NAACP – Baltimore Magazine

A Tale of Two Cities

Jess Mayhugh — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 13:11:07 +0000

A Tale of Two Cities

For half a century, West Baltimore was a vital center of black culture, mixed-income neighborhoods, and groundbreaking civil rights activism. After Freddie Gray, can it be again?

By Ron Cassie
Photography by Justin Tsucalas
April 2016

Private Thomas Broadus, a 26-year-old draftee at the outbreak of World War II, did what any African-American serviceman stationed at Fort Meade with a few dollars in their pocket would do: He headed to West Baltimore. Louis Armstrong was in town for the weekend, playing at a venue along Pennsylvania Avenue, a hub of black culture and entertainment rivaled only by Harlem and Washington, D.C.’s U Street district. It should have been one of the most memorable nights of the young soldier’s life.

Instead, it was his last.

Late in the evening of January 31, 1942, on the bustling corridor simply known as “The Avenue,” after several cabs refused to pick up Broadus and his four companions, they eventually decided to grab a lift from an unlicensed hack. A nearby white police officer intervened, however, demanding they wait for service from one of the city’s white-owned taxi companies. Broadus and the officer, a man named Edward Bender, ended up arguing, reportedly after Broadus said he “wanted a colored cab and had a right to spend his money with whomever he chose.”

"while progress has been made, deeply rooted, systemic drivers of racial discrimination, economic injustice, and poverty remain in place," Rev. Brown says.

At that point, Bender grabbed Broadus, striking him repeatedly with his billy club as the two men stumbled into a scuffle on the sidewalk, according to scores of witnesses. The serviceman—a Pittsburgh native and married father of three small children—regained his balance and tried to run, but Bender rose, aimed, and shot him in the back. As Broadus fell and then attempted to crawl under a parked car, the officer shot him a second time and “dared him to move.” He also began kicking the private, who remained pinned beneath the automobile, and was later pronounced dead minutes after arriving at nearby Provident Hospital.

Although criminal charges were initially filed against Bender—who had killed another black citizen two years earlier—they were dropped without explanation.

The shooting of a black American soldier in the middle of busy Pennsylvania Avenue became a call to action in a West Baltimore civil rights community already steeped in a struggle over segregation and social justice causes. Far from an isolated incident, Broadus’s death marked the 10th killing of a black citizen by white city police officers over the preceding three years, the Baltimore Afro-American reported at the time. The newspaper described West Baltimore as “a tinderbox.”

In the fall of 2014, following the shooting death of unarmed Michael Brown by a white officer in Ferguson, MO, Rev. Heber Brown III, a politically active local pastor, recounted the forgotten Broadus story during a town hall with Rep. Elijah Cummings and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. Brown told of how 2,000 people—led by Afro publisher Carl Murphy and Baltimore NAACP chapter founder Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson—demonstrated in Annapolis following the Broadus shooting. Some protesters said they had walked the entire 25 miles from Baltimore.

Casket of Pvt. Thomas Broadus, who was killed by a white police officer on Pennsylvania Avenue in 1942; The National Guard in Baltimore during the ’68 riot.
–Reprinted with permission from The Baltimore Sun Media Group: All Rights Reserved; reprinted with permission from the Baltimore Afro-American Newspaper

A few months after that town hall, 25-year-old Freddie Gray would die from a severe spinal cord injury suffered while in police custody only blocks from where Broadus was killed. And this time, as it had in 1968 after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the lid, briefly, blew off West Baltimore. But then, after the riot of April 27, the unrest quickly coalesced into a series of peaceful demonstrations and demands for change—not just to end police brutality, but also for broader criminal, economic, educational, and housing justice—that have not abated since Gray’s death.

The same thing had happened after Broadus was killed. Police reform—including a request to put the first black police officers on patrol in the city—was the initial demand, but that uprising also expanded into calls for wider action around education, jobs, housing, and public health issues.

That’s the broader link from 1942 to Freddie Gray and what’s happening right now in Baltimore, Brown says today, adding that while progress has been made, deeply rooted, systemic drivers of racial discrimination, economic injustice, and poverty remain in place—including plenty erected after Broadus’s death.

“Seventy-two years ago,” the pastor had thundered during that town hall with Rawlings-Blake, Cummings, and other religious, law enforcement, and community leaders, his voice quaking with emotion. “And I’ll be damned if my grandchildren are going to fight a fight that we have the power right now to end in our community.”

Vacant Homes in Freddie Gray's Sandtown neighborhood.

In the aftermath of Freddie Gray’s death, the local and national spotlight turned to the West Baltimore area where he grew up and died. Plagued for decades by vacant buildings and lead-infested homes, hyper-segregated and low-income schools, a lack of accessible jobs and transportation, high unemployment and incarceration rates, open-air drug markets, violence, and recently, a sex-for-repairs public housing scandal that even The Wire for all its despair couldn’t have imagined, West Baltimore now appears at a crossroads. Police Commissioner Anthony Batts was forced out months ago as the homicide rate spiraled to record-breaking levels. Rawlings-Blake—much like former Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro III after the ’68 riots—has declined to seek re-election along with more than a third of the City Council. And earlier this year, 35,000 people signed a petition calling for the ouster of housing chief Paul Graziano.

By any objective measure, the data from Sandtown-Winchester, Harlem Park, Madison Park, Upton, and Druid Heights is alarming. Infant mortality rates in parts of the 175-block neighborhood collectively known as “Old West Baltimore” are more than 3.5 times the national average. Life expectancy is more than 10 years below the statewide average, almost 20 years shorter than in Roland Park, which sits just a few miles away—ranking below famine-afflicted North Korea. Children in Sandtown-Winchester, where poverty rates surpass 30 percent, face the most dire economic prospects of the top 100 U.S. metro areas, and poor teens in the city deal with living conditions worse than their counterparts in Nigeria, according to recent studies.

But buried in West Baltimore, in between the majestic, if too often crumbling, three-story brick rowhouses—and sometimes literally inside those vacant homes—lies a history as compelling as any in the country.

Penn-North mural featuring Holiday and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

It’s here, for example, that Rev. Harvey Johnson, one of the few Americans born into slavery to leave written words chronicling his worldview, founded the Mutual United Brotherhood of Liberty—the forerunner of the Niagara Movement and the NAACP. After being ejected from a B&O train for refusing to sit in a segregated compartment on his way to a 1906 Niagara meeting in Harpers Ferry, it was also Johnson who fought and overturned Maryland’s separate car rules for interstate passengers—some 60 years before the famous Freedom Riders. His home and the historic church he led, Union Baptist, both survive to this day on Druid Hill Avenue.

Similarly, it was Baltimore native Irene Morgan, a 27-year-old mother of two, refusing to give up her bus seat 11 years before Rosa Parks, who broke down a key constitutional interstate segregation law. In fact, her landmark case, reaching the Supreme Court, was won by Baltimore’s future justice Thurgood Marshall, who later argued and won the historic Brown v. Board of Education case. His boyhood home, which is intact, and elementary school, which is boarded, are here as well, though separated by several blocks of blight and struggling homes on Division Street.

And on it goes: Pioneering civil rights activist Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson met with Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr. at the “Freedom House” on Druid Hill Avenue, which was unexpectedly and controversially razed last fall. Her daughter, Juanita Jackson Mitchell, the first African-American woman to practice law in the state, and son-in-law, Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. (nicknamed the “101st Senator” as the NAACP’s chief lobbyist during the civil rights legislation of the 1960s), kept their home and legal office here, too—although both sit in disrepair today. Parren Mitchell, the first African-American from a Southern state elected to Congress following Reconstruction, lived in a stately house that stands in solid shape—but amid other vacant homes—at the corner of Lafayette Square. And old Frederick Douglass High School, the city’s original “colored” high school, where the Maryland-born abolitionist gave the commencement address in 1894, and from which jazz legends Ethel Ennis and Cab Calloway graduated—as well as Marshall and all of the aforementioned Mitchells—still stands, too, now renovated into low-income apartments.

Baltimore’s former NAACP Chapter “Freedom House,” which was demolished unexpectedly and controversially last fall.

“This,” says Lou Fields, president of the African American Tourism Council of Maryland, “is one of the most historic black neighborhoods in the United States.”

In fact, the 111-year-old Arch Social Club, believed to be the oldest continuously operating African-American men’s club in the country, continues to host live music, dance classes, and galas at the corner of Pennsylvania and North avenues—directly across from the CVS store that the country watched burn on television last April.

And still, none of this scratches the surface of the black renaissance that flourished starting in the 1920s. Ragtime legend Eubie Blake got started here and Billie Holiday lived on this side of town for a period. They, along with Calloway, Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and later, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, The Supremes, and Etta James—whose classic “At Last” has been covered by Adele and Beyoncé—lit up the bills at venues like the Royal Theatre, Sphinx Club, and the Regent. Martha and the Vandellas, who give a shout out to Baltimore in their hit, “Dancing in the Streets,” were booked for an entire week in 1964—the same year James Brown released Pure Dynamite! Live at the Royal.

That was also the year civil rights activist and singer Nina Simone, who played here, recorded “Mississippi Goddam,” which acclaimed local jazz performer Navasha Daya re-adapted in the aftermath of Gray’s death: New York's got me so upset; Ferguson makes me lose my rest; and everybody knows about Baltimore, goddam.

But those clubs were not only black destinations. There were two entertainment centers in Baltimore—The Block and Pennsylvania Avenue—one built around women taking off their clothes, the other around music. Doctors from Johns Hopkins who played instruments were known to sit in at the Sportsmen’s Lounge, a jazz venue owned by Colts great Lenny Moore.

“Oh my, the whole of Pennsylvania Avenue was something in the evening,” says Rosa Pryor-Trusty, a West Baltimore native and former singer, promoter, club manager, and current Afro and Baltimore Times columnist. “Women stepping out in their dresses, with their fancy hats and gloves. The men putting on their best three-piece suits and polished, patent-leather shoes. Everybody walked The Avenue, going from one theater or comedy club or nightclub to the next.” Barred from staying in the segregated downtown hotels, entertainers generally stayed right in West Baltimore, if not at one of the three small black hotels, then sometimes at the Black Baltimore Musicians Union Hall and boarding house on Dolphin Street (which also still stands) or with a local family, shopping in the trendy clothing and record stores in the afternoons before shows.

“It does seems unreal when you see how things look today,” says Pryor-Trusty.

Iconic Royal Theatre; Louis Armstrong backstage at the Royal; Billie Holiday shopping on Pennsylvania Avenue.
–Photography by Henry Phillips

The Pennsylvania Avenue corridor and surrounding community was long something of an oasis in what was historically the largest segregated city south of the Mason-Dixon line. But as the Broadus killing illustrates, West Baltimore was never immune to the social ills plaguing the country—it represented the best, and worst, of the times. And then, in 1971, the iconic Royal, Baltimore’s version of Harlem’s Apollo Theater, was demolished in a failed “urban renewal” plan. The Royal marquee sculpture at a nearby park and the statue of Billie Holiday at Pennsylvania and Lafayette may be homages to the past, but they are also stark reminders of all that has been lost or destroyed.

“Pennsylvania Avenue was never a beautiful tree-lined kind of street, but there was always a visceral excitement, a buzz in that neighborhood,” says Camay Calloway Murphy, the 89-year-old daughter of the renowned bandleader. “You would’ve had to live it to fully appreciate it.” She grew up in New York, visiting her Baltimore cousins each summer, before later moving here and marrying John Murphy III, who succeeded his uncle Carl as publisher of The Afro. “There were movie theaters and play houses all over, too, seemingly on every block, a lot going on,” Calloway Murphy says. “But it was a place you felt safe as a kid.”

This is a point, too, that James Hamlin, who grew up in this community and opened The Avenue Bakery on Pennsylvania Avenue five years ago, emphasizes. Beyond civil rights icons and the heydays of jazz and Motown in the area, Old West Baltimore was a stable place to grow up. “The term today is ‘walkable neighborhood,’” he says as customers stream in for his homemade buns, muffins, and sweet potato pies on a Friday afternoon while Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” plays in the background. “We had that here. We had shops, dry cleaners, delis. As a teenager there were plenty of places to a get a job. I got my first job at 13 at Archie Ladon’s grocery store at Presstman Street and Druid Hill Avenue. It was enough money to buy my first pair of blue-tip Jack Purcells [Converse sneakers]. But there were also three newspapers to deliver, The Sun, News American, and Afro-American. And, if none of that worked out, you could always nail together a wooden shoebox and shine shoes on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

The 67-year-old Hamlin, who started unloading trucks with UPS in 1968 before working his way up to a series of management positions, returned to the neighborhood of his youth in an effort to bring back small businesses and stimulate commercial activity on the Pennsylvania Avenue corridor. The bakery, unharmed in April’s riot, has become not just a regular stop for customers, but also a mini-Baltimore civil rights museum—with murals, photos, bios, and historical timelines covering the walls, and a documentary about the city’s musical legacy looping on a television. “These were thriving residential neighborhoods,” he says. “There were lawyers, doctors, and teachers living on every block, right alongside people who were working in factories and doing whatever jobs it took to get by.”

Which begs the question: How did a neighborhood listed on the National Register of Historic Places end up in such condition?

Avenue Bakery owner James Hamlin.

