The first museum building in the Western Hemisphere can be easily missed. Situated behind beautiful Zion Lutheran Church, which has maintained German-language services for more than 265 years, and in the shadow of historic City Hall, the exterior of The Peale is relatively modest.

The story inside the four-story, red-brick Federal Period townhouse is anything but.

The brainchild of painter and innovator Rembrandt Peale, acclaimed for his astonishing likenesses of contemporaries George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, The Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts opened a month before the British attack on Fort McHenry. Two years later, Peale fired up a gas-fueled chandelier in his repository of fine art and curiosities—recently discovered mastodon bones, for example—and convinced several local businessmen to launch the nation’s first gas company, aka BGE. Then Peale and friends talked city officials into making Baltimore the first city in the U.S. with streetlights.

More interested in European painting techniques and science of all sorts than paying his mortgage, Peale soon turned museum operations over to his brother Rubens. (Rembrandt Peale was preordained to be an artist like his father, Charles, as were his siblings, whose names included Rubens, Raphaelle, and Titian.) Rubens Peale brought in live animal acts to attract crowds, but ultimately the Peales closed their museum, selling the building to the burgeoning Baltimore, suddenly in need of a formal City Hall in 1830. The mayor and council finally outgrew the townhouse and moved down the street into our current City Hall in 1875, at which point change would become a constant for the Peale building.

Next, it served as host to Male and Female Colored School No. 1, the first designated “colored” high school in Maryland. Later, the Baltimore water department assumed control of the property. In 1916, the space became home to shops and light manufacturing.

This part sounds thoroughly modern: Along the way, the now-iconic building was twice condemned by officials, only to be saved by public outcry each time. Eventually, it was rehabilitated and rebranded the City Life Museum, but then that closed in the late 1990s because of budget cuts. Which brings us to today: Shuttered for much of the past quarter century, The Peale officially reopens (again) August 13—on the 208th anniversary of its original opening—following a $5.5-million capital campaign and top-to-bottom overhaul, an effort begun by the Friends of The Peale in 2008.

The mission of the new Peale centers on another evolution, as a community-driven museum, repurposing the historic building as a celebration of the unique history of Baltimore, its denizens—and fittingly, its one-of-a-kind buildings.

“We won’t do ‘top-down’ curated shows more than once a year,” says Nancy Proctor, The Peale’s chief strategy officer. “We operate quite differently from a traditional museum approach. Everything that happens in the building will be proposed by a community member. Exhibitions and performances are all grassroots-driven.”

Recent exhibitions include “THE AMAZING BLACK MAN,” a solo exhibition by local artist Kumasi J. Barnett, who painted over old Marvel and DC comic books, replacing past heroes with characters such as “The Amazing Black-Man.” In June, the museum hosted the Single Carrot Theater, which performed Marie Antoinette and the Magical Negroes, a high-fashion, time-jumping exploration of race and revolution in America, set against 16th-century Versailles and the French Revolution.

Board member Mortimer “Tim” Sellers, a descendant of Rembrandt Peale, believes in the museum’s new direction. Its 50-year lease with the city, similar to several other historic venues, is also a welcome development.

“The Peales thought of themselves as scientists, as well as artists, and they were in touch with all the cutting-edge and experimental things happening,” Sellers says. “When the idea of gas lighting became possible, they instantly tried to do it. But I’m not sure Rembrandt was a particularly good businessman. The family lost any connection to Baltimore Gas and Electric.

“That’s typical, though,” Sellers continues with a laugh. “I’m speaking of his family, but it’s my own family, too. We’re all creative and very involved in life and innovation, but we’re not particularly good at focusing on making any money out of it. I mean, I guess it’s more fun to discover things than it is to actually figure out how to monetize them. There’s a downside, which is to say to we remain poor.

“You asked what I do for a living? I’m a philosopher. I’m an academic at the University of Baltimore. So, there you have it.”

Two-hundred-plus demonstrators calling for cuts to the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) budget, and a reallocation of BPD funding to other agencies, marched to City Hall Friday afternoon with several protestors painting “Defund the Police” in large, block lettering on Gay Street.

Protest organizers, including local grassroots group Organizing Black, said they set the time and place of the rally to send a message to the City Council as they began their virtual budget hearings Friday afternoon. Among those attending the budget hearing was Police Commissioner Michael Harrison, along with other officials.

“The police budget increases every year, and every year, there’s more crime,” Taz Gaines, with Organizing Black, told reporters as the street painting got underway. “Why are we still increasing funding? We should be taking away funding and adding it to education and housing. It’s not just about defunding the police, but reinvesting that money back into the city.”

