The son of a social worker and psychiatrist, Councilman Zeke Cohen’s commitment to building community was inspired by his mother’s participation in civil rights marches and voter registrations during the Mississippi Freedom Summer. The Goucher graduate and 35-year-old father of two would go on to teach public school students in Sandtown and Curtis Bay before starting a youth-leadership nonprofit.

Cohen introduced the Elijah Cummings Healing City Act, signed into law last February and launched recently, making Baltimore the first U.S. city to comprehensively legislate trauma-responsive care. Here, we talk to him about the groundbreaking legislation and its impacts on the community.

More than 56 percent of Baltimore’s children have experienced major traumatic life events, which include economic hardship, witnessing or experiencing violence, having a parent incarcerated or deceased, living with someone with alcoholism, addiction, or mental illness, and experiencing discrimination because of one’s race or ethnicity. Tragically, the pandemic is exacerbating these issues. 
We know that one of the less spoken about impacts of the pandemic is on mental health. When you think about the isolation…you think about young people not having their school community, their teachers, their friends. When you think about unemployment, you think about people who were working and middle class who have fallen into poverty with a broken support system. That’s devastating [for families]. I worry the mental health impacts of this pandemic will have an even further reach than the physical health impacts, and we’re a city that already experiences an enormous amount of trauma on a good day.

The Healing City Act, which you’ve been the driving force behind, aims to address the trauma experienced by young people with trauma-informed policies, trainings for staff across city agencies—from the library system to the housing department—and a citywide task force. Has this rollout been on hold amid COVID-19?
There’s been a lot of behind-the-scenes work going on. We’re getting ready to start up the task force. The first round of nominees was sent to the City Council for confirmation. My [City Council] colleagues and I will be among the first to get trained in healing-centered, trauma-informed care. And Mayor Scott [just] announced trainings for his cabinet members.

With this groundbreaking legislation, you also make a point of referencing Baltimore’s historic and systemic racism. Why?
In some cases, [the City Council] has been a vehicle that has caused trauma, particularly in Black and Brown communities. Think about the 1910 ordinance that was among the first in the nation to codify racial housing segregation. You think about redlining, where banks and the Federal Housing Authority colluded, with support from the city. Or you think about the way in which the War on Drugs was prosecuted to target people, mostly Black, with substance-use disorders.

What’s important in this legislation is not only that we all get trained, but there is a mechanism to review policies and procedures of every city agency to reduce harm, to reduce traumatization, because I think, unfortunately, city government has something of a dark history in Baltimore for not always supporting the health and well-being of our residents.

When Ekiben co-owner Steve Chu got a call from a friend asking to donate a few of his signature steamed buns to local hospital workers in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, he was more than happy to help. 

“We can’t do anything to help them except try to keep their spirits up,” Chu says. 

At the time, hospitals were overflowing with patients and the shutdown had hit local businesses especially hard. In fact, Chu says at one point, Ekiben almost went out of business.

Then, an opportunity presented itself inspired by his friend’s request: “We wanted to do something to help us to help them,” Chu says. 

This was the inspiration behind Ekiben’s “Buy a Hero a Bun” program, in which customers can spend anywhere from $10-100 to send sandwiches to feed healthcare workers at 17 hospitals across the city.

Ekiben continued to donate sandwiches as the weeks went on, but the team wanted to do more. With assistance from The Power of 10 Initiative, a nonprofit that supports neighborhood restaurants, as well as Baltimore City Councilman Zeke Cohen, they set up shop in community centers all over the city, distributing around 2,000 steamed buns per session.

“It was great to have the means to just go outside and work again,” says Chu, whose team often worked farmers markets and community festivals pre-COVID. “Everyone really missed it.”  

When natural disasters strike, communities often turn to restaurants and local businesses for help. A pandemic, says Cohen, is no different.

“They understand their role as business owners, but also as community members,” says Cohen, who represents Baltimore City’s first district that includes Ekiben’s flagship store on Eastern Avenue in Fells Point, “and that if people are suffering, they have an obligation.” 

In March, as local restaurants were forced to grapple with the immense challenges of shuttering their dining rooms, laying off staff, and pivoting to carryout and delivery service, many managed to still find ways to give back to those in need.