The short answer to what happened to West Baltimore is sometimes proffered as “the riots,” meaning the four-night, April ’68 riots following King’s murder in Memphis. And it’s not a wrong answer—those riots sent white merchants, many Jewish with long ties to the community, and, eventually black residents with the wherewithal, fleeing for the counties. Six people were killed; more than 700 injured; 5,500 arrested; 1,050 businesses robbed, vandalized, or set afire; and an estimated $90 million in property damage in today’s dollars occurred (compared to the $9 million there was in last April’s riot). Of course, businesses and residents across the city left in huge numbers in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, too, with the tax base and jobs in close pursuit. But the riots didn’t create the ghettoization of West Baltimore—they were the capstone of decades of racially discriminatory laws and agendas.

Like more than 100 cities—including New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Los Angeles, which experienced protests and riots in the mid-’60s prior to King’s death—Baltimore was coming apart because of myriad forces tied to first legal, and later de facto, segregation. Those practices included, but were not limited to, redlining by the Federal Housing Administration, whose officials literally drew red lines around minority neighborhoods on maps in order to discourage loans, and discriminatory distribution of G.I. Bill benefits, which included not just tuition and job-training money, but business and home loans as well. (In New York and northern New Jersey, fewer than 100 of the 67,000 mortgages insured by the G.I. Bill backed minority home purchases.)

Those practices were just part of the massive local, state, and federally supported suburban expansion—prohibiting blacks by written and unwritten policies—long before the riots following King’s murder. The ongoing segregation, furthered by the construction of public housing projects in already poor, minority neighborhoods, exaggerated its effects. It was a process that George Romney—the father of the former Republican presidential candidate and Richard Nixon’s first Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary—described as creating a “high-income, white noose” around the nation’s urban core. As governor of Michigan, Romney had seen it play out in Detroit.

At HUD, the Baltimore metro area was one of the first Romney targeted to promote integrated housing. At one point, he froze federal money tied to water, sewer, and park plans in Baltimore County unless it loosened its stance against low-income and minority housing. As far back as 1964, Baltimore Mayor Theodore McKeldin, a Republican, had attempted to work with then-Baltimore County Executive Spiro Agnew—considered a reformer—on a metropolitan-wide open occupancy plan. The County Council blocked those efforts, however.

In comparison to Dale Anderson, the Democrat who followed the eventual Nixon vice president into the Baltimore County executive office, Agnew was a reformer. Out of political necessity, Agnew eventually opposed open housing laws, but Anderson was more blunt, decrying programs that would “bring hordes of migrants.” In late 1972, he ordered real-estate brokers to report sales or rentals to African-Americans to the police, according to longtime former Sun reporter Antero Pietilla, author of Not In My Neighborhood. (Both Agnew and Anderson were later busted on tax evasion and corruption charges during this particularly ignominious period in Maryland politics.)

This hand-colored 1937 Baltimore map, prepared by the government’s Home Owners Loan Corporation, redlined much of the center city (largely African American or Jewish). Since regular mortgages were nearly impossible to get, homes there could be sold only through speculators. –Antero Pietilla

Also, for Marylanders today who only know the state as a reliably blue bastion, it’s worth recalling that segregationist George Mahoney won the Democratic primary for governor in 1966 on the dog-whistle slogan, “Your home is your castle—protect it” and former Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace, of “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” infamy, swept the state’s 1972 Democratic presidential primary.

But in truth, the wheels that set the demise of Pennsylvania Avenue and Old West Baltimore in motion date back further—to the first apartheid housing laws of Rev. Harvey Johnson’s era, derided then by The New York Times as “the most pronounced ‘Jim Crow’ measure on record.”

“This mess really begins in 1910 with the City Council’s first segregated housing law—Ordinance 610,” explains local historian Fields, to a small group he’s leading on a tour of Freddie Gray’s neighborhood and nearby civil rights landmarks. Fields’s driving tour, which he has been offering for several months, starts at New Shiloh Baptist Church, whose congregation hosted Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1953 and Gray’s funeral last April. From there it moves through the bleak area near Gray’s childhood home, where he and his sisters suffered lead paint poisoning, to the Western District police station—built atop a playground, it turns out—where the first protests erupted while Gray remained in a coma following his questionable arrest and ultimately fatal police wagon ride.

“Thurgood Marshall, the Jacksons, the Mitchells all walked these streets—so did Billie Holiday,” says Fields, pointing out several historic sites, including the former home of Baltimore’s first Colored YWCA.

One of the last stops is the Holiday sculpture, located three blocks from where Broadus was killed and between the fourth and fifth stops of Gray’s fatal transport. Among those joining Fields’s tour is artist James Reid, who created the striking bronze piece in 1985, capturing Holiday in full voice, which Reid describes as a “call to action.” At that time, however, he was not allowed to install the sculpture’s original base panels because one panel is designed around the jazz singer’s anti-lynching song, “Strange Fruit”— Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze; Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees. Ultimately, the panels were added in 2009.

The birthplace of first black Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall located at 1632 Division Street.

“A 24-year censorship fight,” says the soft-spoken, 73-year-old Reid, who pumped gas as a teenager in this neighborhood. “The entire work is metaphorical and the ‘Strange Fruit’ piece is more important than ever. To me, there’s an evolution from the lynching of young black men to mass incarceration of young black men and police brutality.

“You know, I had a very strict mother,” he continues. “And she taught me to be careful in how I move around a store and things like that. She told me to keep my hands close by my side and not to pick up anything until I was ready to buy it. Would you believe that I am still aware of that at my age now?”

That 1910 law that Fields highlighted, which Baltimore City Solicitor Edgar Allan Poe—a grandnephew named after the famous poet—had declared constitutional, did get overturned. But it served as the foundation of the segregated—if at least mixed-income—early black neighborhoods here. That legislation got its start after a Morgan State College alum and Yale-educated black lawyer named George McMechen bought a house on then all-white, well-heeled McCulloh Street just west of Bolton Hill. Until then, black residents lived in nearly every ward, but the uproar over McMechen’s residency led to block-by-block partitioning while actually making the sale of a white-owned home on a “white” block to a black purchaser, and vice versa, illegal.

Exclusionary covenants, blockbusting, predatory lending, and more recently, of course, targeted subprime loans, followed. Inevitably, the “high-income, white noose” tightened over time as top-down policies promoted a continual shift of resources to the suburbs, while de-industrialization, lead paint crises, the drug war, mass incarceration—supported by everyone from presidents Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and both Bushes, to former Mayor Martin O’Malley—piled on urban areas. And, as in other cites, there was also the construction of an urban freeway through West Baltimore—the I-70 stub, which was never completed and became an unnecessary addition of Route 40. These went through poor, minority neighborhoods—including the disastrous “Highway to Nowhere,” which destabilized a vast swath of neighborhoods in the late ’60s and early ’70s, displacing more than 3,000 residents and dozens of businesses.

The open wound of segregation prevented several generations from building the wealth that typically flows from homeownership, says Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. He notes that, while black family incomes are about 60 percent of white family incomes, black household wealth is only 5 percent of white household wealth. “In Baltimore and elsewhere,” he says, “the distressed condition of African-American working- and lower-middle-class families is almost entirely attributable to federal policy that prohibited black families from accumulating housing equity during the suburban boom that moved white families into single-family homes from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s—and thus from bequeathing that wealth to their children and grandchildren, as white suburbanites have done.

Somewhat infamously, future Hall of Famer Frank Robinson and his family struggled for months to buy a home in segregated Baltimore in 1966 because of their race. At one point, his wife came close to leaving the city and returning to California with the couple's two children.

“Look at those Levittown, NY, homes built after World War II, which excluded blacks,” Rothstein says. “They now go for upward of $400,000 and $500,000. Things like helping a child pay for a college education or put a down payment on a house are out of reach for poor, or working-class, minority families.”

Against this history, the data revealing dramatically diminished opportunities for people in the city’s poor neighborhoods should not come as a surprise.

“Baltimore has always been a tale of two cities,” says Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, former head of the NAACP’s Baltimore Chapter and current president of the Matthew A. Henson Neighborhood Association, which represents the same community where Freddie Gray attended elementary school. “There’s always been the well-to-do Baltimore and other Baltimore. But there’s also the tale of West Baltimore—how it used to be—set against how it is now. Poverty and struggle have always been a part of the story.

“The question is, do we have the political will to move forward?”

Cheatham’s query is a good one.

Like many other African-American Baltimore activists, he has been frustrated by the city’s now majority black political leadership’s inability to address the systemic issues facing West Baltimore.

Harry Sythe Cummings, Baltimore’s first black city councilman, was elected in 1890 and served several terms, but during the key mid-century period from 1930 to 1955, there was no black representation on the City Council. From 1955 to 1967, just two of its members were black, and it wasn’t until 1987—when the damage seemed irreversible—that Kurt Schmoke, the first elected black mayor, took office. Now, of course, the City Council maintains a consistent black majority, but along with Rawlings-Blake, it has come under fire for approving tax breaks for Inner Harbor projects that hurt public school funding. Over the longer haul, activists have condemned officials for selling out to developers while tripling the police department’s budget during the past 25 years and shuttering recreation centers.

“So many things have happened, but we can’t point the finger at anybody but ourselves anymore,” Cheatham says. “It’s poor political leadership—the Baltimore Development Corporation [a nonprofit whose mission is to boost the economy] isn’t doing anything here. For starters, we could use funding and tax credits to rebuild vacant houses, putting unemployed residents to work learning rehab skills and earning credit toward homeownership.”

That said, larger forces still can throw up enormous obstacles to potential growth in West Baltimore: The cancellation by Gov. Larry Hogan of the decade-in-the-works, nearly $3 billion Red Line project was a crushing blow, and the decision has been challenged by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which alleges the action violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964. According to the complaint, a transportation economist using the state’s own models, “found that whites will receive 228 percent of the net benefit from [Hogan’s] decision, while African-Americans will receive -124 percent.”

“The term today is ‘walkable neighborhood,’” says bakery owner james hamlin, while sam cooke’s “A change is gonna come” plays in the background. “We had that here.”

In large part, the project was viewed as a remedy for decades of disparity in transportation spending, as well as an attempt to address specific needs in areas like Sandtown-Winchester and Harlem Park, where residents have the city’s longest average commute times. The U.S. Department of Transportation is currently investigating the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s complaint.

Yet resources remain in West Baltimore—not the least of which is its history, which residents, along with the nonprofit Baltimore Heritage, are working to preserve. There’s also a committed community of citizens that show up in inspiring numbers at public safety meetings, candidate forums, and town halls. A recent Saturday city budget workshop packed the Enoch Pratt Free Library conference room at Pennsylvania and North avenues for three hours. And there’s also the historic churches—Union Baptist, Douglass Memorial, and Sharp Street Memorial United Methodist, among others—that remain anchor institutions.

Besides Hamlin’s bakery, other enterprises are popping up. Most notably, an “Innovation Village” collaboration between the Maryland Institute College of Art, Coppin State, the city, business and community groups, has launched in hopes of attracting tech start-ups to the Penn-North corridor. Two firms already have committed. Nalley Fresh, a local restaurant chain, is looking at opening on The Avenue, and Hamlin, who also hosts live music in his store’s courtyard from May through October, says long-held plans to rebuild a new Royal Theatre are more promising than ever.

And early this year, Hogan announced $75 million in state funding over four years, along with an annual $10 million pledged by Rawlings-Blake, to demolish blighted buildings. Some feel it’s a start. Monica Cooper, who grew up in Sandtown and co-founded the Maryland Justice Project, attended that January Hogan-Rawlings-Blake photo-op in her old neighborhood. She isn’t convinced that merely knocking down vacant rowhouses will accomplish a great deal. Cooper says more is needed, including programs to fix houses and keep residents in the neighborhood.

“There’s different ways people look at Freddie Gray, his death, and everything that happened afterward,” she says. “Some people look at his background and just see a hustler, someone dealing drugs on the corner. Other people see him as a martyr. Other people knew him as a friend. What I know is that what happened to him should never have happened. I also know that sometimes it takes a tragedy for a change to take place.”

New leaders are emerging as well, and they express optimism, if cautiously, for West Baltimore.

Ericka Alston, a public relations specialist, was inspired to create Kids Safe Zone, an afternoon, evening, and weekend youth space in Sandtown-Winchester in the immediate aftermath of Gray’s death. (Alicia Keys made a memorable stop after learning about the work being done there.) Like Devin Allen, the photographer who shot the Time cover image of last April’s riot, and Dominic Nell, another local photographer, Alston has become an activist on multiple levels, supporting political empowerment while also tackling the immediate needs in the neighborhood.

Ericka Alston and photographer Dominic Nell working with youth at the Kids Safe Zone.

“I have hope. I do,” says Alston. “But even if I didn’t, I’d still be doing this.”

Allen, 27, and Nell, 39, grew up in the neighborhood where the unrest unfolded and have been mentoring children in the art of photography, with an exhibition planned for this summer. With the highest tally of Baltimore’s record-worst 344 homicides last year coming from the Western District, neither is naïve about overnight turnarounds here. But both feel a deep responsibility—and love—for the community they’re from.

“My family goes back generations here. My house is right behind where the curfew confrontations took place,” says Nell, a quiet, thoughtful presence among all the kids rushing around. Farther down Pennsylvania Avenue, there are other thriving community spaces, he notes. The Upton Boxing Center, for example, offers top-notch coaching. Gervonta Davis, an undefeated, professional featherweight supported by former champ Floyd Mayweather, trains out of the gym.