Marchers met at Baltimore’s Central Booking and Intake Center at 3 p.m. Friday before walking the roughly 10 blocks to City Hall, where they met other demonstrators. Other groups partnering in the rally included Baltimore Bloc and CASA.

Throughout the past 30 years, the BPD’s budget has tripled while Baltimore City Recreation & Parks funding has remained nearly flat.

According to a 2017 Fiscal Year study by the Center for Popular Democracy, which was published by Forbes last week, Baltimore has the highest level of per resident policing, by far, of any large city in the country.

With a city operating budget of $2.6 billion that year, $480.7 million was dedicated to policing in Baltimore. That represented 18.2 percent of Baltimore’s total operating budget, which equates to $772—the highest level in the report by far—per person on policing, a figure more than double that of Los Angeles, for example.

Recent Morgan State University graduates Chrissy Okemkpa and Taylor Boykin attended the rally in front of City Hall. Both said it was important for them to be present given the recent protests against police brutality in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, as well as the subsequent calls to shift police funding to other functions that benefit the community—which they believe is needed.

“It’s not enough for people to just be on social media and say they support something,” Okemkpa said. “We wanted to be here. We wanted be present. That’s how you show you support the movement and calls for reform and changes.”

She continued: “We went to school in the city. We’re both from Baltimore, and the city spends too much money on policing—we see it. There’s a lot of inequities that need to be addressed—public health, food desserts—and yes, police brutality.”

Boykin also highlighted the need to shift the police department spending elsewhere.

“Education definitely needs more money,” said Boykin, who mentioned a need for more recreation centers and after-school, weekend, and summer opportunities for city students.

Michaela Brown, one of the Organizing Black leaders, said the group is demanding that 50 percent of the police department’s budget be redirected to infrastructure, education, housing, health care, and social services.

She also said they were calling for the repeal of Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBOR), which can hinder investigations into allegations of police violence. Police supervisors, for example, may not question their officers for 10 days following an incident report.

City Council members met virtually last week to review the $3 billion operating budget put forth by Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young for the next fiscal year, which is scheduled for a vote on Monday. Young’s proposal would give the Baltimore Police Department a budget of $550 million, which is roughly 20 percent of the entire city budget and an increase of around $21 million.

Council members can negotiate funding priorities with Young and his administration, but they only make cuts to the proposal and cannot increase spending in any one area.

A perennial problem with the police budget is the roughly $40-$50 million that is spent each year on overtime. Police Commissioner Harrison said he is determined to do better, and he demonstrated that by decreasing overtime costs by about $5 million in the last year. He also eliminated vacant positions and generated savings through reduced legal settlements.

More cuts, Harrison warned, will “have very serious consequences,” such as longer response times and more unsolved crimes.

Even before recent protests, Young described the fiscal 2021 budget process, which goes into effect in July, as “incredibly difficult,” given projected revenue decreases because of the COVID-19-related economic shutdown.

“Every City and county in the country are facing difficult budgetary decisions, and Baltimore is no different,” Young said last month when he released his budget outline. “What sets us apart, however, is the fact that even in the face of financial pressures, our commitment to our children and families is rock solid. The budget I presented makes very clear that Baltimore values its children, older adults, and most vulnerable residents.”

Earlier Friday morning, hours prior to the march and rally at City Hall, other protesters met outside the South Baltimore rowhouse of City Councilman Eric Costello, the chairman of the council’s budget and appropriations committee, calling for him to cut police spending and redirect the funding to other urgent needs. Costello responded by phoning—and apparently expressing anger toward—a local parent of one of the photojournalists covering the protest.

Costello later issued an issued an apology for his actions.

With tension across the nation continuing to mount—leading in many cases to chaos and violence in major cities—hundreds of Baltimoreans gathered downtown yesterday for a peaceful, youth-led demonstration demanding justice for George Floyd and all victims of police violence.

Beginning at the Baltimore Convention Center, organizers were determined to maintain order, calling upon those in the crowd to stop fellow protestors if they began to exhibit violent behaviors on what would be the third day of protests in the streets of Baltimore City.

From the intersection of Pratt and Sharp streets past City Hall, the Jones Falls Expressway, and the Baltimore City Correctional Center, masked protestors maintained their mission and peacefully expressed their anger and frustration over the lives lost at the hands of the police.

Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh has been charged with 11 counts of wire fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy by federal prosecutors, who allege in a 34-page indictment released Wednesday morning that the former politician was involved in a long-running, corrupt enterprise involving sales of her self-published children’s book series, Healthy Holly.

