In southwest Philadelphia in August 2019, a young Black man sat down on a folding chair in a high school auditorium and clipped a lapel mic to a bright yellow T-shirt that read “Philly Thrive.” “So, how you doin’? My name is Ricky,” he said into a camera. “I’m a resident in the Gray’s Ferry community, and I’m hoping and praying the refinery gets shutdown.” The refinery in question was Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES), up to that point the largest oil refinery on the Eastern Seaboard. It had operated just a stone’s throw from the Gray’s Ferry neighborhood until two months earlier. In the early hours of June 21, 2019, Philadelphia was rocked by three explosions at the refinery and a fire that burned for more than a day. A week later, PES shut down the refinery. The next month, the company declared bankruptcy and announced it was looking for a buyer. Amid rampant speculation about whether a new owner would restart the refinery or redevelop the site for other uses, Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney established a Refinery Advisory Group “to bring together people with diverse experiences, knowledge, and perspectives on the refinery” and inform the city’s planning for the future of the 1,300-acre site. This could have been a moment for moral repair. City officials had set themselves up to learn how surrounding neighborhoods had been affected by the refinery over its 150-year history. By acknowledging the harmful legacy of pollution—which Ricky went on to describe as “a hundred…