Nell also mentions the enduring Shake & Bake Family Fun Center—a roller skating and bowling arcade created by former Colt Glenn “Shake and Bake” Doughty in the early ’80s—and the more recent Strawberry Fields Urban Farm effort, plus the success of Martha’s Place, a former vacant building turned drug addiction recovery and transitional long-term housing facility for women. And, across the street from Martha’s Place, there’s Jubilee Arts, which offers dance, art, and business classes for students. “St. Peter Clavel Catholic Church is there, too, one of the oldest in the city,” Nell muses.

The Upton Boxing Center; photographers Devin Allen and Dominic Nell working with youth at the Kids Safe Zone, launched by Ericka Alston.

“That’s the thing, though,” he continues. “All that is surrounded by vacant lots, boarded-up homes, and that junkyard—the scrap metal and salvage place where there’s always a line of people hauling stuff in. Down the street from Jubilee Arts, where those little girls do ballet in their pink leotards, I saw a metal coffin once being scrapped for cash.”

Nell pauses.

“But that’s the way Baltimore has always been,” he says. “It’s what a good friend of mine who is no longer around used to say: ‘In Baltimore, beauty and chaos live side by side.’”

Source

Likable Larry

Jess Mayhugh — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 08:30:00 +0000

Frank Hamilton

Outside West Baltimore’s Shake & Bake Family Fun Center, 15 brand new, all-terrain Department of Public Works litter vehicles line the sidewalk. Courtesy of a $500,000 Keep Maryland Beautiful grant from the state, the fleet of golf-cart size street sweepers is being unveiled this morning as the Cardinal Shehan school choir—of Good Morning America fame—kicks off what is billed as Governor Larry Hogan’s “regional cabinet meeting” inside the iconic roller rink.

“Cardinal Shehan school choir—incredible. Wow. I mean they put me in a hard spot,” a beaming Hogan exclaims after a rousing rendition of “Rise Up.” “I’m not sure how you follow anything like that choir.”

The governor has brought his top officials with him, including Pete Rahn, head of the Department of Transportation, and Ken Holt, the state’s housing secretary, but the event has the unmistakable feel of a crowd-for-hire campaign rally. Those cramming into the Shake & Bake—mostly white, largely made up of Maryland government employees in suits and dresses sporting state ID badges—break into applause and standing ovations during the governor’s remarks, while he touts administration efforts in the city. Even the majority of the police officers on hand appear to be from Annapolis.

Tellingly, before Keiffer Mitchell, the former city councilman and current senior advisor to the governor, introduced Hogan, he began his remarks by describing the black renaissance history of Pennsylvania Avenue and the story behind the roller rink, which was started decades ago by former Colt Glenn “Shake & Bake” Doughty.

Neither “The Avenue” nor the roller rink needs an introduction to West Baltimoreans.

It would be easy, in other words, to dismiss the entire orchestration as mere political theater (Hogan implied it was a historic occasion). It is, after all, taking place on the first day of early primary voting, and the governor, without a Republican opponent, is spending the entire day in the heart of Democratic Baltimore, taking headlines away from the opposition. Except, the handful of invitees who live or work in West Baltimore and speak on the governor’s behalf are clearly impressed by Hogan’s outreach and sincerity, including Shionta Somerville, principal at nearby Carver Vocational-Technical High School. Not just today, but over the past four years.

“After his second visit [to Carver], people asked me, ‘How is the Governor?’” Somerville says. “Not people at school but friends of mine outside of school,” she adds with a smile, garnering nervous laughter from the audience, which is fully cognizant that a white Republican governor isn’t likely to engender much affection in heavily Democratic West Baltimore. “I say he’s just down to earth and very charming. I’ve never been very big on politics, but I’m big on people.”

As unlikely as it would’ve sounded at this time four years ago, when he trailed Democratic nominee Anthony Brown by double digits in the polls, Larry Hogan—a first-time Republican elected official in one of the bluest states in the country—is now the second-most-popular governor in the United States. According to a Morning Consult poll this summer, 68 percent of Maryland voters approve of the job Hogan is doing. Only Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, another Republican in a blue state, is more popular, by a single percentage point.

Of course, despite Somerville’s affection and kind words, and Hogan’s genuine talent for retail politics and relationship building, he is not going to carry Baltimore City this November. The overwhelming 10-1 Democratic registration advantage, and his original sins in the eyes of many in the city—cancelling the $2.9 billion Red Line transit project, breaking the decade-in-the-works $1.5 billion State Center redevelopment deal, holding back school funding weeks after the Freddie Gray uprising—are simply a bridge too far.

Also: Larry Hogan doesn’t need to win Baltimore. He didn’t in 2014. With broad support in the state’s suburban and rural counties, he just needs to mitigate the damage. So when Baltimore’s second-highest-ranking elected official, City Council President Jack Young, refuses to answer a reporter’s query about whether he will support the incumbent Republican governor or the Democratic nominee—it should ring alarms among the Democratic party faithful hoping to elect nominee Ben Jealous.

“You heard what people said. Look at his poll numbers,” Young says after offering words of praise for the governor in the lobby of the Shake & Bake as the Hogan event winds down. “I don’t have to tell you [who I’m voting for],” adds Young, suggesting he’s either a genuine fan of the governor, intimidated by his approval ratings, or both. “Who are you voting for?”

By now, most Maryland voters at least know the outline of Larry Hogan’s backstory. That his father, Larry Sr., was a U.S. Congressman and Prince George’s County Executive (also a former FBI agent and one of the first Republicans to come out against Richard Nixon after Watergate). That Hogan worked for his father and held a top appointment in the Republican administration of former Governor Bob Ehrlich, a friend since the pair were in their early 20s. That he was—and still is—the owner of a successful real estate company (while serving as governor, Hogan turned over leadership of his company to his brother and put his assets into a trust). And that he’s a self-described workaholic who didn’t marry until he was 48.

Less well known when he ran four years ago was that he’d run twice for his father’s old congressional seat and lost, which—silver lining here—meant he didn’t have to defend a voting record on Capitol Hill. It also effectively allowed Hogan to position himself as a political newbie in 2014 and an Anne Arundel County “small businessman.” He was anything but, obviously. He served as Maryland chairman of Youth for Reagan and four times as a delegate to the Republican National Convention, displaying sharp political instincts and a knack for savvy messaging from the outset of his stunning upset campaign. Hogan Companies have completed more than $2 billion in real estate deals since they were founded in 1985 and the governor has made roughly $2.4 million in combined corporate earnings and government salary since taking office.

Hogan had begun planting the seeds of what ultimately became his campaign when he launched a Facebook page in 2009 with the name Change Maryland and started trolling Governor Martin O’Malley—“Owe Malley” in red circles—over increases in state taxes, tolls, and fees, and the cost of regulations to businesses. That was five years before he announced his intent to run for governor. “Just a genius use of social media,” says Eberly, political science professor at St. Mary’s College in Southern Maryland. “I can’t think of anything like it before or since.”

In a recent interview at the Governor’s Mansion, Hogan says he was just frustrated at the time by the direction in Annapolis and didn’t necessarily intend to run for office himself. Borrowing from the opposition playbook, he took to Facebook after witnessing the Barack Obama’s groundbreaking use of social media. “It started to grow very quickly,” Hogan recalls. “I couldn’t find anyone I thought could win. [So], I decided to [jump in].”

Later, Hogan memorably—some would say cynically—dubbed an EPA-mandated, storm water management fee initiated by O’Malley “the Rain Tax,” honing his anti-tax message down to a three-word mantra. Avoiding hot-button social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage that could potentially plague a conservative candidate in Maryland, Hogan—an Irish Catholic who personally doesn’t support the right to choose and says he has “evolved” on gay marriage—simply declared the subjects settled.

Hogan also vowed not to go after the new gun-control laws passed in the state under O’Malley in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, and he has kept those promises. He even went further after the Parkland school shooting announcing he would support a “red flag” bill that would allow judges to temporarily require people to surrender firearms if they are deemed a danger to themselves or others.

Four years later, in his reelection campaign, he’s plugging positive job growth numbers in the state (although Maryland’s unemployment rate remains above the national average and neighboring Virginia and Pennsylvania), and his successful efforts to roll back tolls and push the first day of public school to after Labor Day.

“It’s been a pendulum swing from O’Malley,” says Jennifer Duffy, of the Cook Political Report, a national independent, non-partisan newsletter that analyzes elections. “Hogan doesn’t have an enormous record of accomplishment, and he’s not putting forth a grand vision for the second term, but he’s not raising taxes and he’s focused on deregulating rules for businesses. Maryland’s one of the wealthiest states in the country, has high-ranking public schools, and that’s enough for a lot voters who see no reason to change course.”

The attacks on O’Malley and the Rain Tax have also returned. The Maryland road signs Hogan changed after taking office still say, “We’re Open for Business.”

Hogan’s political success as a Republican governing a blue state is also something of a phenomenon, rarely seen in recent years outside of New England. (See Massachusetts governors Charlie Baker, William Weld, and Mitt Romney; Vermont Gov. Phil Scott; and New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu.) It has put him on the radar of the national Republican strategists who ponder the possibility of a Hogan presidential run—should a more moderate post-Trump GOP ever emerge.

“Larry Hogan is an interesting guy to watch,” says Rick Wilson, a longtime Republican strategist and author of Everything Trump Touches Dies. “He may not be on the radar of the average voter outside Maryland, but political nerds know him.”

“He’s charismatic, he’s a people person, and he loves to talk. He’s been that way for 35 years.”

To understand how Hogan ascended to the stunning position he’s in, which includes a 22-point lead over Jealous in last week’s Goucher College poll, it is worth remembering that he was not really known—think Q rating terms—even after he was first elected. In a low-turnout year, he won by garnering roughly 19 percent of the voting-age eligible population. Ordering the National Guard into Baltimore in the midst of the Freddie Gray uprising 97 days into his first term raised his profile, but he still was not a well-defined figure outside the political class.

That changed two months later when he held a press conference, his wife Yumi by his side, and informed Marylanders he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after discovering a lump on his neck during a trade mission to Asia. Staying on the job despite the tough rounds of chemotherapy—his bald pate a visible testament of the battle—the newly elected Hogan, gregarious and self-deprecating by nature, proved more than just relatable to the average Marylander, but courageous as well. “The best news is that my odds of getting through this and beating this are much, much better than the odds I had of beating Anthony Brown,” Hogan joked during the announcement.

Now, there remains a narrative that Hogan’s bout with cancer, fraught as it could’ve been, remains at the core of his statewide appeal. Undoubtedly, it provided a sympathetic boost and a turning point in his approval numbers. But to credit his record popularity three years later to mere goodwill would be not just unfair, but a mistake.

“Let me preface this by saying I don’t think a cancer diagnosis is ever a good thing, for anyone, ever,” says Mileah Kromer, a Goucher College political scientist and pollster. “That said, a lot of people in the state didn’t really know who Larry Hogan was up until then—they hadn’t had time to fully shape an identity around him—and then that did it. Every family has been affected by cancer. His approval numbers were in the 40s at the time, and they shot up. That is all true. But to focus only on that is to miss Hogan’s gifts as a politician.”

Larry Hogan shared a picture on Twitter after undergoing a procedure to remove a form of skin cancer.

Those gifts include Hogan’s remarkable skill in navigating a General Assembly with veto-proof majorities in both the state House and Senate, and dancing, on a nearly daily basis it seems, around the chaotic presidency of Donald Trump, the face of his party, just 35 miles down the road.

Democrats in Maryland, which Trump lost by 26 points, would love nothing more to tie Trump like a lead weight around the governor. Mostly, however, Hogan nimbly sidesteps the Twitter barrage and controversial policies coming from the other Pennsylvania Avenue—the one in D.C. But he has also taken some questionable positions and made some questionable statements for the leader of a blue state.

He remained mostly silent in the wake of the president’s Muslim travel ban and called efforts to limit state cooperation with ICE’s ramped-up deportation of immigrants “absurd,” for example. (In his first year in office, Hogan told the federal government Syrian refugees were not welcome in Maryland.) Two of his officials signed off on the state’s participation in a controversial Trump Administration effort probing alleged voter fraud. He joined embattled U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on a visit to a Montgomery County school, but declined to comment on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, a pick many legal observers believe could imperil Roe v. Wade.

Most of these potentially polarizing episodes don’t stick to Hogan, however, and his ability to defuse problematic issues and appear pragmatic and reasonable have become a hallmark.

Hogan makes walking the difficult tightrope between the president’s words and deeds in more liberal Maryland almost look easy, says Richard Vatz, a professor of rhetoric and communications at Towson University. Stylistically, says Vatz, he’s able to alleviate middle-of-the-road Democratic voter concerns while not alienating the Republican base, by presenting himself as “not Trump” rather than “anti-Trump.” “When he does agree with the president’s agenda,” Vatz adds, “he goes out of the way to say he supports the policy, not necessarily the person behind it.”

“The real ‘Trump effect’ is that he is making Hogan look like a moderate,” Kromer says.

The General Assembly did override Hogan vetoes to pass a paid sick leave bill and higher renewable energy benchmarks, among other legislation, but overall he’s proved adept at avoiding losing fights in the state legislature, the importance of which he learned from his stint in the combative Ehrlich Administration. He maintains a solid rapport with powerful Senate President Mike Miller, who has known Hogan, through his father, since the governor was a teenager. “I let a lot of pitches go by,” Hogan says. “Where there is common ground, we work together.”