After weeks of mounting pressure, Pugh resigned her office in May 2019 following revelations first reported by The Baltimore Sun that she made hundreds of thousands of dollars from sales of her children’s book to the University of Maryland Medical System, where she was a longtime board member. It’s been alleged that $800,000 from book sales to a variety of nonprofits and foundations—including Kaiser Permanente and Associated Black Charities—with business, or potential business, before the city and state was funneled through her Health Holly limited liability company.

Pugh, who initially called the investigation “a witch hunt,” stepped down after the FBI raided her two homes and City Hill office, and the City Council put forth a charter amendment to make it possible to remove a mayor from office.

From November 2011 to March 2019—a time period that includes when Pugh served in the state senate—federal prosecutors allege the 69-year old Baltimore politician, most notably along with legislative aid Gary Brown, Jr., “did knowingly devise” a scheme to defraud purchasers of Health Holly books. The allegations claim that Pugh used the proceeds of sales to promote her political career, fund her mayoral election campaign, and enrich herself—including buying and renovating her house, and paying down $40,000 in credit card and home equity loan debts.

Pugh is scheduled to appear for arraignment in U.S. District Court in Baltimore before U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow on Nov. 21. She is also expected to turn herself in to the U.S. Marshals prior to the afternoon hearing in federal court.

“Our elected officials must place the interests of the citizens above their own,” United States Attorney Robert K. Hur said in a statement announcing the indictment. “Corrupt public employees rip off the taxpayers and undermine everyone’s faith in government. The U.S. Attorney’s Office and our law enforcement partners will zealously pursue those who abuse the taxpayers’ trust and bring them to justice.”

Guilty pleas from related investigations of Brown, Jr., and Roslyn Wedington, the executive director of a nonprofit training center where Pugh served as board chair, were also unsealed Wednesday. Brown has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, falsifying a tax return, and two counts of conspiracy to defraud the United States. Wedington has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the federal government and multiple counts of falsifying tax returns.

Central to the federal investigation, the indictment highlights, is that Pugh’s self-published Healthy Holly books—generally considered amateurish—were sold to nonprofits, foundations, and others with business before the city and state. Also central to the federal investigation are allegations that Pugh “double sold” books and did not provide actual books to entities that had paid for them.

Among other tax evasion charges, federal prosecutors allege Pugh reported her taxable income in 2016 to the IRS as $31,020 when it was, in fact, more than 10 times that figure. Among the related allegations is that Pugh wrote checks to Brown “to create false business expenses for purported outside services performed for Healthy Holly.” She is also charged with tax evasion in 2015.

If convicted, Pugh faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for the wire fraud conspiracy and for each of the seven counts of wire fraud; five years in federal prison for conspiracy to defraud the United States; and five years in federal prison for each of the two counts of tax evasion. It is worth noting that actual sentences for federal crimes are typically significantly less than the maximum penalties allowed.

Here’s further background: After Pugh’s mayoral election, Brown was found guilty of violating election laws for using his relatives to channel illegal funds to her campaign. Nonetheless, despite questions, Pugh did not fire Brown from his City Hall position after his conviction.

Pugh launched Healthy Holly, LLC, in 2011 to publish, market, and sell children’s books she authored. Since 1997, she also owned Catherine E. Pugh and Company, Inc., a marketing and public relations consulting firm. The principal address for both companies was Pugh’s residence in Baltimore, according to the federal indictment, which adds that Pugh was also the sole signatory on the Healthy Holly and Pugh Company bank accounts. Pugh did not maintain a personal bank account, according to the indictment, commingling her business bank accounts for personal and business use.

Pugh, of course, became the second recent Baltimore mayor to resign following a criminal investigation. Former Mayor Sheila Dixon, who assumed office in 2007 after former Mayor Martin O’Malley was elected governor, resigned in 2010 after she was found guilty of charges she had misappropriated gift cards intended for low-income families.

Current Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young, the City Council president when Pugh stepped down, has assumed the mayoral duties in the interim. He also recently announced he will run for a full term in 2020.

Pugh has not appeared publicly to address questions about the scandal since her resignation, which was read in a short statement by her private lawyer Steve Silverman at a press conference at his downtown office

“In the best interest of the people and the government of the Mayor and City of Baltimore, I am writing to attest that, effective immediately, I hereby resign from the Office of Mayor, to which I was duly elected on November 8, 2016,” read Pugh’s resignation letter. “I am confident that I have left the City in capable hands for the duration of the term to which I was elected.”

