In the summer of 2013, Baltimore’s homicide rate was on the rise, prompting residents to take to the streets in an effort to reduce gun violence through neighborhood engagement. Out of that violent year, positive activism was spun by groups like 300 Man March, Moms Against Gun Violence, West Wednesdays, and, ultimately, Baltimore Ceasefire—which changed its name to Baltimore Peace Movement in 2022 to “declare what it’s about, not what it’s against.”

Baltimore Peace Movement hosts Peace Promise Weekends the first weekend of February, August, November, and Mother’s Day weekend. During these dedicated days—a time for communities to host life-affirming events and celebrate the peace that naturally resides in all humanity—research has shown a 52 percent reduction in gun violence. Throughout the year, the movement serves as a hub of resources for organizations and community members working to nurture peace in Baltimore.

Award-winning photojournalist—and frequent Baltimore contributor—J.M. Giordano has documented the local peace movement since 2013, and compiled his photos into a new book, 13–23: How a Summer of Violence Led to a Decade of Activism.

Here, we share an online-exclusive preview of the pictorial history, as well as exclusive images from Giordano’s most recent coverage of Baltimore Peace Movement’s peace weekend that took place August 4–6, 2023.

From 13–23: How a Summer of Violence Led to a Decade of Activism:

From the Baltimore Peace Movement’s Peace Promise Weekend August 4-6: 

In 2017, as a reaction to the city’s alarming homicide rate, Erricka Bridgeford co-created Baltimore Ceasefire weekends—three designated days during which city residents committed to putting down their weapons, with the hope of reducing violence. But even before Ceasefire, Bridgeford, who works as director of training for Community Mediation Maryland, assisted in passage of a 2015 bill to provide resources to families of homicide victims, as well as the 2013 repeal of the death penalty. Last year, the short film, SAGE, which premiered at the Maryland Film Festival, documented Bridgeford’s ritual of burning sage at the sites in the city where homicides have been committed.

How does Ceasefire work?
We’ve said from the beginning if people are given an opportunity to do something together, that if you have as many people as possible involved, it becomes peer pressure. You don’t want to be that guy who kills somebody while the whole city is having a sacred weekend to celebrate life together.

This is why outreach before the weekend is really important. We’re saying to everyone, be as peaceful as you can and think of ways you can be peaceful on purpose. When people know it’s Ceasefire weekend, they have a conversation with someone, put a flyer in their hand, put a poster in their window.

Part of the reason you started this was that your brother was killed in 2007. Tell us about that.
My brother was two and a half years younger than me. He was my first sibling, so we were very close. Losing him felt like the end of my world. I was working at Community Mediation of Maryland at the time. I found out he got killed when I was in the middle of teaching a mediation training to the Office of the Public Defender in Baltimore. I was in bad shape for about six months.

What’s your biggest success story?
Back in February 2018, the Ceasefire weekend started a stretch of 11 and a half days when nobody got killed. The city hadn’t gone that long without a murder since March of 2014. Instead of trying to guess, we went to the streets and had conversations with people in some of the most violent areas of the city. After the weekend was over, we kept saying, “Oh, my goodness, it’s day four now, it’s day five.” It became a thing and, by day seven, the media had picked it up, so people were having that conversation: “I don’t want to be the one who breaks that streak right now, Baltimore is doing good.”

How has Ceasefire grown?
There are two Ceasefire Charter schools—Creative City and Lillie May Carroll Jackson and we’re working on Frederick Douglass High School—which are used for education and training programs. We’ve trained 30 Ceasefire ambassadors, both youth and adults, who represent the movement. Right now, we’re excited about our ability to get out our branding and messages. Around the city, you’ll see Ceasefire messages on buses and subways and also billboards.

It sounds like you’re reaching a lot of people.
I thought it was going to take years to get the kind of participation and buy-in that we’ve gotten in just two years. I’m completely blown away by it. Also, research shows there’s up to 66 percent fewer shootings on those three days, and the violence doesn’t immediately spike after the Ceasefire weekend. That’s always a big question: Are people just waiting till after the Ceasefire? Even the following weekend, violence doesn’t go up.