Hogan has let an automatic MVA voter registration, Planned Parenthood funding, and oyster sanctuary bills become laws without his signature to avoid veto override fights. He worked with the legislature to prevent Marylanders from losing their health care coverage following Trump Administration policy changes related to Obamacare and to oppose EPA cuts to Chesapeake Bay restoration funds. He collaborated with the General Assembly in putting together a $5-billion incentive offer to lure Amazon to Montgomery County.

But Hogan has also developed a knack for getting behind popular legislation he initially opposed. The fracking ban and the education lockbox amendment to the state constitution—which he now refers to as the “Hogan Lockbox” in a television ad—were first put forth and pushed by Democratic legislators. This week, Hogan began displaying a red apple, the trademarked logo of the 80,000-member Maryland State Education Association, on social media and campaign materials even though the teacher’s union has endorsed his Democratic opponent.

Hogan’s greatest gift as a politician, however, apparent to anyone who has crossed paths with him on the boardwalk in Ocean City, walking in Dundalk’s annual Fourth of July parade, or mingling at the Shake & Bake for that matter, is not his flair for branding or his political agility, as remarkable as those skills are. It’s a rare combination of personality traits for politicians: Hogan is not just an astute political animal, he is a happy warrior on the campaign trail, fun to be around, and disciplined off it.

No one has to ask the governor twice to pose for a selfie.

“He’s charismatic, he’s opinionated, he’s a people person, and he loves to talk,” says his old boss Ehrlich, who now works for the D.C. office of law firm King and Spalding. “He’s been that way for 35 years. Not all politicians are outgoing, but it helps, and he’s very outgoing.”

Hogan makes walking the difficult tightrope between the president’s words and deeds in more liberal Maryland almost look easy.

None of this, however, matters to progressive Democratic leaders and activists in Baltimore.

When Hogan brought his team to the Shake & Bake, local lay minister Glenn Smith, vice president of the Baltimore Equity Transit Coalition, led a small protest on Pennsylvania Avenue. Hogan’s spiking of the shovel-ready 14-mile, $2.9 billion Red Line transit project remains an issue because the lack of reliable public transportation remains the biggest impediment to employment in many neighborhoods, Smith says. “This was 13 years of planning, working with community leaders and community associations, and then just to come in and call it a ‘boondoggle,’ instead of, ‘How can we fix this? What can be improved?’ And to send $900 million back to the federal government—who does that?” says Smith, whose organization is trying to revive the once-in-a-generation initiative. “It felt punitive and mean-spirited.”

The governor admits no formal review document of the project was ever produced. State funds that would have been spent in Baltimore were diverted to highway projects in other parts of the state with higher concentrations of white residents, precipitating a civil rights complaint from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the ACLU, which the Trump Administration dismissed shortly after taking office.

At the same time, Hogan did green-light the Purple Line transit project, connecting suburban Prince George’s and Montgomery counties. Those two decisions together seemed to underscore a shift in the power structure in the state from Baltimore City to the booming D.C. suburbs.

Subsequently, the Hogan Administration’s $135 million effort to improve the MTA bus system in Baltimore has failed to become the “transformational” public transit system he promised. According to a study by the Central Maryland Transportation Alliance, on-time scores have not improved, and access to all jobs has marginally decreased since the change. More recently, an independent review after a four-week closure of the Metro Subway over potentially dangerous and long-ignored safety issues found troubling problems with the state transit agency, including poor inspection and maintenance practices and a failure to follow industry standards. Baltimore region commute times rank among the worst in country, surpassing even Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, Hogan, who says there are no new plans to address transportation woes within Baltimore City, has backed two high-speed rail projects, the Northeast Maglev and Elon Musk-pitched Hyperloop initiative between Baltimore and D.C, which further agitates some Baltimoreans. “The big problem for Baltimoreans is not getting to Washington, but getting across the city. Moving east-west has been a problem since the 19th century,” says former Johns Hopkins professor and Baltimore City historian Matthew Crenson. “The Maglev and Hyperloop make me furious.”

When Hogan opened his Baltimore City campaign office on North Avenue, City Council members Brandon Scott, Zeke Cohen, and State Delegate Brooke Lierman organized a counter press event across the street.

“There is a record here, and it is not a good record for Baltimore,” Lierman told the Real News Network, highlighting the Red Line, as well as the $1.5 billion redevelopment of State Center, now mired in lawsuits after Hogan’s decision to pull out of the deal. “I’m on the Appropriations Committee. Every year, it is a battle to make sure we are funding the priorities in Baltimore,” she added in an interview with the Real News Network. “Whether that’s the Baltimore Regional Neighborhoods Initiative, whether that’s funding for the Enoch Pratt, every year he cuts those initiatives out of his budget, and the General Assembly has to put that money back in and find money.”

Cohen, a former Baltimore City teacher and chair of the City Council’s Education and Youth Committee, said Hogan has underfunded city schools “somewhere in the range of $290 million to $360 million per year, depending on what study you follow” and alleged that when city school boilers “were bursting across the city and the children were in freezing classrooms . . . Governor Hogan was nowhere to be found.”

Cohen also called out Hogan for referring to unionized teachers as “thugs.”

Dave Werkmeister, a 34-year-old IT sales professional and Patterson Park Neighborhood Association member, voted for Hogan four years ago. Hogan won the city’s first district, the geographical bottom of the so-called “White L,” and may very well do so again, but Werkmeister says he’s been disappointed in Hogan’s actions related to Baltimore. “[The Hogan Administration] put out a map of all the major transportation projects in the state, and literally Baltimore City had been removed from the map,” Werkmeister says. “Symbolically, that said everything to me.”

Transportation project map that, quite literally, left Baltimore City off the map. - Twitter

The low point, in terms of Hogan’s rhetoric toward the city, probably came during the trial of the first police officer in the death of Freddie Gray. On WBAL Radio’s C4 Show, Hogan expressed “concern” that while people were venting their frustration over the death of Gray, who had died in police custody, no one was protesting about the 330 other people murdered in city. As City Councilman Brandon Scott responded, that was not just factually wrong—given the 300 Men Marches, Enough is Enough rallies, Citizens on Patrol Walks, and litany of vigils and efforts—it was disrespectful to the thousands of residents who want nothing more than to quell violence in the city.

It was also dismissive of the troubling and criminal problems within the Baltimore Police Department, highlighted by a Department of Justice investigation and punctuated by the recent convictions of eight members of the department’s Gun Trace Task Force.

In 2015, Hogan’s top housing official, Kenneth Holt, told a gathering at the annual summer conference of the Maryland Association of Counties that he was looking to loosen state lead paint poisoning laws, suggesting current statutes could motivate mothers to intentionally poison their children in order to receive free housing.

“Larry Hogan may be doing a great job for other parts of the state,” Werkmeister continues. “And I am not about to tell someone who lives in another part of the state, in another county, that he’s not. I don’t know that. I live here.”

At some point, pollster Kromer believes, one way or another, the city’s high crime and poverty rates, criminal justice problems, school funding shortages, and lack of reliable transportation, affordable housing, and living-wage jobs—will have to be addressed by Hogan. If for no other reason than Jealous, whose parents have Baltimore roots and who needs a big turnout in the city for the race to be close, will bring it up.

Hogan would rather keep the focus on the State of Maryland than the state of Baltimore, Kromer says. “But Baltimore will be litigated.”

Source

Culture Club: Woke at City Hall, John Waters Christmas, and Grammy Noms

Christine Jackson — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 08:30:00 +0000

Visual Art

WOKE Exhibition by Alma Roberts
Opens Dec. 8, Baltimore City Hall, 100 Holliday St. Ste 101. By day, Alma Roberts is a healthcare executive but, when she’s not working on serving her community through health initiatives, she’s enriching it through poetry, plays, and, of course, painting. Roberts brings her work to Baltimore City Hall to share pieces that communicate awareness of social, political, and racial injustices, as well as her hope for an equitable future.

James Hennessey: Enduring Concerns
Open Dec. 9, Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave. Over the 37 years he spent teaching painting at MICA, James Hennessey influenced thousands of artists. Step into the shoes of those many students as Creative Alliance takes a look back at Hennessey’s decades-spanning career in Baltimore and the large paintings that define it. For more insight into the fables and influences that emerge from his canvases, stop by for a free gallery talk on Jan. 6 at 7 p.m.

Performing Art

The Revolutionists
Opens Dec. 6, Everyman Theatre, 315 West Fayette St. A notorious queen, an assassin, a playwright, and a spy walk into a room. What could happen? Take a trip back to the French Revolution with some of the baddest babes in history: Marie Antoinette, Charlotte Corday, Olympe de Gouges, and Marianne Angelle. These French femmes are sure to have you laughing as you learn more about their incredible lives and legacies.

ArtsCentric Presents Sister Act
Opens Dec. 8, Motor House, 120 W. North Ave. Revel in the gospel vibes and hilarious twists of this classic convent caper. ArtsCentric brings the story of diva Deloris Van Cartier (Whoopi played her in the movie, but you knew that), the murder she witnessed, and her new life as Catholicism’s funkiest nun to the Motor House stage. This show is sure to be just heavenly.

Cirque de la Symphonie Holiday Spectacular
Dec. 22-23, Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral St. Spice up your symphony experience for the holidays with a visit from aerial flyers, acrobats, contortionists, dancers, jugglers, balancers and strongmen. These cirque performers will showcase their talents through choreography set to classical scores performed by the BSO. Come early for festive fare and a visit from St. Nick himself.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Dec. 21, Ottobar, 2549 N. Howard St. Join East German glam goddess Hedwig and her backing band, The Angry Inch, as they rock their way through Hedwig’s glitter- and innuendo-filled story of sex, love, music, and discovering exactly who she is. She made it over the great divide, now she’s coming for you.

A Christmas Carol adapted by Ian Gallanar
Opens Dec. 8, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, 7 S. Calvert St. You’ve seen the original by now, so why not take in a different version of this Charles Dickens classic? Opt for a uniquely regional retelling of the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge and his ghostly visitors with CSC artistic director Ian Gallanar’s adaptation, which swaps out London for Victorian-era Baltimore.

Events

We Are Baltimore Rising
Dec. 12, The 29th Street Community Center, 300 E. 29th St. Come for the screening of director Sonja Sohn’s HBO documentary, Baltimore Rising, following activists, police officers, gang affiliates and community leaders in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray. But stay for the discussion to follow with those still addressing the issues covered in the film. Strong City Baltimore, which is hosting the event, encourages “young community leaders” ages 16-30 to attend. Lunch will also be provided.

Brown Lecture Series: Paul Butler
Dec 13, Enoch Pratt Free Central Library, African American Department, 400 Cathedral St. Listen as author, professor and former federal prosecutor Paul Butler shares insights from his book Chokehold: Policing Black Men. In it, he describes a system that isn’t broken, but is instead made to manufacture fear of black men from politicians, police, and ordinary people. This frank discussion of widespread issues with crime, law enforcement, and the criminal justice system is not to be missed.

A John Waters Christmas
Dec. 19, Baltimore Soundstage, 124 Market Pl. Nativity plays and Nutcracker performances not your thing? Consider attending this one-man show from longstanding resident of Santa’s naughty list John Waters. The Pope of Trash will share his yearly holiday musings and answers to age-old questions such as, “Is Prancer the only gay reindeer?” and “What would a Gaspar Noé Christmas movie look like?” among other, filthier queries. But leave the kiddies at home for this holiday outing, this show is (obviously) for adults only.

News

Several people and projects with Baltimore ties are up for NAACP Image Awards come January. On November 20, photographer Devin Allen, author Ta-Nehisi Coates, the documentary Step, and HBO docudrama The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks all received nominations for the annual awards honoring outstanding people of color in film, television, music, and literature. Winners will be announced Jan. 15.

Maryland natives also have several chances to shine at the Grammys. Country duo Brothers Osborne (Deale) is nominated for Best Country Duo/Group Performance for “It Ain’t My Fault.” Rapper Logic (Gaithersburg) scored a nom for “1-800-273-8255 (feat. Alessia Cara & Khalid)” in the Song of the Year and Best Music Video categories. Father John Misty (Rockville) is looking to score his first Grammy with Pure Comedy after a loss last year. Pure Comedy is nominated for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Recording Package. Columbia’s Brent Faiyaz also as a shot at a Grammy nod for his work on DC rappers Goldlink and Shy Glizzy’s “Crew,” which is up for Best Rap/Sung Performance.

Source

‘Marshall’ Director and Star Discuss Legendary Civil Rights Lawyer

Ron Cassie — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 20:53:00 +0000

On the heels of the 50th anniversary of the swearing-in of Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court earlier this month, Marshall, a compelling courtroom drama built around the legendary Baltimore civil rights fighter opens in theaters this weekend.

Based on a real Connecticut case taken up by the NAACP and Marshall in 1940, the film plays like a legal potboiler—a black chauffer has been accused of rape by a rich white woman—while offering glimpses of the legendary attorney as a young man.

(For a deeper dive into Marshall’s Baltimore roots and seminal role in U.S. history, check our story from our August “Best of Baltimore” issue. For a full review of Marshall, read managing editor and pop culture critic Max Weiss’ piece.)

Before the release of the film, which has been receiving positive reviews, we sat down at the Four Seasons Hotel Baltimore with award-winning director Reginald Hudlin, whose previously produced works include Django Unchained, and Marshall star Chadwick Boseman, previously known for his portrayals of James Brown in Get on Up and Jackie Robinson in 42.