“What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”

-Inscription above the altar at St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Jim Cabezas’ boyhood church and school.

In 1971, Jim Cabezas’ rookie year walking a beat, there were 323 homicides in Baltimore. Twelve months later, a then-record 330. Heroin was sold openly, and he worked alongside more than a few, in his words, “brutal racists.” (Cabezas once threw his body on top of a black citizen getting savagely kicked by two officers, only to be told if he tried anything like that again he’d never receive backup.)

Less than two years on the job, Cabezas saw a grand jury return bribery indictments against six current and two former detectives. Indictments also came down against five lieutenants, six sergeants, and three patrolmen. Then former Governor Spiro Agnew resigned as vice president over extortion and other charges from his time in office in Maryland.

Recently, an older woman approached Cabezas, who just wrote his autobiography with former Sun reporter Joan Jacobson, and asked the former Baltimore cop and state political corruption investigator if he thought things had improved since be became a police officer. It should be noted: Cabezas spent three years working undercover as a taxi driver on The Block in the mid-’70s, and later, after losing his eyesight to a degenerative condition, oversaw the investigations that ended the tenures of former City Comptroller Jacqueline McLean, former Mayor Sheila Dixon, and former Anne Arundel County Executive John Leopold. “Probably the same,” the good-natured, matter-of-fact Cabezas told the woman. “Maybe worse,” he added, reflecting further.

The son of devout immigrants from Nicaragua and Chile, Cabezas grew up next to Patterson Park, attending St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church. His childhood was idyllic—baseball, football, and school—for a time. A near-fatal reaction to an antibiotic as a boy triggered a rare eye disease (which ultimately caused him to go blind in the middle of his career). Shortly afterward, he lost his mother to brain cancer. Then, as a cop, still only 22, his father—“my best friend”—was murdered.

Much of Cabezas’ 46-year career was spent in the chaotic Baltimore quadrant that includes The Block, City Hall, and police headquarters. Telling everyone he’d had enough and quit the department, in 1975, he actually went undercover for three years—posing as a taxi driver even to his future fiancée—and began frequenting The Block to determine if the Philadelphia mafia had infiltrated the prostitution, drug, gambling, and loan-sharking operations there. He also followed up on FBI concerns that the New York mob had infiltrated the docks and longshoreman’s union. Neither, he’d determine, had their hands in Charm City’s underworld. “Baltimore had a rep as a ‘rat town,’” he says. “Nobody kept an out-of-towner’s secrets, and it made the Philly and New York mobs nervous. Instead, it became a town where the mafia exiled people they didn’t kill.”

A chameleon with an unmistakable Highlandtown accent, he found corruption at each turn. “The culture on The Block is [drug] abuse and being abused, and it’s sad, but there is at least some honor among thieves. A few people look out for each other. With the police and with politicians, it’s just greed and hubris.”

After 15 eye surgeries, two well-timed minor miracles allowed Cabezas to maintain his near half-century pursuit of wrongdoers. The first was an offer to join the State Prosecutor’s office in the mid-’80s when his vision had deteriorated to where he couldn’t carry a gun. The second was new computer software for the blind that enabled him to stay on that job after a state doctor recommended his termination.

Photo Courtesy of Bill Barry

The light turns red at President and Pratt streets in Harbor East and a half dozen teenagers in T-shirts, jeans, and unlaced high tops spring from the grassy median, holding up Windex spray bottles in one hand and gas station-style squeegees in the other. Two skinny younger boys jump into the street first. A couple of older kids shout and laugh at each other over the idling traffic. It’s a clear, bright Sunday in May. The school year is almost over.

They try to make eye contact through rolled up windows.

“I got you,” says one of the teenagers, leaning over the hood of a Honda, spraying a dab on the windshield.

“How are you?” a kid says to another driver. “What’s up?”

“I got you.”

A second teenager sprays a shot of soapy water on a windshield, trying to drum up business. The woman behind the wheel simply continues to stare at her phone.

To still another driver: “You look good, bro. You look sharp. You wanna wash?”

A 40ish white man in a Range Rover frantically waves his arms. “No, no, no! Don’t touch my car.”

A young woman in a Honda Accord smiles as she shakes her head toward James, the self-possessed 16-year-old high school student who serves as this group’s informal crew chief. “I don’t have any money,” she says. But then she offers him her French fries, which he accepts. Before the light changes, four drivers get quick windshield wipes. They appear happy, at least content, to hand over a buck or two for a slightly better view of the world. An equal number of drivers appear annoyed. The rest look relieved they avoided the kids’ face-to-face pitch.