How did people resolve differences without firearms?
When people had conflict with each other, they’d go to whoever was their leader—whether it was their gang leader or someone they respected in the neighborhood. They’d say, “Look, I have a beef with so-and-so, but I know we have this thing going in Baltimore right now and I don’t want to be that guy that messes it up.” So they would brainstorm and come up with creative ways to resolve the conflict. They’d block off a lot or an abandoned field where people could come. Whoever had this conflict, they were going to come and have a fight and after the fight was over, nobody could come back shooting, nobody could keep talking about it and antagonize the other person. Anyone who came to see it had to check their gun with someone at the gate—yes, this really happened.

People look at shooters as different from themselves. The truth of the matter is that if most people had a gun in their hand at the wrong time, many more of us would have shot somebody and never even remembered pulling the trigger. Conflict often escalates—and it’s easier to buy a gun in Baltimore than find fresh fruits and vegetables.

Does your background in mediation help with your advocacy?
Mediation skills give me the ability to understand people’s hopelessness and make sure people feel heard, but it doesn’t give me the wherewithal to keep navigating murder. What helps me with that is having faced so much murder myself and doing my own healing work around my own trauma.

I was born with one hand, so society treats me like I’m broken, and I’ve watched people treat Baltimore like it’s broken. These different things are identity markers for me: Having one hand, being Black, being a woman, growing up in poverty, having to face murder so much. These are my experiences and give me this wide-ranging emotional and spiritual wherewithal to navigate and engage with murder.

Although our city’s slogan is no longer “The City That Reads,” a new literacy program is using one powerful story to bring local communities together.

One Book Baltimore—a collaboration between Baltimore City Public Schools, the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore Ceasefire, and several other organizations—connects area students through a book club-style reading of author Nic Stone’s best-selling novel, Dear Martin. Stone kicked off the initiative during the Baltimore Book Festival in September with a discussion about her debut book, which follows the story of an Ivy League-bound, African-American student who becomes a victim of racial profiling.

The program started with the distribution of free copies of the novel to all Baltimore City Public Schools seventh- and eighth-graders and continued with free events such as youth conferences on social justice. Going forward, One Book Baltimore leaders hope that the story’s narrative surrounding race and identity will encourage young people to discuss their own experiences and challenges.

Tarnerra Davis, a junior at Carver Vocational-Technical High School, says she recognized parallels between some of the plot points in Dear Martin and the violence occurring in her own neighborhood.

Davis says the book empowered her to participate in a community discussion during one Baltimore Ceasefire weekend. “I’m into speaking out on certain things that are going on in the community if someone else isn’t going to,” she says.

To wrap up the program’s inaugural year, Stone will visit the Enoch Pratt Northwood library branch on December 12 for a discussion on the book’s racial equity and anti-violence themes.

“People don’t expect [teenagers] to speak up and be knowledgeable about these topics,” says Jaylin Jones, an eighth-grader at Southwest Baltimore Charter School. “Learning about it forwards us into being leaders on these topics and enables us to help other people understand them.”

Three years after the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who died while in Baltimore police custody, Baltimore’s artists, activists, and community members continue to grapple with the underlying causes of his death, the multi-day uprising that followed, and how the events continue to impact every corner of the city. On the anniversary of Gray’s death, April 19, more than 150 people gathered at Union Baptist Church in Druid Hill for the third annual Rise Bmore, a free evening of words and music, of and for Baltimore, in honor of Gray.

“We gather here every year in memory of one of Baltimore’s murder victims. We gather here in memory of Freddie Gray,” said Judah Adashi, founder and artistic director of Rise Bmore. “We are here because he’s not here—we’re here because he should be here.”