[To Hudlin]: It was particularly nice to see Marshall’s first big civil rights win—desegregating the University of Maryland law school, which would not admit him—get a mention in the film.
Hudlin: [The University of Maryland law school case] was such a pivotal story, it had to be in the film, to me. It shows his complete intolerance for racism and those kinds of barriers. That it would be the first thing he did after getting a law degree, and to succeed, speaks to his intelligence and his ability as an attorney.

It also speaks to his ability to hold a grudge. Marshall somewhat famously did not come back to Baltimore when the law library was named after him.
Hudlin: [Laughter] I didn’t know that. That’s great.

Why the Joseph Spell case instead of the Brown v. Board of Education decision?
Hudlin: When you are going to do the cradle to grave biopic, there is a kind weariness that people have. So I said, ‘Let’s not do that movie. Let’s make a legal thriller that would be exciting if the protagonist, the lead attorney, were Joe Smith.’ This is an exciting case. A case where we don’t know the outcome like Brown v. Board of Education … You don’t know this case. You don’t know the outcome, but so many of the themes of the case are still relevant now—like you don’t have to be a saint not to be guilty—that is the issue with every police shooting now, ‘Well, he’s no angel.’

So if they love this case, great, and please go learn more about Thurgood Marshall, one of the greatest men in American history.

[To Boseman]: How much research did you do in preparation for portraying Marshall?
Boseman: I had some video footage to look at. Not a lot. I usually have endless amounts—like baseball footage [of Jackie Robinson]. Not a lot of courtroom footage of Marshall arguing before the Supreme Court. What was important for me, was to get a sense of Thurgood Marshall from the books, from Young Thurgood [written by University of Maryland law professor Larry Gibson], from Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary [by Juan Williams] and what was said about him. And then reading about the other cases he argued, learning about his perseverance. The thing about being a civil rights attorney is that it’s not about winning all the time—it’s often about taking losing cases and taking them to the Supreme Court, which is what he did.

Like a lawyer, you did a lot of reading.
Boseman: To me, there is a great of information in the written word about him. I think he had a sizable ego, but he also had a sense of humor where he could bring together other people with sizable egos and get them to work together and that’s part of his genius. He wasn’t the person that always had to be the ‘A’ person in the room—although he always was the ‘A’ person in the room. He could tell a joke and compliment another person. He used a lot of different tools to get to his goals. Just a very well rounded individual, who could do a lot of things. He could spend the night drinking, debating, and arguing strategy with other NAACP officials and then get up the next morning and get the job done. That’s who he was. The research that’s written is interesting enough not to have video footage.

[To Boseman]: Is it easier to play someone you’ve met?
Boseman: I don’t know to be honest. You are always trying to find the essence of the person. You have a different body, a different history, and you are sort of pouring their history inside of your cup and becoming them. It’s the ability to take that essence and embody it and give it new life—that we are really judging [when an actor portrays a real-life figure]. It’s not an imitation. It’s not comedy. It’s the spirit of the person you are really embodying.

Marshall in this case, for all intents and purposes, is under a gag order in the courtroom and has to operate and argue through his white attorney and legal partner. Obviously, that was a challenge for Marshall at the time. Was it for you?
Boseman: You know a person from the obstacles they’ve overcome, so I felt like it was the best possible problem to have and best possible conflict. He becomes a coach, a mentor, but he’s still the lead of the movie, he’s still the protagonist of the film. I say that because a lot of time you have a story where the black person should be the lead and the white person somehow—because of how Hollywood works—comes in and takes over the movie. We were mindful of that as well.

There’s a lot of layering of the broader character of Marshall and the broader nature of the NAACP’s mission in the film, which people who are familiar with his history will pick up on. That had to be very intentional.
Hudlin: A lot of people had never seen an individual like Thurgood Marshall before [when he arrived to town to argue a case in court.] He insisted on you dealing with his full humanity. He did not allow himself to be reduced to anything less he was. That, and he was always the smartest guy in any room he walked into. He was making a legal case, but there was also a bit of therapy going on every time he dealt with these people [who held racist views] because he had to explode all these preconceptions.

A coincidence the film is coming around the time of the 50th anniversary of Marshall’s appointment to the Supreme Court?
Hudlin: It is one of those happy coincidences of things coming together when you make a film.

Boseman: I hope it brings more recognition [to Marshall]. You can’t walk outside without there being some impact he had on your life.

Hudlin: You think about your life [in this country]. You think about the framers of the Constitution, the guys who wrote it. Then there’s the guy who actually made America live up to its promise as a nation—that’s Thurgood Marshall. If you are going to add a face onto Mount Rushmore, he’s a pretty good choice.

Is there something happening culturally—with Hidden Figures, Selma, Moonlight, Fences, 42, etc.—that more black films are finally reaching broad American audiences? Hidden Figures, for example, was a huge box office success.
Hudlin: I think the audience has been ready. I think the folks between the filmmakers and the audience needed to get out of the way and allow us to make the films people want to see. It’s very satisfying for me when Marshall plays equally well to men, women, every racial group—it doesn’t matter. Everyone who sees the movie responds the same way. And yeah, I think there is a hunger for [those stories]. We are at a pivot point in our nation. We are looking at the past to figure out who we are and where we are going. When you read that list, I didn’t just hear it as films with black protagonists, I heard it as films grappling with our history and I think all of America is trying to grapple with who we are.

Boseman: It’s interesting being in films because we are watching this thing happen [black-protagonist films winning broad American audiences]. But I am hesitant to start talking about it, because I feel like if we talk about it, it’s going to stop happening [laughter]. I have to say it is not like the doors have opened up and everybody is cool with these films being made. It is still very difficult to find the money to get them made. It’s not like the entire culture in Hollywood has changed, it is just that there are a few, very smart, inspired people who have not taken ‘no’ for an answer.

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NAACP Convention Kicks Off, Trump Declines Invitation

Ron Cassie — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 17:13:00 +0000

With deep roots in the city, not to mention its national headquarters, the NAACP kicks off its annual national convention in Baltimore this weekend.

Elected officials scheduled to speak at the convention over the next several days include Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings and Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)—all considered possible Democratic presidential contenders in 2020—are also scheduled to appear.

The convention officially begins Friday with an opening press conference slotted for Saturday at 9:30 a.m., during which the NAACP has said it will be making an announcement about the future of the organization. The nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization has been without a president since its board of directors announced it was letting go of Cornell Brooks last month.

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump said he had declined an invitation to address the convention. The White House said later it would be open to meeting with NAACP leadership for a dialogue.

Among the recent issues in contention between the civil rights organization and the new president have been the Trump Administration’s efforts to collect detailed voter data from state governments.

In a statement, Leon W. Russell, chair of the NAACP national board of directors, described the nation as finding itself “in a new period of turmoil” with looming cutbacks in education funding, civil rights enforcement and health care.

“This year’s convention takes place at a pivotal time for our country, and for our association,” said Russell.

“Our theme for 2017 (“steadfast and immovable”) reminds us that as an organization, our intent is to fulfill the vision and mission of our founders, and we will leave Baltimore united and committed to making our nation a better place for all,” said Derrick Johnson, vice-chair of the board of directors.

The five-day conference features seminars, committee meetings, workshops, exhibits and panel discussions, as well as keynote addresses from NAACP staff, civil rights and faith leaders, elected officials, and media and youth leaders.

Tessa Hill-Aston, president of the NAACP’s Baltimore City branch, who put in the city’s bid to host the convention three years ago, said five-day event offers an opportunity for Baltimore leaders to engage with city and national leaders in addressing concerns that are common across the country. She said the convention is expected to bring 5-6,000 visitors to the city.

“Baltimore has specific problems [to address], in criminal justice, for example, but many of the issues here are also issues in Chicago and Detroit and other cities across the country,” Hill-Aston said. “There are national level issues that we need to address, discuss and find solutions for.”

The Baltimore branch of NAACP, the second chartered in the country, was founded in 1912 and was led by numerous notable civil rights figures in the past, including Carl Murphy, Lillie Carroll Jackson, Juanita Jackson Mitchell and Enolia McMillian.

Baltimore, of course, is also the birthplace of Thurgood Marshall, the legendary civil rights lawyer and Supreme Court justice who successfully argued Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, thereby ending the country’s legal doctrine of segregation. Marshall, for whom the University of Maryland law school library named its library in 1980, founded the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in 1940.

For three decades, another Baltimorean, Clarence Mitchell Jr., led the NAACP’s office in Washington D.C., where he became known as “the 101^st Senator” for his efforts in helping pass the key civil rights legislation of the 1950s and 1960s.

Two recent NAACP presidents also have deep connections to Baltimore. Former NAACP president Kweise Mfume, current chairmen of the board at Morgan State University, was born and raised here, and Ben Jealous, a Democratic candidate for governor in Maryland, spent summers visiting his grandparents in Baltimore.

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Former NAACP President Ben Jealous Runs for Maryland Governor

Michelle Evans — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 09:45:00 +0000

Once the youngest president and CEO of the NAACP, Ben Jealous announced his candidacy for Maryland governor outside his cousin’s Northwest Baltimore flower shop on Wednesday, May 31.

Jealous, 44, who has no previous political experience, is seeking the Democratic nomination for the June 2018 primary. He is now the second Democratic candidate to formally announce candidacy joining tech expert Alec Ross, who announced his bid last month. Other possible Democratic incumbents include: Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, former Attorney General Doug Gansler, State Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr., Rep. John Delaney, Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker, and Baltimore lawyer James L. Shea.

After resigning from the NAACP, Jealous continued to be an advocate for social injustice by leading movements to abolish the death penalty in Maryland, defend voter rights, secure marriage equality, and combat racial profiling. More recently, he endorsed and became a proxy for Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential campaign, citing that his experiences with Sanders, among other qualifications, make up for his lack of political experience.

“I’m a community organizer—I’ve spent my life doing that,” he said. “I’m a civil rights leader. Pulling together, solving problems, and serving people are what I do.”

Dr. Mileah Kromer, assistant professor of political science at Goucher College, says that Jealous brings something different to the table than the other potential candidates. She labeled Jealous as a “true resistance” democrat that many within the party are looking for in the mold of Bernie Sanders. Similar to Sanders, he has a persona that appeals to a younger, more progressive demographic, especially African American voters.

“He has an ability to talk with a lot of credibility on important social justice issues,” Kromer said. “There’s no better messenger on racial and social justice issues than a former head of the NAACP.”

Although Jealous has the national recognition and civil rights experience, Kromer says that it may not be enough to compete with seasoned elected officials. Not all Democrats fall under the progressive umbrella, so he faces the challenge of appealing to those individuals less interested in social issues, and more concerned with economic development.

“Democrats want to know, who’s electable? Who can beat Larry Hogan?” Kromer said. “Right now, all polls show that Hogan is one of the most popular elected officials in the country.”

In a poll of 85,000 registered voters released in April by Morning Consult, 73 percent of Marylanders approve of Hogan. A Goucher College poll from February shows Hogan with a 63 percent approval rating, and 57 percent of poll responders leaning towards a 2018 Hogan vote.

Without providing detailed proposals, Jealous said that, if elected, he will raise minimum wage to $15, enhance transportation by extending state highways and bridges, grow local businesses, and improve public safety.

“We will close corporate tax loopholes. We will end mass incarceration. We will cut the murder rate, and we will lock up the shooters,” he said. “We will restore trust by better training officers, and also holding officers who kill unarmed civilians fully accountable.”

But some advocates of the opposition are skeptical that Jealous’ lack of political experience make him unprepared to keep those promises.

“The voters of our state rejected this kind of rhetoric and the failed job-killing policies the Maryland Democratic Party represents when they elected Governor Larry Hogan in 2014,” said Brian Griffiths, editor-in-chief of conservative news outlet RedMaryland.com. “We are confident the voters will make the right choice again in 2018.”

However, support for Jealous came from all over the state to attend the rally, including Robert Julian Ivey, a council member of Cheverly, Maryland.

“It’s just so important that we put someone against Hogan that can stand up to for the ideals that the people of Maryland believe in,” Ivey said. “He’s someone that can stand up and keep organizing, and keep being an activist.”

Similarly, Karen Warwick of Anne Arundel County is hoping that Jealous will be “Maryland’s Bernie.”

“For the progressives nationwide, we were all in for Bernie,” she said. “But here in Maryland, we have a chance to elect this person that holds the same values as Bernie to be the governor of the state.”

Jealous may have the nationwide recognition, experience with social justice, entrepreneurial savvy, but the list of potential candidates that he is up against all have extensive resumés, with experience running and winning elections.

“It’s a long road to Hogan,” Kromer said. “There’s a lot before he gets to go head-to-head, and there’s a long journey to get to there.”

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Trial Starts for Van Driver in Freddie Gray Case

Ron Cassie — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 10:12:00 +0000

The third trial involving Baltimore police officers charged in connection with the death of Freddie Gray got underway Thursday with Officer Caesar Goodson Jr. facing allegations that he intentionally gave the 25-year-old a “rough ride.”

Goodson was the driver of the van in which Gray, according to the state medical examiner’s office, suffered a broken neck and the severe spinal cord injuries that led to his death last April.

Goodson Jr. has been charged with second-degree depraved heart murder—the most serious allegation made against the six officers involved in case—involuntary manslaughter, manslaughter by vehicle, criminally negligent manslaughter by vehicle, second-degree assault, misconduct in office, and reckless endangerment.

In two previous trials, Baltimore prosecutions failed to earn convictions in trials involving two police officers involved in Gray’s arrest and transportation.