It’s such a familiar scene by now in Baltimore, the two-minute productions play out like a choreographed dance. “The overall reaction? I’d say 50-50,” James says as he steps back to the median as cars begin rolling again. “Some people definitely resent you. Hey, I get it. You’re walkin’ up on their car. Other people tell you they’re glad you’re out here making an honest dollar.

“Most of the time,” James continues, “it’s not even about us. Everybody’s bringing their own stuff they got going on and it gets directed at you.”

Baltimore’s “squeegee kids” have been a source of hot, racialized debate, law enforcement confusion, and political puzzlement for decades. In 1985, the City Council voted 11-7, splitting along white-black lines, to ban the practice and call for arrests. Black council members saw the proposal as racist because the young entrepreneurs the legislation targeted were almost exclusively black. Congressman Parren Mitchell, the first African-American to represent Maryland, decried the hysteria around the squeegee kids in his regular column in The Afro. So did former Sun columnist Roger Simon, generating a maelstrom of letters to the editor.

Then-police chief Bishop L. Robinson, the City’s first black police commissioner, sought the ban because some drivers had complained they felt threatened by the youth and because he was concerned about the squeegee kids’ safety. (Indeed, a 14-year-old was killed the next year by a tractor-trailer.) Facing backlash, Mayor William Donald Schaefer sought time to study the issue. Ultimately, the law went into effect with a compromise—the removal of the threat of incarceration—and stands to this day. None of this flap and fury makes sense to Derrick, who is two years younger than James and has been working a squeegee alongside him since they were 10 and 12, respectively. He says after all this time he still can’t get his head around the daily gamut of responses he receives, and endures, from adult drivers.

“Honestly? It’s confusing,” the 14-year-old says. “Someone will give you a $10 bill and thank you, and the very next person will cuss at you.” Derrick and James, like most of the teenagers hustling at this end of I-83—built, of course, in the 1960s to ferry suburbanites in and out of the city—live in the Douglass Homes housing project near The Johns Hopkins Hospital. “How do you make sense of that when you didn’t do one thing different?”

“What do you want us to do for money?” James says. “Cut grass? That’s a white people thing. There ain’t no grass around here.

-J.M. Giordano

Ever since the battle lines were drawn in the ’80s, the squeegee controversy has risen and fallen every few years, typically driven by outrage from white commuters following a fresh report that someone near a squeegee location grabbed a wallet off a car seat, kicked a door, or hurled a water bottle at a vehicle. Each episode inevitably casts everyone with a squeegee in hand in the same dark light. (When a husband who killed his wife falsely claimed last year that a panhandler had stabbed her to death at an East Baltimore intersection, the initial blowback wasn’t only felt by panhandlers, but squeegee youth, too. None other than Oprah said she’d think twice before ever rolling down her window again.)

In 2017, after renewed complaints—BPD fields multiple calls daily that report squeegee workers soliciting in traffic—former Mayor Catherine Pugh launched a “Squeegee Corps” initiative. Her office, estimating there were about 100 squeegee kids they could help get off the street, put together car washes outside City Hall and elsewhere. However, a sustainable program was never put in place.

Last fall, the cycle started again. A driver in Federal Hill accused a black male (whom he later admitted was older and not part of the regular squeegee group with which he was familiar) of shattering the rear window of his SUV, posting a video of the encounter to a South Baltimore Community Facebook page, which went viral. A week later, Downtown Partnership announced plans to place unarmed security guards at intersections to “monitor” the actions of the squeegee kids at a cost of $3,000 per week.

 

“What do you want us to do for money? Cut grass?”

 

Two weeks later, a 10-year-old squeegee kid was nearly killed in a terrifying crash—also caught on video—after being struck by a car at President and Pratt streets.

Shortly afterward, Pugh vowed to create a $2-million annual effort, with at least some of the money coming from private sources, to “address the squeegee problem” and develop the next iteration of the Squeegee Corps to move the kids off the street corners. Following Pugh’s resignation, that plan is now up in the air.

“Look, I’m probably more liberal in my views than most of my counterparts,” says Major Richard Gibson. “To me, this is a social problem. It’s similar to the panhandlers, sex workers, and homeless. People complain, it’s illegal solicitation like panhandling, so we deal with it. You get them to move off the intersection. But these aren’t really law enforcement issues unless they do something that’s legitimately criminal.”