Community storytellers and artists Malaika Aminata Clements, Julian Hamer, and Shannon Wallace started the evening with a discussion titled “Seeing Baltimore.” Moderated by local musician and writer Brittani McNeil, the discussion centered around using artistic mediums to challenge the narratives presented by local and national media about the uprising and how the panelists use art to push the conversation about life in Baltimore forward.

Wallace, an award-winning photographer from East Baltimore, said it’s important for her to share stories of otherwise unseen members of the African-American community through her photography. She told the audience about how she photographed a young kid, who lived in Rutland, and put him on the cover of her zine, BLVKBLUE (What Does It Mean to Be Black?). When Wallace gave the boy’s mother a copy, she burst into tears at the picture of her son.

“For the first time, I felt like what I do matters to someone,” said Wallace. “It was the first time I felt like someone was visible because of me.”

For Hamer, who worked for WBFF Fox 45 during the uprising and has since become a documentary filmmaker, the unrest influenced her decision to stay in Baltimore because she felt determined to see the city grow and thrive again.

“There’s no reason that [Baltimore] can’t be great if we continue to do individual arts and make each person’s day a little better,” said Hamer. “I want to see this city be the place that I know it can be, that we’ve all seen it be. And you don’t have to do that anywhere else. We can do that right here.”

At 8 p.m., the event shifted as the voice of Erricka Bridgeford, one of the organizers of Baltimore Ceasefire and The Sun’s 2017 Marylander of The Year, filled the room with a pre-recorded reading of “Invocation: Dear Baltimore.” The performances that followed—from artists that represented a true cross-section of the city’s music and arts scene—provided a window into each performer’s pre- and post-uprising reality.

At the top of the concert, soulful singer-songwriter Joy Postell delivered unflinching performances of her songs “Hands Up Don’t Shoot,” which is dedicated to Gray, and “Consciousness,” that uses her signature rhythms and sharp lyrics to address issues faced by the African-American community. Then, Abdu Ali, who has become a local underground music and cultural figure, shared four of his recent poems about experiencing life in Baltimore as a black man. Voices Rise, a community choir lead by brothers Douglas and Benjamin Buchanan, performed classic uplifting songs “Let It Be” and “Lean on Me.”

Before performing her original song “Sundown Town,” Baltimore folk singer-songwriter Letitia VanSant told the audience she wrote the song in reaction to an experience she had while canvassing for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign in a suburb outside Detroit. One of her fellow canvassers, an African-American man in his 60s, was visibly shaken about being in this quiet, orderly neighborhood after dark because he grew up in a “sundown town” where black people were not welcome at night. VanSant said that when she returned to Baltimore, she questioned how her sense of safety as a white person compared to others in her community.

“I think that if we want peace in Baltimore we have to work for justice for everybody,” she said. “Nobody’s going to be safe until everybody’s safe.”

Three musicians, Akua Allrich on vocals, Japheth Clark on flugelhorn, and Mark G. Meadows on vocals and piano, performed Meadows’ original “Stay Woke,” Nina Simone’s “Come Ye,” and “Baltimore” by Randy Newman to “pay homage to the great city of Baltimore.”

To round out the show, renowned local poet Tariq Touré performed his piece “No Refuge: For the Love of The Game” that addresses his views on the disposability of black athletes and the dilemmas they face when choosing whether to speak out about social injustices.

His final stanza, “I assure you they love me! / surely they’ll understand today / So when I take this knee / as that anthem starts to play. / You think they could look at me / with this passion in my face / And truly be able to say / this is the land of the free / and the home of the brave?” was immediately followed by a passionate interpretation of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by Adashi on piano.

Jonestown resident Ashley Day, who attended Rise Bmore for the first time since 2016, said she’s glad Adashi has been able to maintain the event as a platform to address the changes or lack thereof since Gray’s death.

“It reminds people that it happened,” she says. “It also creates the memory and the life of a presence that’s no longer here, and it motivates and inspires the community again to get more involved and spark change.”