In a bench trial last month, Judge Barry Williams acquitted Officer Edward Nero of charges of assault, reckless endangerment, and two counts of misconduct in office. Williams said in reading his verdict that Nero had essentially acted in a manner that “a reasonable officer” could be expected to act during his relatively minor role in Gray’s arrest and transport.

Officer William Porter’s manslaughter trial ended in December with a hung jury. He is scheduled to be tried again in September.

In both of those trials, defense attorneys and the expert witnesses they called stated that ultimate responsibility for securing detainees being transported rests with the driver of the vehicle—in this case—the 46-year-old Goodson. Like Nero, Goodson and his attorneys sought to have the case decided by Williams rather than a jury. A second-degree depraved heart murder conviction carries a maximum sentence of 30 years.

Goodson is the only one of the six officers who did not make a statement to police investigators after Gray’s injury and death.

David Jaros, a University of Baltimore law professor who has been following the trials, told The Baltimore Sun that the outcomes of the first two trials should not be considered predictive of the outcome in the Goodson case.

“The case against Officer Nero was one that involved some very close legal questions that, I think, the defense felt favored them and so wanted a judge who appreciated the legal standards that were in question,” Jaros said. “Goodson’s case will rest less on the complexity of the legal theory and more on questions of fact and responsibility, which we consider more in the jury’s bailiwick—the questions of what happened.”

Others experts have said that proving second-degree murder after the failure to secure a detainee will be a heavy burden for prosecutors. Specifically, demonstrating that Goodson gave Gray a so-called “rough ride” without surveillance video and eyewitness testimony would be a challenge. Prosecutors indicated at the first day of the trial yesterday that they believe—and they are in possession of—such evidence.

The Baltimore Sun reported last April that Gray was not first detainee to suffer spinal chord injuries after unsecured rides in city police vans.

Tessa Hill-Aston, Baltimore chapter president of the NAACP, noted after Nero’s acquittal the difficulty for Gray’s family in going through six separate trials. She also indicated frustration that the responsibility for the failure to properly seatbelt Gray has been passed from one officer to the next thus far at the two trials.

“Police rules have at least changed for the better since [Gray’s death]—I’ve read them.” Hill-Aston said.”In the future, no officer will be able to claim it was someone else’s responsibility—a superior officer or the driver. It is everyone’s responsibility now.”

Meanwhile, five of the six police officers charged in relation to Gray’s death, including Porter, Nero, Garrett Miller, Alicia White, and Brian Rice, are known to have filed defamation suits against City State’s Attorney General Marilyn Mosby now. Nero and Miller allege, for example, that Mosby intentionally made allegations she knew “contained false statements” and spoke in a “divisive and inciting manner” when announcing the charges against the police officers at a press conference that received national media coverage.

A copy of Nero and Miller’s 28-page civil suit can be read here.

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Protests Growing After Judge Declares Mistrial in Porter Case

Jess Mayhugh — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 16:49:00 +0000

Immediately after a Baltimore City jury could not reach a decision in the trial of Officer William G. Porter on four charges related to the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, a group of protestors slowly grew outside the courthouse.

Following Judge Barry G. Williams declaring a mistrial Wednesday afternoon, tensions grew amongst demonstrators, as a scuffle broke out and at least one protestor was arrested and brought inside the courthouse.

“I’m mad. I’m upset. But I am also not surprised,” said Justin Sanders, 32, of West Baltimore outside the courthouse. “How can anybody be surprised anymore?”

The mistrial was declared after the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict to acquit or find Porter guilty of involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, misconduct in office, or reckless endangerment. Attorneys are due in court tomorrow to set a retrial date.

“It’s part of the process,” said community organizer J.C. Faulk outside the courthouse. “What the city is doing is delaying the inevitable.” While clearly not happy with the court’s ruling, he added, “Now is not the time to put bodies on the line.”

Following the announcement, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake immediately released a statement, urging citizens to “respect the outcome of the judicial process . . . I urge everyone to remember that collectively our reaction needs to be one of respect for our neighborhoods, and for the residents and businesses of our city.”

Congressman Elijah Cummings echoed the mayor’s sentiment in a statement released Wednesday evening.

“With the eyes of the world on Baltimore City, we must ensure that any protests that take place are peaceful, and we must ensure that the process of healing our community continues,” Cummings said in the statement. “We must continue to channel our emotions into strong, positive change, so that, as a city, we truly see our young men of color before it is too late.”

Similarly, mayoral candidate and City Councilman Nick Mosby released a statement saying, “As a city, we must come together and continue the healing process of working to rebuild trust and improve community-police relations for the safety of residents and our police officers.”

Gene Ryan, president of the Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police, called the decision “obviously frustrating” in a statement.

“Officer Porter and his attorneys will continue, with the full support of the Fraternal Order of Police, to press for his acquittal,” Ryan said.

City State’s Attorney prosecutors Michael Schatzow and Janice Bledsoe, pictured, left the courthouse without speaking to the media.

As Wednesday evening went on, protestors continued to march from the courthouse to City Hall, just a block away.

Amongst the demonstrators was City Councilman Carl Stokes, who said, to him personally, it was “most bothersome” that Porter’s defense attorneys made the case that their client was not guilty because “nobody follows the rules,” in terms of seat-belting arrestees in transport vans.

Stokes was also upset at the defense for putting all the blame on not securing Gray on the van driver and, ultimately, making the case that it didn’t matter whether Porter called for medical assistance or not because Gray would not have survived his catastrophic injury regardless.

“[Porter] and his fellow officers are accountable and responsible for Freddie Gray’s death,” he said. “But there is a systemic issue as well. There is a culture that has developed within the police department that some of our citizens’ lives are worthless.”

Also following the trial closely was Tessa Hill-Aston, NAACP Baltimore chapter president.

“I’m disappointed,” she said. “I sat in court each day and heard medical testimony and everything else. I know Freddie Gray was in pain. I heard testimony that made me cringe about the pain he was in. And nobody called for help. Somebody has to be responsible and accountable for that.”

Hill-Aston added that she expects protests this evening in the city, but hopes no one will do anything that ends up in an arrest.

“We know what can happen to people when they get locked up,” she said. “I don’t want to see anyone else get hurt.”

Additional reporting was contributed by senior editor Ron Cassie.

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Closing Arguments Over: First Trial in Freddie Gray Case Goes to Jury

Ron Cassie — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 16:48:00 +0000

After eight days of testimony, final arguments were made Monday in the trial of the first police officer facing charges related to the death of Freddie Gray.
In her closing statements to the jury, prosecutor Janice Bledsoe described the police van where Gray’s fatal spinal injury occurred as “a casket on wheels” after Officer William Porter did not call for medical help and did not seat belt the handcuffed and shackled 25-year-old following the fourth of ultimately six stops.

Porter attorney Joe Murtha emphasized testimony from the defense team’s medical experts that called into question the conclusions reached by the state’s medical examiner’s office. Murtha repeatedly told the jury that Porter’s actions on the morning of April 12 were reasonable by department standards and in accordance with Baltimore police practice.

“I understand there is a need to hold someone accountable,” Murtha said, looking at the jury. “That is a natural human reaction . . . what is in contradiction is that Officer Porter is responsible.”

The case of Porter, 26, was sent in mid-afternoon to the 12-person jury—made up of four black women, three white women, three black men, and two white men—for deliberation. There is no timetable for how long it will take the jury to reach a verdict on the four charges against Porter, which include involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, misconduct in office, and reckless endangerment.

Expectations from legal observers in the courthouse Monday generally range from one to three days.

City officials have already expressed concerns about potential protests following the jury’s verdict.

Gray died from severe spinal injuries after suffering a broken neck at some point during a 45-minute, multi-stop ride in a police transport van last April. He was found unconscious and not breathing at the Western District police station.

At the core of the Porter case are several key questions that jurors will wrestle with:

Did Porter fail a legal obligation—as prosecutors allege—to protect a handcuffed Gray from harm by not seat belting him in the back of a police van as department guidelines set out.
Did Porter fail a legal obligation—as prosecutors allege—to call for emergency medical assistance when Gray requested help as Porter checked on him during several stops?
Or, was Porter following common practice and using reasonable officer discretion by not seat belting Gray and not to radioing for medical help for Gray earlier.

One of the facts in dispute during the trial between the prosecution and defense—and again during closing arguments—has been when Gray suffered his initial injury.

Prosecutors allege Porter was “grossly indifferent” and “criminally negligent” for failing to help Gray, whom the state medical examiner testified was exhibiting signs of injury by the fourth of ultimately six stops.

Porter’s defense presented other medical experts, who testified that Gray did not suffer his broken neck until after the fifth stop—and after the last time Porter checked on Gray before reaching the police station where medical help was eventually called.

Also in dispute is an initial phone conversation between Det. Syreeta Teel, who testified that Porter told her that Gray said, “I can’t breathe,” at the fourth stop.

Porter contended on the witness stand that Teel misunderstood his remarks in the unrecorded phone conversation. Porter testified that he was referring to the first stop—before he was directly involved in the transport of Gray—not the fourth.

Former Baltimore prosecutor Debbie Hines said whether or not the jury believes Teel’s or Porter’s account of that conversation will be critical.

“[Porter] acknowledged on the witness stand that if Freddie Gray had said, ‘I can’t breathe,’ at the fourth stop then he would’ve been obligated to call for a medic,” Hines said.

Prosecutors claim Porter has changed his testimony in several instances since being interviewed by internal affairs experts last spring and taking the stand in his own defense last week, including his role in helping Gray from transport van at the Western District police station and calling for a medic.

Defense attorneys for Porter described him during the two-week trial as a caring young officer, a son of West Baltimore, who was well-intentioned, but inexperienced and ill-served by misguided police department practices and inept communication methods. The defense also repeatedly put the responsibility of securing and protecting Gray on Officer Caesar Goodson, the driver of the transport van. He is the next of the six officers to tried related to Gray’s death and faces the most serious charges of the all the officer, second-degree depraved heart murder. His trial is scheduled for the first week of January.

On Wednesday, at a press conference at police headquarters, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake asked Baltimoreans to respond peacefully when the jury ultimately decides to convict or acquit Porter on all, some, or none of the charges. “We need everyone in our city to respect the judicial process,” Rawlings-Blake said.

On Friday, Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis cancelled departmental leave this week “as part of preparations and out of an abundance of caution” as Porter’s trial comes to an end. All sworn department personnel will be assigned to 12-hour shifts. Leave will be restored as conditions permit, according to a media release.

“The community has an expectation for us to be prepared for a variety of scenarios,” Davis said. “This cancellation is part of preparedness, just as our ongoing community collaboration efforts that were highlighted this week.”

Over the weekend, the grassroots activist group Baltimore BLOC put out a call for an “emergency protest” at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall on “the evening of and after” the Porter decision, “if Porter walks.”

“I certainly support the right of people to protest,” Baltimore NAACP chapter president Tessa Hill-Aston said after spending the day observing the proceedings. “I also hope and expect that everyone will be peaceful, not destroy any property, and not do anything that will get them locked up.”

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Monumental Decision

Jess Mayhugh — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 11:01:00 +0000

*Update following the final Jan. 14 public meeting of the special commission named by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to review the city’s four Confederate monuments: The seven commissioners voted by a 4-3 margin today to recommend removing the city’s Robert E. Lee-Stonewall Jackson monument from Wyman Dell and the Roger B. Taney bust in Mt. Vernon.

The commission also voted to keep, but add context to the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors monument in Bolton Hill and the Confederate Women’s monument near The Johns Hopkins University campus in Homewood. The commissioners will meet again privately before issuing their final report to the mayor, which is expected to be completed in 6-8 weeks.

The commission intends to offer the Robert E. Lee-Stonewall Jackson monument to the U.S. Park Service for placement on the Civil War battlefield of Chancellorsville, VA—where the two met in a scene depicted by the sculpture. The bust of Taney, the former Supreme Court chief justice who issued the infamous Dred Scott decision, is a replica of a similar bust in Annapolis. No consensus was reached by the commission regarding what should be done with the Taney bust, if it is ultimately removed.

The story below was published in Baltimore magazine this month and traces the history of Baltimore’s Confederate monuments and the more recent controversy surrounding their ongoing existence and meaning in the city. The story was posted online in mid-December as the commission was holding earlier public meetings:

A Chesapeake Bay breeze blusters across Point Lookout State Park as Confederate flags are raised, the whistling wind and scattering leaves adding solemnity to the funereal mid-October morning. When the Civil War began, the southern tip of St. Mary’s County had been a popular resort, filled with cottages, a hotel, a wharf, and a lighthouse. But after Gettysburg, the Union army turned the peninsula into a massive prisoner-of-war camp. By the end of the bloody conflict, some 50,000 Confederate troops had been interned, making it the North’s largest such institution. Of course, whether Maryland, a tobacco-growing, slavery-legal state that didn’t get around to voting on secession, was—or is—“in the North” remains debatable. Not in dispute is that conditions at Point Lookout deteriorated as its Confederate population exploded—an 80-foot granite obelisk here carries the names of the 3,382 known Confederate soldiers who died while incarcerated on the 40-acre grounds.

All of this, and other reasons, too, is why two-dozen Maryland Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) are taking part in this remembrance ceremony. A SCV stalwart, retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. John Zebelean, leads the color guard. The group’s chaplain prays an invocation and a representative from the North Carolina Order of the Confederate Rose, a women’s group, lays a wreath, followed by a musket and cannon salute and the singing of “Dixie.” Not quite a full-on Civil War re-enactment, but similar.