A former high-ranking police official, who did not want his name used because of his current job, was more adamant about getting the squeegee kids off the street, similarly lumping them with panhandlers, sex workers, drug dealers, the dirt bike-riding 12 0’Clock Boys, and the homeless—as well as the large groups of youth who from time to time have stirred tensions with the police at the Inner Harbor. “They are a part of what people see as the chaos of Baltimore when they drive into the city,” he says.

The squeegee kids don’t see themselves that way at all.

“Everybody got a reason to be out here, or they wouldn’t be here,” James says later in the afternoon. “Not everybody has two parents at home or people looking after them the way they should.”

Derrick uses some of the money he earns—$100-$150 after six to seven hours on a busy weekend—to help his mother pay rent. “I’ve got four siblings,” he says. “I come out before school some mornings to have money in my pocket and get something to eat after. Who else is going to help us?”

Donovan, 19, wearing a Ravens cap, is among the oldest here—most are between 10 and 18—and knows firsthand the other alternatives to making money for black males growing up in poverty in Baltimore. He got caught selling drugs when he was younger. “I’ve seen friends die and go to jail with long sentences,” he says. “I’ve seen some pretty terrible stuff, and I don’t want that.” He picked up a squeegee a year ago, even though police do charge squeegee workers with aggressive panhandling and illegal solicitation from time to time because “I’m my only source of income,” he says. Young guys like Derrick and James are actually positive role models to the boys in their neighborhood, Donovan adds, because they aren’t selling drugs and have their own money to buy shoes and clothes, as well as the occasional soda for an 8- or 10-year-old. That said, Donovan adds, they get profiled regularly in public places.

“If we go to eat at a restaurant after being out all day, what we get is, ‘No, no, no. Too many of you,’” he says. “And we got money. That doesn’t happen if you’re white. Same when it comes to using the bathroom. Can’t use the bathroom even when we are buying something. Same at the mall, security following you around. Secret shoppers, following you around. You’ve got have your money out when you’re in a store or you get chased out.”

Personable and thoughtful, Donovan says he plans to go back to school and would like to learn how to buy and invest in real estate. James, who’s adding a job washing dishes, wants to own a car wash after he graduates and employ some of his cohorts.

“Instead of them experiencing unfair treatment for bringing income into their homes, they would benefit from more outreach support—school and career counseling and other services, ” says India Bell, a Baltimore social worker and former resident advisor with the Department of Juvenile Services who regularly engages the young men along Martin Luther King Boulevard near Route 40. “Things have fallen apart in this city, in this country. We have long incarcerated black males at disproportionate rates, and that has impacted the families and neighborhoods where these kids are from. As well as segregation, redlining, and disinvestment. I know—I’m from one of those neighborhoods.

“The bottom line,” Bell adds, “is that kids shouldn’t have to spend their childhoods out in the street earning money.”

Baltimore author D. Watkins, editor at large for Salon, went from dealing drugs to a career as a teacher and writer. He spends a lot of time in local schools and knows some of the same squeegee workers that Bell does along MLK Boulevard, including a former high-school student he taught at the Friendship Academy. Watkins also made a few dollars as a squeegee kid in the late ’80s and early ’90s. “A lot of people don’t understand the perspective of these kids,” Watkins says. “They are scared to interact with them and a lot of people get frustrated with them. Everybody is scared of everybody and nobody is talking to each other. Meanwhile, the former mayor initiated the Squeegee Corps, and that went away and she kind of abandoned them.”

 

“People sell drugs on the corner every day. I got no interest. Not for me.”

 

Kaye Whitehead, who teaches at Loyola University and hosts a WEAA talk show, echoes Bell and Watkins. “If this was a lacrosse team in the street raising money with buckets for a trip to play in a tournament, no one would have an issue,” she says. “We as a city need to lean in and find ways to support them. The folks who were doing this 40 years ago have grown up, but this generation is running up against the same problems.”

Bell stresses that no one believes it’s a good idea for children and teenagers to be bouncing through traffic at stop lights. But in a sense, she says, the squeegee corners are “safe spaces” for many kids. “They have a measure of independence, they can act like 15, 16, 17-year-olds. In their neighborhoods, there’s always a lot of trauma and stress, and they feel like they have to keep their guard up and watch their back.” In fact, one 14-year-old squeegee kid mentioned the threat of getting robbed by older teens and young men walking back to his own neighborhood in the evening with squeegee money in pocket.

