Excerpts
Sheila (01:41.6)
Hi everybody, how y’all doing? My name is Sheila Armstrong, and it’s my honor and my pleasure to get this opportunity to talk to each one of y’all. I’m loud, I’m bubbly, but this is who I am. I am a Philly girl, born and raised in Philadelphia. I claim all of Philadelphia because I was raised throughout the city. It was times of period where our family dealt with homelessness. So I done stayed in North Philly, South Philly, West Philly. So I claim the whole city of Philadelphia as my city. I’m born and raised, lived here all my life. And because of that, I shared that at the beginning, young stages of my life, I was a troublemaker. I’m not going to sit up here and act like I was innocent or anything of that nature. I had a, as I tell people, I had my Moses moment with God.
And once I had my most moment with God that changed my life, and I’m going to share all this with y’all as we go further. But just to give you a brief, a small brief background on who I am. My name is Sheila Armstrong. I currently live in West Philadelphia. I raised, I have two children, two boys, ages 16 and 23. My 23 year old son, three year old son is autistic. He has been, he was not at the time of his diagnosis, he was nonverbal and he was diagnosed with Asperger’s disorder. As I explained to people, I am a praying and believing mother. When my son was diagnosed with Asperger’s disorder, I was working with a doctor who told me my son would never speak, would never do anything. And I didn’t believe him. I trusted my faith, I trusted in God. And the reason why I didn’t believe that this doctor was because my son was trying to communicate with me anyway. While he couldn’t speak and he was a verbal, he was making sound and noises. He would point to stuff that he want. with that, I knew he could find the right people that could talk. So here we are. 23 years later, my son is now 23 years old. We created this organization called Cook it for Autism. He graduated.
Sheila (04:07.891)
from Mass Bomb High School culinary program. And he’s currently working right now as a cook at Sesame Place, because he loved working at Sesame Place. We started cooking for autism. And cooking for autism, the main primary goal when we first started was just to help other parents like us. I am a low income single mother. I’m the first one in my family to graduate high school, get a GED, because I got my GED.
I’m the first one in my family to graduate from college. I’m the first one in my family to get a master’s degree and I’m the first one in my family to be a business owner. So I am a family first. I believe I’m a cycle breaker. That is my responsibility and my family is to break the cycle of poverty that’s in my family. Cause we’ve been low income forever. forever. I don’t know a time when we wasn’t low income in my family. This go back decades and cycles of poverty in our family. I can’t remember a time where I didn’t live in a community that was high in crime. I currently live in a community that’s still high in crime. So everything that I fight for is the things that affects me. That’s the best way to explain it.
Robert N Rust III (08:38.36)
Well, that’s a great story. Thanks for sharing it with us. Listen, let’s go on to the rest of the things you’re doing with your life. Let me tell you, I was raised in Virginia. I was raised in a segregated environment. I’m an old fella, by the way. And I went to school in college in the South and it was segregated at the time. And it’s been over time that I’ve come to learn that that was not a good thing.
At the same time, I had very strong and good relations, believe it or not, with members of the African American community. My dad was a contractor. And some of the greatest lessons I got was from some of the folks that worked for him for years and years. I just give you that as a preface because I understand that you have taken steps to talk about how to break the poverty in Philadelphia and elsewhere.
You’re trying to break the cycle of white and black not properly communicating with each other. You’re trying to break the cycle of young black youth getting into something productive for their lives. You’re trying to break the cycle as it relates to break up with the family. I might be going too far into any of that, but I’m going to let you take it from there.
Sheila (15:53.64)
I told my son father this, we got into a bad fight. From this bad fight, I woke up in Lankanaw Hospital. At Lankanaw Hospital, I went from Lankanaw Hospital to Women Against Abuse Emergency Shelter. And working with Women Against Abuse, we used my case, my abuse case, and that was the first law that I changed, and I loved it. The first law that I changed on my abuse case
And Rob, you know, you’re lawyer, you will notice, back in the day, it was the classification of a weapon. And Pennsylvania law has stated at the back of the day that a weapon classified was a knife, a gun, and a pipe. We use my case because at the time of my incident, my son father beat me with a vacuum cleaner. And the judge threw out the vacuum, the classification, of the vacuum cleaner as a weapon. And because the judge threw out the classification of the vacuum cleaner being a weapon, that also threw out the classification of the charges for attempted murder. So with this happening and this being my son’s father first of his and everything that’s going on, instead of my son’s father sitting in jail for attempted murder, he ended up walking away with probation.