Zebelean, still trim, in a gray calvary officer’s uniform, waist sword included, notes in his address that much has changed from the Civil War’s centennial and the sesquicentennial this past year. A Catonsville native, he is referring, directly, to local and national efforts to remove Confederate monuments from public squares in response to the murders of black churchgoers in Charleston, SC.

“A veritable tsunami of anti-Confederate vitriol,” Zebelean calls the reaction, highlighting the removal of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s statue from a Memphis park. (Zebelean doesn’t mention that Forrest was a slave-trader, accused of an infamous massacre of black Union soldiers, and the original Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.)

“In Baltimore, the mayor plans for a commission to advise her on what to do with the Confederate monuments in the city, most of which have been there for more than a century,” he continues. “Like sharks smelling blood, the feeding frenzy is on.”

Zebelean’s remarks are greeted with enthusiasm and cheers. They’re not intended to, nor do they, incite hostility or threats. As the folding chairs are picked up, the Sons of Confederate Veterans mingle in the cemetery’s parking lot with spouses and friends. There’s a tangible camaraderie, not unlike after a football game or, say, a traditional Veterans Day event.

“See, we’re not wearing white hoods,” says Maryland Division SCV commander Jay Barringer, smiling before driving home to Sykesville. “These people are engineers, bankers, and I.T. professionals,” adds Barringer, a North Carolina transplant with an infectious Southern drawl, who helps close the ceremony with a rendition of “Amazing Grace” on Scottish bagpipes.

Lost on Barringer, apparently, is the irony that the Christian hymn, published in 1779, was written by a former slave-ship captain named John Newton, whose epiphany during a violent North Atlantic storm led him into the clergy and England’s abolitionist movement.

On June 17, Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old with Confederate sympathies, allegedly shot and killed nine Bible study members at Charleston’s nearly 200-year-old Emanual African Methodist Episcopal Church. (He has pled not guilty for his upcoming trial.) Ten days later, activist and filmmaker Bree Newsome—coincidentally, a Maryland native—climbed a 30-foot pole outside the South Carolina State House and pulled down the Confederate flag there, an act for which she was arrested. Her protest, however, subsequently inspired further efforts here and throughout the U.S., as Zebelean related, to officially rid public areas of Confederate monuments and imagery.

Left to right: Roger B. Taney statue on Mt. Vernon Place, Confederate Soldiers and Sailors monument in Bolton Hill, and Confederate Women's statue in Homewood. - Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum Inventory

In the days following the Charleston massacre, former Baltimore NAACP chapter president Marvin “Doc” Cheatham Sr. and other activists began calling for the removal of the prominent Robert E. Lee-Stonewall Jackson monument across from The Baltimore Museum of Art and also the renaming of Robert E. Lee Park in Baltimore County. Then, on the same afternoon as a Cheatham-led press conference—three days after Newsome’s direct action—Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced the creation of a commission to review four of the city’s Confederate statues. It set in motion a six-month process that will lead to recommendations in the coming months as to what Baltimore should do, if anything, with its controversial statues—the Lee-Jackson monument; the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors monument in Bolton Hill; the Confederate Women’s statue in Homewood; and the Roger B. Taney statue on Mt. Vernon Place.

But while the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments gained urgency in light of the Charleston massacre, the Black Lives Matter movement, and other issues, it is not new. The memorialization of the Confederacy has been a source of contention ever since Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

“Of course, the monuments are becoming flashpoints,” says Montgomery County resident and Harvard-trained sociologist James W. Loewen, the best-selling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong. “They were intended all along to be divisive.” They’re not put in place to heal, Loewen says, “but to promote segregationist values.”

In fact, in an 1880 letter, an actual Confederate veteran named Charles Crane warned then-Baltimore Mayor Ferdinand Latrobe against building the Confederate monument proposed at the time.

“ . . . with a heart full of love and reverence for my fallen comrades, I am unwilling to see erected in the public streets of this city a monument to a dead idea, but which will be a standing menace, and a source of bitterness not only to a great number of the citizens of Baltimore and Maryland, but a great number of the people of the United States.”

Crane, obviously, proved more prophetic than he could imagine.

Already since Charleston—and 135 years after Crane’s plea was ultimately ignored—changes are underway across the state. In Rockville, a courthouse Confederate statue has been boarded up in preparation for a move to a nearby historical park. In Frederick, aldermen passed a resolution to remove from the steps of City Hall a bust of Taney—the Supreme Court chief justice who delivered the notorious Dred Scott decision that ruled slaves remain the property of their owners in free states and that all blacks were not, and never could be, full U.S. citizens, including those who were “free.” From Annapolis, Gov. Larry Hogan requested the Motor Vehicle Administration stop issuing and recall commemorative Confederate license plates, and in Baltimore County, the name of Robert E. Lee Park (owned by the city, but operated by the county) was changed to Lake Roland on the county’s website.

These may seem like knee-jerk reactions, but efforts to remove the Taney bust in Frederick, to block the issuance of Sons of Confederate Veterans license plates, and to change the state song from “Maryland, My Maryland”—a Confederate battle hymn calling on residents to spurn “the Northern scum!”—have been going on for two decades.

As evidence of the challenges of renaming or remaking decades-old and century-old landmarks, the Lake Roland change has managed to draw criticism from even those who wanted the Robert E. Lee name stricken. That’s because of the new name’s association with the Roland Park Company—the neighborhood’s founding developer, which used racially restrictive housing covenants to promote white-only segregation.

“The problem we have had is that both African-Americans and Caucasians, and I’m talking about our elected officials, know so little about history,” says Cheatham. “We have leadership that doesn’t understand the city’s history and just allowed the Freedom House [a former civil-rights hub where national figures like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Eleanor Roosevelt met with local black leaders] on Druid Hill Avenue to be demolished.”

As Cheatham points out, it is exactly the history, artistic and political values, and intention behind Baltimore’s Confederate public monuments—erected between 1887 and 1948—that the special commission is tasked with discerning. More difficult will be sorting out the role the monuments should play going forward: The commission could recommend leaving the monuments alone; adding historical signage, putting the statues in some type of context; relocating one or more to the Civil War Museum on President Street, for example; or removing them from view altogether. Some of these options, naturally, are more expensive than others.

Three weeks after the Sons of Confederate Veterans memorial service in Southern Maryland, Loewen and Eli Pousson, director of preservation at Baltimore Heritage, presented research around the monuments to the commission at a crowded City Hall meeting. They explained that such statues, essentially, were erected to help build the now century-and-a-half-in-the-making mythology of the “Lost Cause.” More than inanimate objects, Confederate monuments embody a broader, post-Civil War effort to rework history. They are concrete representations of a campaign begun almost immediately after the war in Maryland, other border states, and across the South to recast what was a rebellion to preserve slavery into a noble “Lost Cause” fought for “states’ rights” by honorable and courageous men. Or, as the inscription on the Lee-Jackson monument describes the horseback-riding generals: “Christian soldiers . . . [who] waged war like gentlemen.”

There’s no doubt that such efforts have been successful. In a 2011 Pew Research Center poll, 48 percent of respondents said the Civil War was mainly about states’ rights; only 38 percent said it was mostly about slavery, while 9 percent said it was about both. Those figures startle historians such as UCLA professor Joan Waugh, co-editor of The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture, who says, “It’s insane not to acknowledge the primary role of slavery.” She points not just to secession documents, but also speeches from the period, “which are all about protecting the institution of slavery.”

And if there’s any doubt that this desire to paint the Civil War in a new light continues, consider Texas, where 5 million freshly written textbooks that further play down the role of slavery were introduced to schools this fall.

“They were intended to be divisive . . . to promote segregationist values.”

“The secession documents are online,” says Loewen. “South Carolina’s statement—and they were the first to secede—spells out in the first sentence that it’s about slavery. The others do the same. These were written by Southern leaders who wanted strong federal enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act after Northern states began passing laws that nullified its effect. They were pissed off at what New England states were doing.”

In Baltimore, Pousson says, Confederate memorials present more than a reminder of the city’s mixed North-South allegiances. “The meaning of the works is not confined to the Civil War,” Pousson highlights in his report to the commission, “but reflects the racist reaction against civil rights in Maryland and the South from the 1860s to the 1960s.”

For decades now, the Sons of Confederate Veterans have celebrated Robert E. Lee’s and Stonewall Jackson’s birthdays—which fall four and six days, respectively, after King’s and thus on King’s holiday weekend—at the Lee-Jackson monument. And for the fourth year, Quakers from Stony Run Friends will protest the SCV ceremony with a silent vigil.

Ann Kehinde, who attends the Stony Run meetings, lives across the street from the Lee-Jackson monument with her two biracial children and her husband, who is black. It was her son, Suraju, now a college freshman, channeling his frustration over the veneration of the Confederate generals on King’s birthday, who initiated the talks about an appropriate Quaker counter demonstration.

“As my children studied the Civil War in school, they were at first puzzled as to why this commemoration took place, and then they were angry that it was held on the Saturday before Dr. King’s birthday was celebrated,” Kehinde says. “I think we have come to a point in our city’s history where we must recognize the pain caused by those who continue to glorify the Confederacy. For me, this statue is a daily reminder.”

More recently, about two months ago, the Lee-Jackson monument ignited another kind of confrontation.

After the October 29 meeting of the Confederate monument commission, artist Pablo Machioli, with assistance from activist friends, placed a 13-foot, 400-pound sculpture of a pregnant black woman—her fist raised—directly in front of the Lee-Jackson double-equestrian statue. His piece was inspired by black resistance to oppression and full of symbolism, not the least of which, Machioli explains, is that “we all come from a woman, from an African woman.” A Uruguayan who says he has experienced police brutality in Baltimore, Machioli didn’t want to create a work that faced off with the Lee-Jackson monument, but one that expressed in a similarly triumphal manner, themes of peace, brotherhood, and social justice.

His work stood for 22 hours until it was ordered removed by the City Recreation and Parks Department and the police arrived. At that point, Machioli brought the statue back to the Copycat building in Station North where he has a studio. Soon afterward, the statue was vandalized—the woman’s pregnant stomach kicked in and the “N-word” spray-painted across her body—while it was being kept in one of the building’s public walkways.

It didn’t end there, however.

After the statue was carried inside Machioli’s studio to protect it from further damage, poet Nakia Brown, who also lives in the Copycat building, wrote a series of seven poems in response to Machioli’s sculpture—“that looked like me,” she says—and its destruction.

Her poems were pulled from the wall near where the statue had been placed, urinated upon, and left on the floor.

“People told me that they couldn’t believe that it happened in the Copycat, which is artist housing,” says Brown. “But for me, as a black woman who grew up in Baltimore, I don’t live in that same bubble. I was surprised that someone who lives in this community would deface a piece of art. It is not shocking someone wrote that word, or racism exists here.”

The final hearing of the special commission to review Baltimore’s public Confederate monuments is scheduled for January 14. The commission’s report and recommendations are expected to be delivered to the mayor early this year.

“I want them destroyed,” Brown says of the Confederate monuments, pausing to consider her words. “I want them removed. They didn’t deserve to be there in the first place.”

Source

Marylanders Differ in View of Police Along Racial Lines

Ron Cassie — Thu, 08 Oct 2015 13:24:00 +0000

A poll released this week from Goucher College shows that a vast majority of Marylanders are following the events surrounding the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray from injuries suffered while in police custody in April. Overall, 53 percent of respondents indicated they’ve been paying “a lot” of attention to the events around Gray’s death in Baltimore City, with another 29 percent indicating they’ve been paying “some attention.”

Only 5 percent said they were paying “no attention at all” to events around Gray’s death. New motion hearings have been set for Tuesday and Wednesday in the trials of six police officers charged in connection to Gray’s death.

Perhaps more revealing, state residents were also asked about aspects of policing in their communities; with African-American and white Marylanders expressing significantly different views on the issues.

For example, barely one-quarter (27 percent) of African-Americans believe that all races are treated equally by police in their community while more than twice as many white Marylanders (60 percent) believe that all races are treated equally by police. Similarly, less than half of African-Americans believe that police are held accountable for misconduct (47 percent) while more than three-quarters (77 percent) of white Marylanders believe police are held accountable for misconduct.

Following a public safety forum in the Western District Monday night, interim police commissioner Kevin Davis did not dispute the polling data—or that it reflects real and compelling differences in terms of police relations with African-American communities.

“Those numbers don’t surprise me. Not at all,” Davis said. “It will take new and innovative community policing and transparency to turn those numbers around. We have to be willing to be our own harshest critic.”

Interestingly, Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, president of the Matthew Henson Neighborhood Association and former head of the Baltimore branch of the NAACP, said the size of the disparity in the views of police between African-Americans and white Marylanders, were a revelation to him.

“The difference, the wide range, it surprises me,” Cheatham said. “It has to be in the relationships between people, communities, and police. I live in West Baltimore and we’ve tried to reach out to police, but there’s a poor relationship that exists. We don’t even have someone from the Western District on the civilian police review board.”

“As the trials of the officers in the Freddie Gray case begin, the nation’s attention will again turn to Baltimore City,” said Mileah Kromer, director of the Sarah T. Hughes Field Politics Center, in a statement. “The stark racial differences in our results suggest that regardless of the outcomes of the six trials, political and community leaders in Maryland will need to continue working to develop solutions to address these divisions in police-community relations.”

From the G oucher Poll:

49 percent of all Marylanders agree that “people of all races receive equal treatment by the police in your community.”

Among African-Americans, 27 percent agree.
Among whites, 60 percent agree.