Local business owner Chris Wilson, who did 16 years in prison for a crime committed while a juvenile, sees himself in the young men wielding squeegees. “I tell every single one of them I respect the hustle and I respect them trying to make a living,” says Wilson, author of The Master Plan: My Journey from Life in Prison to a Life of Purpose. “They’re doing all the things an entrepreneur does. They’re calculating how much cleaning supplies to buy, how much water to buy if they’re selling bottles of water, what’s the best time to work, the best location, how much they need to make. The next step is setting longer-term goals. Nobody teaches them how to set goals, make a plan, and then walk down that road.”

To Wilson’s point, some of the kids, concerned about public relations, have begun leaving soapy hearts on women’s windshields.

Nate, a lanky, charismatic 19-year-old who lives in the McCulloh Homes housing project in West Baltimore, says he had a job at Walmart at the Golden Ring Shopping Center, but the bus rides and taxes left him with little time and money to show for his effort. He started squeegeeing two-and-a-half years ago, trying to do both for a period, along with his friends Carlose, 22, Antoine, 17, and Derwood, 20, who was also hawking bottles of cold water for $1 on a recent Monday afternoon. He readily acknowledges quitting school in 10th grade was a mistake and wants to earn his GED. “You need school, and you need that degree,” says Nate. “When I quit, I couldn’t even have told you why I quit other than I was bored. But I realize I wasn’t getting what I needed from school, either.”

“I’d like to own my own business,” he continues. “Maybe start a small clothing line or open a food truck. Even a car wash down at the Rite-Aid parking lot,” he says, gesturing down the street, “would be a start and better than minimum wage. People sell drugs on the corner every day in Baltimore, and I got no interest. Helicopter surveillance, drama, and violence. Not for me. I don’t like it. We’re in entirely different lanes.”

Don’t be alarmed when you see the dome of City Hall illuminating red on Friday night. Baltimore is one of 130 landmarks in the U.S. and Canada to participate in a show of support for the sixth biennial Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) “roadblock” telecast airing on Friday, September 7. Each building will light up in a combination of SU2C’s signature colors—orange, red, yellow, gray, or white.

This year’s show is especially significant because it commemorates the organization’s 10-year anniversary of raising funds and awareness for cancer research.

“It really shows support and unity,” said Sung Poblete, president and CEO of SU2C. “It’s a visual connection. One in three Americans will be touched by cancer in their lifetime. This is one way of all of us standing together and fighting for those that we love.”

Since 2008, SU2C has been able to support more than 180 clinical trials with 1,500 scientists to help more than 12,000 cancer patients. The telecast is a way to secure a large number of funds for continuing research in the more than 180 medical institutions it works with—including Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University.

Maryland resident Bob Siskind, who was diagnosed with stage one pancreatic cancer in 2017, is grateful for the work that SU2C has done. There was a study that was funded by the group that saw significant tumor reduction in patients with stage-four pancreatic cancer and decided to see how well it would work on someone less terminal. Siskind, who says this type of cancer runs in his family, agreed to try it out.

“They removed half my pancreas, my spleen, and the tumor,” he said. “Then I did the chemotherapy and the immunotherapy was the experimental trial that was supposed to hopefully prevent the cancer from coming back. I’m very optimistic. Funding like that doesn’t grow on trees and Stand Up To Cancer came through with the money to run the study and it enabled me to get well.”

Poblete says that cases like Siskind’s are the reason why the organization and this telecast are so important. Unlike typical grants that are specific to one scientist or institution, SU2C has no boundaries or borders for its scientists allowing them to work across multiple institutions.

“The brightest minds are not all at one institution,” Poblete said. “Having no boundaries to seek out the best ideas and having the best and the brightest work together, it’s a dream team approach.”

This year’s telecast will also feature a new pre-show digicast at 7 p.m. on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter inviting people to join in the conversation online. The hour-long show will feature cancer survivors, celebrities, and exclusive access to some behind-the-scenes of the live show.

During the “one night to save lives,” Poblete hopes to raise a significant amount of money—no number was specified because she believes that any amount counts. She says she’s grateful and humbled by all of the support from each state participating in the illumination as well as all who donate to advance the research to find a cure for cancer.

“It’s about all of us coming together,” she said. “One-hundred percent of the funds raised go towards our innovative cancer research—to support brilliant scientists who can make these amazing discoveries. We hope to hit a big number this year and we’re keeping our fingers crossed.”

Ring Tone

February 8, 2014
Joppa Farm Road, Joppa 

“There’s nine matches, and only three have been approved for weapons,” Dan McDevitt reminds the motley crew of tough guys, heels, cheap-shot artists, Samoans, and “Black Wall Street” thugs—some doing push-ups, others pulling on Lycra singlets and elbow pads—backstage at the sprawling Joppa Market Place. The venue normally hosts an Amish flea market, but tonight is the site of Maryland Championship Wrestling’s (MCW) 16th Anniversary Show.