Robert N Rust III (17:21.646)
But that caused then for law to be changed, right?
Sheila (17:24.511)
that caused the laws to be changed.
And that was the first thing. I tell people, I remember this as the back of the hand. And it was only five words that had to be added. The wording that was changed was anything that causes bodily injury is now classified as a weapon.
Robert N Rust III (18:10.167)
huh. Okay.
Sheila (18:12.873)
So here, that was my first law I changed with Woman Against Abuse was the classification of what a weapon was because Pennsylvania law has stated. And then from there, when I realized, I just became an advocate. I started speaking with Woman Against Abuse, throwing a lot of stuff with Woman Against Abuse. In the shelter of a woman against abuse is when I had my Moses moment.
My Moses moment, I explained, and Moses is just like, I call it my Moses moment, because it’s when Moses got to talk to God with the burning bush. For me, that was my Moses moment and woman against abuse shelter. Nobody imagines ending up in a shelter. Nobody plans to be homeless, as I try to explain to people. Nobody homeless plan to be homeless. I never planned in my life to be homeless or anything.
And one night I was mad. I was in the shelter. I was mad. And I remember screaming, cussing, crying everybody out. I cussed everybody out. Even God, cussed him out. I cussed everybody. I was mad. I’m mad. I’m in the shelter. I’m mad. I want y’all to understand. Nobody playing. I’m mad. OK? And I remember, it’s middle of night. I’m going through it. I’m sitting up there looking at my baby crying, sleeping, and we’re in the shelter. And I remember at having it out and quiet as hell. heard a voice say, are you done yet?
Are you done yet? And then after that, I heard the voice say, how dare you? How dare me to blame God for all the stuff that went wrong in my life. And I never once reached out to God or seek God for anything. But here I am at my lowest pit of my life, blaming God for where I ended up. How dare me? That’s what God said to me. How dare you? How dare you blame me?
Sheila (20:14.355)
How did you say this? But he said, guess what? I promise you this, you follow me now, I give you peace. Cause that’s all I wanted. I never had peace in my life. I remember the earliest age of me being molested was at the age of seven.
I never remember having a good night’s sleep. Even when I was on the street side, I tell people the first time I had a good night’s sleep was in that woman that gets the booth shelter. Cause God said, follow me, I will give you peace. And I said, okay, God, I will follow you. And I’m a crier and I’m a weeper now, Rob. And I’m going to tell you, cause when I talk about the glory of God, I cry.
Robert N Rust III (35:23.618)
Okay, now, let me stop you there. You said that the education agencies that have been in place for a good while have been failing. And you said also that they know these things. And are you also saying that they have that knowledge and they’re not acting on it? Or I’m not sure what you’re saying. Okay, okay.
Sheila (35:25.608)
Yes.
Sheila (35:44.371)
That is exactly what I’m saying. That’s exactly why I’m saying they, cause they had the knowledge, they had the information, they never acted on it because they was trying, trying to maintain the system of status quo.
Robert N Rust III (42:51.694)
Sheila, I’m sorry to interrupt, but we’ve got just a little bit more time. I think what I heard you say, and I think it’s very important, you’re saying that the way we’ve got the system set up, yeah, we help people when they need help, but we keep them trapped to keep them poor. And if you kept the things going that were there in the first place, enough time to allow them to break out, then that’s what we need. Is that right? Okay.
Sheila (42:53.203)
Yes. Yes.
Sheila (43:17.055)
That’s exactly right. That’s what we need. We have people like myself, low income that is trying to get out of poverty, but we are trapped down here. We are trapped. feel like this is poverty, systematic poverty is systematic poverty. I don’t know if that’s a terminology.
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