66 percent of Marylanders agree that “police in your community are held accountable for misconduct.”

Among African-Americans, 47 percent agree.
Among whites, 77 percent agree.

61 percent of Marylanders agree that “the racial makeup of a community’s police department should be similar to the racial makeup of the people living in that community.”

Among African-Americans, 66 percent agree.
Among whites, 57 percent agree.

51 percent of Marylanders agree that “police officers should be required to live in the communities in which they serve.”

Among African-Americans, 59 percent agree.
Among whites, 44 percent agree.

77 percent of Marylanders agree that “in general, police officers are respected in your community.”

Among African-Americans, 69 percent agree.
Among whites, 81 percent agree

*Conducted from Sept. 26-30, the Goucher Poll of 636 Maryland residents includes a probable 3.9 percent plus/minus sampling error from the actual population distribution for any given survey question.

Source

Atop Federal Hill, O’Malley Makes Presidential Bid Official

Ron Cassie — Sat, 30 May 2015 12:40:00 +0000

On an unexpectedly warm morning, with Baltimore’s harbor as his backdrop, former mayor and Maryland governor Martin O’Malley offered an animated, and, at times, fiery, indictment of the status quo and rapidly growing economic inequality in the country.

And then he officially announced his bid for the White House in 2016, declaring that the presidency of the United States wasn’t a crown to be passed back and forth between two families.

“Recently, the CEO of Goldman Sachs let his employees know that he’d be just fine with either Bush or Clinton,” O’Malley recounted for the crowd. “Well, I’ve got news for the bullies of Wall Street—the presidency is not a crown to be passed back and forth by you between two royal families.”

The biggest question today wasn’t whether Martin O’Malley was going to announce a presidential bid—that’s been assumed forever as we noted in a profile two years ago—but who would turn out to support him.

O’Malley, a staunch backer of Democratic favorite Hillary Clinton’s run in 2008, doesn’t have a natural constituency in the way that the former first lady and secretary of state does in her bid to become the first woman to win the nation’s highest office. Nor does he have socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sander’s built-in progressive following.

None of the city or state’s major politicos were on stage with O’Malley—other than his father-in-law, the long-serving, former Maryland attorney general Joseph Curran.

Even in his adopted hometown, O’Malley’s legacy in light of the Freddie Gray riots has taken a darker hue recently. His administration’s “zero tolerance” toward crime—while seen as effective in reducing violence in the city at the time—has also been blamed for engendering poor relationships between struggling neighborhoods in the city and the police department. In fact, the ACLU and NAACP sued and won a settlement from the O’Malley administration in the aftermath of his mass arrest policies. And one local activist group, Baltimore Bloc, led a protest of O’Malley’s announcement at Federal Hill.

That said, there are plenty of reasons why O’Malley’s record as both mayor of Baltimore and governor of Maryland might appeal to Democratic primary voters. He’s credited with reducing lead poisoning in the city as mayor, adding drug treatment services, and making city services, like trash pick up, more efficient. As governor, he successfully fought to end the death penalty in the state, to make same-sex marriage legal, to strengthen gun control measures, and to pass a Dream Act for young immigrants brought here by their parents.

During his announcement speech, O’Malley plugged his efforts to keep college tuition in check in Maryland while governor as well as his commitment to the state public school system, which has generally been ranked among the best in the country.

He also highlighted his middle class background, including the lift his father received from the G.I. Bill as a World War II veteran, and took shots at Wall Street’s influence and power, sticking to a populist economic message throughout his announcement: “Tell me how it is, that you can get pulled over for a broken tail light in our country, but if you wreck the nation’s economy you are untouchable.”

But at the moment, the continued blight in many Baltimore neighborhoods—though certainly driven by long-term national economic and political trends as much as anything else—and his administration’s crime and policing policies are viewed as albatrosses around O’Malley’s bid.

O’Malley didn’t address the recent violence in Baltimore at length in his remarks, but made it clear that more needs to be done directly, including raising the minimum wage, to end “the scourge of hopelessness” in challenged urban areas. “Conditions of extreme poverty,” O’Malley said, “breed conditions of extreme violence.”

O’Malley, who has never backed away from his record in Baltimore, also touted the widely-praised CitiStat and StateStat efficiency initiatives that he implemented first as mayor and then as governor.

But how exactly O’Malley will raise his profile and standing among potential primary voters outside of Maryland isn’t clear.

In the most recent Quinnipiac poll, he ticked just 1 percent of support among potential Democratic voters, well behind not only Clinton, at 57 percent, but Sanders, at 15 percent. Still, with just three candidates officially entered in the Democratic race—although former Rhode Island senator and governor Lincoln Chafee is expected to join the field next week—there would appear to be enough elbow room between the centrist Clinton and ultra-progressive Sanders to create a running lane. One major difference, of course, from Clinton and Sanders is O’Malley’s age—at 52, he’s a generation younger than either one of those candidates.

“I think he has shown vision with his ideas for improving health care and education in the state of Maryland,” said O’Malley supporter Joan Floura, a small business owner who lives in Govans and has two children in Baltimore City public schools. “We need a fresh approach to government and something new—not the same old thing.”

How much traction he ultimately gains remains to be seen, but there’s certainly nowhere to go but up at this point for the never-shy O’Malley—off to Iowa today to win over that caucus voters there.

Source

Police Have Delivered Freddie Gray Results to City State’s Attorney

Ron Cassie — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 13:40:00 +0000

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced late Thursday morning that the Baltimore Police Department has delivered the results of its initial investigation into the death of Freddie Gray to the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office.

The mayor’s office in a statement did not indicate, when, or if, any of the results of the initial city police probe into Gray’s death will be made public. The results of the initial police investigation had been expected Friday.

The criminal investigation into Gray’s death is now in the hands of the Office of the State’s Attorney, which is also conducting an independent investigation, the mayor’s office said in its statement. Ultimately, it will be up to City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby to determine whether to file criminal charges. Once the criminal investigation is complete, an internal disciplinary city police department process can begin, the mayor’s office stated.

“Even as the Baltimore City State’s Attorney conducts her investigation, it is important to remember that another outside, independent investigation is also taking place by the U.S. Department of Justice,” Rawlings-Blake said. “The family of Mr. Gray wants answers. I want answers. Our entire city deserves answers into Mr. Gray’s death. I ask that everyone remain patient and vigilant on this path to justice.”

Bruce Goldfarb, spokesman for the state’s medical examiner office told Baltimore magazine this morning that every case that the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner investigates is delivered to the City State’s Attorney directly and that they do not release anything to the public while a case is being investigated or prosecuted.

For the past two days now, civic leaders and local elected officials have been trying to lower expectations that more information about the circumstances of the 25-year-old Gray’s death this month in police custody would be forthcoming this week. The news the Baltimore Police Department has delivered the results of its initial investigation to the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office comes a day before large protests scheduled for late Friday afternoon and Saturday.

Little new information is likely to be released publicly from the initial city police investigation, city civic leaders and local elected officials have cautioned. They have been trying for several days, in the aftermath of violent protests earlier this week, to tamp down expectations that significant new information would be released to the public immediately following the initial city police investigation. The Gray family’s attorney, Billy Murphy, and others, including City Councilmen Brandon Scott and Nick Mosby, who represents Gray’s district and who is married to the City State’s Attorney, have also been preaching patience to protestors this week.

On Tuesday night, crowds of young demonstrators noisily but peacefully marched and chanted around a cordoned off City Hall in Baltimore, Murphy tried to get the message out that the legal process will take time and protestors need to remain patient. He said that it could be weeks or longer before full investigations are completed and new Baltimore City state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby makes a decision on filing charges against any police officers involved in the fatal arrest and transport of the Gray earlier this month.

“I wish I could push a button, but justice doesn’t happen that way,” Murphy told protestors gathered around him after an appearance on CNN. “We need to lower expectations. We need to tell people straight that this is going to take time to get this right. So let’s get the word out together.”

Murphy said that he does not expect the results of their investigation to provide the public with major insights into the ongoing investigation of Gray’s death in police custody. He certainly doesn’t expect Mosby’s office to indicate a quick path to any charges. “There may be some information that gets released to the public, but I don’t think Friday [the originally scheduled conclusion of the initial police investigation] will be some magic day for disclosure,” he said.

Further, Murphy added, it terms of legal strategy, it would not behoove the City state’s attorney to tip her hand before the investigation gets to the stage where she’s ready to go forward with any potential prosecutions. “[Baltimore Ravens head coach] John Harbaugh doesn’t telegraph to [New England Patriots head coach] Bill Belichick what play he’s going to call before he runs it,” Murphy said. “You don’t to lose. You don’t want me to lose. That’s not my reputation.”

Baltimore City Council member Brandon Scott, who has expressed deep anger and frustration over Monday night’s violence and unrest in the city, shared Murphy’s desire to tamp down expectations. He also said that he doesn’t expect an accelerated investigation and/or legal action in Gray’s case. “It’s a fragile situation,” Scott said, acknowledging many protestors are demanding speedy justice. “Which is why everyone—community leaders, clergy, parents, adults, the media—needs to explain to those who want to see justice in the Freddie Gray tragedy to be patient.

“We saw the legal process took months in Ferguson, with Trayvon [Martin], with Eric Garner in New York,” Scott continued. “I’m sure some information can be released to the public [immediately], but I don’t know how much. I’m not going to be disappointed if it’s not a lot. The City state’s attorney needs to make sure she crosses all the ‘t’s’ and dots all the ‘i’s.’ And I’m sure she will.”

Nick Mosby, who helped lead a clergy march on Monday in West Baltimore as riots exploded, said, “We have to get this right.”

“It’s been many years of growing frustration,” Mosby said, referring to the plight of many of the city’s young protestors. “[Freddie Gray’s death] just blew the lid off. Many of these are children and teenagers who have been living in harsh, abject poverty without any hope of a better future. They also don’t have the means, or knowledge, to express that frustration and that’s something we have to help them learn.”

Tessa Hill-Aston, president of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP, asked that protestors remain patient and peaceful as investigations and the legal process around Gray’s death continue. She also said that he doesn’t want city police, state troopers, out-of-town law enforcement agencies and the Maryland National Guard to escalate confrontations with protestors when they are not being violent.

Ben Jealous, former head of the national NAACP, still lives in Baltimore, where the organization’s headquarters are located. His parents met as schoolteachers many decades ago at Harlem Park Elementary/Middle School in West Baltimore. He also said the causes and conditions for the protests coming out of the city’s poverty-stricken neighborhoods have been simmering for decades.

He highlighted the peaceful protests Tuesday night throughout the city, which were followed up again by peaceful—and even celebratory— rallies and demonstrations, including a huge, diverse march from Penn Station to City Hall Wednesday afternoon.

“The city needs to be focused on rebuilding and becoming stronger after all this,” Jealous said outside City Hall. “I think the seeds [in the peaceful protests] are being planted to do just that.”

Source

20 Events of 2013: Maryland abolishes death penalty

Jess Mayhugh — Sun, 01 Dec 2013 10:00:00 +0000

Five men in the state still sit on death row and could potentially be
executed, but as of October 1, no one else will be sentenced to death
in Maryland.

Leading up to last year’s General Assembly, legislation to end
capital punishment hadn’t been expected to even reach the floor for a
full vote. But in a nod to growing public sentiment, Senate President
Mike Miller—not a supporter of repealing capital punishment—changed
judiciary committee assignments and hope for the measure suddenly
appeared.

Organizations like Maryland Citizens Against State Executions, the
Archdiocese of Baltimore, and the NAACP threw their weight behind the
legislation, sponsored and ultimately signed into law by Gov. Martin
O’Malley.

Exonerated former death row inmate Kirk Bloodsworth, who fought to
end capital punishment ever since his incarceration nearly 30 years ago,
leapt and threw his hands into the air in the State House balcony as
the votes were cast.

“No innocent man will ever be convicted and sentenced to death
again. Not in my state.”—exonerated former death row inmate Kirk
Bloodsworth

Source

NAACP – Baltimore Magazine

A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities

For half a century, West Baltimore was a vital center of black culture, mixed-income neighborhoods, and groundbreaking civil rights activism. After Freddie Gray, can it be again?

Likable Larry

“He’s charismatic, he’s a people person, and he loves to talk. He’s been that way for 35 years.”

Hogan makes walking the difficult tightrope between the president’s words and deeds in more liberal Maryland almost look easy.

Culture Club: Woke at City Hall, John Waters Christmas, and Grammy Noms

Visual Art

Performing Art

Events

News

‘Marshall’ Director and Star Discuss Legendary Civil Rights Lawyer

NAACP Convention Kicks Off, Trump Declines Invitation

Former NAACP President Ben Jealous Runs for Maryland Governor

Trial Starts for Van Driver in Freddie Gray Case

Protests Growing After Judge Declares Mistrial in Porter Case

Closing Arguments Over: First Trial in Freddie Gray Case Goes to Jury

Monumental Decision

“They were intended to be divisive . . . to promote segregationist values.”

Marylanders Differ in View of Police Along Racial Lines

Atop Federal Hill, O’Malley Makes Presidential Bid Official

Police Have Delivered Freddie Gray Results to City State’s Attorney

20 Events of 2013: Maryland abolishes death penalty

“No innocent man will ever be convicted and sentenced to death again. Not in my state.”—exonerated former death row inmate Kirk Bloodsworth

“No innocent man will ever be convicted and sentenced to death
again. Not in my state.”—exonerated former death row inmate Kirk
Bloodsworth