Meanwhile, 64-year-old WWE Hall of Famer Jerry “The King” Lawler, best known for putting comedian Andy Kaufman in a neck brace in the 1980s, poses for photos with row after row of fans. Later, just before intermission, Lawler, still built like a keg of beer, enters the ring to battle “The Pinnacle” Shawn Patrick. 

Despite his age and a 2012 heart attack, which occurred announcing a show, Lawler trades body slam after body slam with Patrick, an Ocean City hotel manager by day, before finishing him off with his signature pile driver.

“Phat Blues” Kelly Bell, a 290-pound MCW wrestler, retiring because of vertebrae issues, notes that being a good wrestling heel isn’t easy. “I always started with a bad joke, but you walk a line,” says Bell, who fronts the popular Kelly Bell Band in another life. “Years ago, I grabbed the mic and asked a good ol’ boy crowd what Pink Floyd and Dale Earnhardt had in common. The punch line? ‘The last hit for both of them was ‘The Wall.’

“Too soon [after Earnhardt’s death]. My tag-team partner and I needed a state police escort out of the building.”

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Carnal Knowledge

February 14, 2014
North Avenue

Billed as a “nerd date,” an eclectic mix of straight and gay couples, gray-haired and young alike—as well as curious singles—pack Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse for a Valentine’s Day science lecture from Harvard professor Sarah Richardson, author of Sex Itself: The Search for Male & Female in the Human Genome. Not a traditional Valentine’s date perhaps, but romantic nonetheless. “I studied biology as an undergrad, and my boyfriend is a neuroscientist at NIH,” says Will Abshier, 22. “This is a shared interest for us.”

Naturally, there’s a photo of Bill Clinton in the presentation. Not, however, because of the former president’s infamous hormones; rather to highlight that researchers now believe there are greater genetic differences between men and women—Bill and Hillary, for example—than previously understood. According to biologist David Page, whose TED Talk Richardson uses in her lecture, men and women are about as similar, in terms of the percentage difference of their human genomes, as they are to chimpanzees.

Richardson stresses that gender descriptions as more complex than “binary” “X” and “Y” labels—and that scientific “facts” remain influenced by culture and politics. She jokes that the mapping of the human genome did not include the discovery of the “Jane Austen appreciation locus” or “channel-flipping trait”.
During the Q & A, one man asks about the human male Y chromosome, which diverged 300 million years ago in mammals, but is getting smaller. “It’s an interesting subject, especially when you consider it alongside the expanding role of women and the ways some men are reacting to that,” Richardson tells another male questioner. “But yes,” she adds with a wry smile. “There’s shrinkage.”

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Monumental City

February 22, 2014
North Gay Street

Inside the marbled War Memorial Building, about 200 people, including current Maryland National Guard soldiers and a dozen and a half surviving members of the Maryland 231st Transportation Truck Battalion are celebrating that historic, all-black unit’s 135th anniversary. Later, there will be a wreath laying at the Negro Heroes of the Unites States statue at City Hall.

Also on hand, a descendant of “Buffalo Soldier” 1st Sgt. Augustus Wiley, who served in the 9th Calvary Regiment after being born into slavery in Reisterstown.

Dubbed the “Monumental City Guards” when the unit received recognition as an all-black independent militia in 1879, the truck battalion was called to active duty during the Spanish-American War, both World Wars, and the Korean War. “The 231st Battalion was the first U.S. National Guard unit to land in Pusan—Dec. 31, 1950,” retired Sgt. 1st Class Louis S. Diggs, the keynote speaker, tells the audience.

A member of the 231st, Diggs recalls waking up in Korea after integration came to his unit’s camp literally overnight—when troop losses and the arrival of new soldiers put black and white soldiers in the same barracks for the first time—albeit two years after President Truman’s order abolishing racial discrimination in the Armed Forces.

After Korea, Diggs spent years in Japan and Germany, not realizing how little things had changed at home. “I’ll never forget visiting my mother in Sandtown before leaving for Philadelphia where I was stationed next,” Diggs recalls. “She made me a big bag lunch for the drive—didn’t have to look inside—whatever she’d cooked, I knew would be good. But after a ways, I open it and with my food, I pull out an empty jug.

“I thought, ‘What’s this?’ And then it hit me—she knew, even if I’d forgotten—there wouldn’t be a bathroom on Pulaski Highway or Route 40 that I could use.”