Days after stay-home orders came down, dedicated workers from Mera Kitchen Collective, Alma Cocina Latina, Wilde Thyme Baltimore, True Chesapeake Oyster Co., and many others got to work preparing meals for local donation drives.

“We knew that, because of the inequities in the city, there were going to be massive gaps,” Mera Kitchen Collective co-founder Emily Lerman told us in June about her team’s ongoing efforts to distribute meals to underserved communities. “We thought, ‘If we can do this, it’s a win on every level.’”

Others, like Ekiben, Cocina Luchadoras, and Motzi Bread, implemented pay-it-forward models that allow customers to add extra items to their orders to be donated later.

Sotto Sopra, an Italian fixture in Mt. Vernon, recently introduced its own buy-one, give-one special running through the month of August. Customers can purchase a meal (everything from fettuccine bolognese to pork ossobuco) and have the same dish delivered to a friend, neighbor, frontline worker, or someone experiencing homelessness free of charge.

“I thought it was a great way to put a positive spin on this pandemic,” says owner Riccardo Bosio.  

So far, the restaurant has delivered 30 free meals as a part of the special. Bosio even recalls one woman who called from New York to purchase two meals, one of which was for her daughter.   

Many bars and restaurants have also donated food, latex gloves, and masks to hospitals, according to Darin Mislan, owner of The Admiral’s Cup Restaurant & Bar in Fells Point.

“Our industry responds well to these types of crises,” says Mislan, who is also president of Fell’s Point Main Street. “We’re always the go-to when there’s a hurricane or something. So the first week we were closed we were like ‘Okay anything that is perishable we’re going to try to donate.’”

Cohen points out that Admiral’s Cup has demonstrated leadership throughout the pandemic, often rallying for safer practices in all local restaurants. On August 7, Mayor C. Bernard “Jack” Young announced that restaurants could reopen at 25 percent capacity. But Mislan and his staff felt uneasy about operating inside with coronavirus cases still on the rise. So, he opted to continue outside-dining only until further notice and 40 other establishments in the area followed suit. Mislan says it was important to him that the decision was unanimous.  

“When I weigh those things, I don’t think the risk is worth it for any reward at this point,” he says.

As Cohen sums up, the restaurant industry continues to set an example of unity and hospitality even under the most challenging circumstances. 

“For me, the pandemic has heightened the profound disparities within our city and our community,” he says, “but it has also demonstrated a level of leadership and compassion among our small businesses and community restaurants.” 

With handmade signs, carnations, and candy in tow, a group of Southeast Baltimore small business owners are taking to the medians of President Street this week to wave and give out goodies to morning commuters coming into the city.

Among them Tuesday morning was a smiling Nick Johnson, owner of furniture store Su Casa in Fells Point, who stood alongside Sergio Vitale of Aldo’s, Patrick Russell of Kooper’s Tavern, Beth Hawks of Zelda Zen, Max’s Taphouse owners Ron and Gail Furman—who gave away wooden tokens redeemable for free beer at their bar—and others proudly holding signs with slogans such as “You are Our Valentine” and “Small Businesses Welcome You.”

“For me the fun part is I’ve met a bunch of my customers in traffic,” Johnson says. “It’s nice to put a smile on their faces. That was the whole intent. Some people are like, ‘Isn’t there a larger message? Is this a political thing?’ And the answer is no, this is about smiles and waves, and that’s it.”

The mission behind the gathering at one of the city’s most prominent entryways at the bottom of I-83—a location often frequented by squeegee kids, people who are experiencing homelessness, and organizations collecting donations—is part of a larger small business initiative called “Love Local Bmore” spearheaded by councilmembers Zeke Cohen and Bill Henry.

“We’ve heard from far too many people in surrounding counties that they don’t come to Baltimore anymore,” says Vitale of Aldo’s, mentioning negative perceptions of the city based on media coverage of the crime rate. “All of those stories deserve a lot of attention, but at the same time a lot of us here in the city are doing great things, and we have employees who depend on people visiting. So we wanted to counter that narrative with love, positivity, and a little generosity.”

Gathering on President Street is seen by many as the first action plan in moving the Love Local Bmore project forward. Johnson, a Fells Point Main Street board member, says that the idea was a result of him and his neighbors collectively “feeling the impact of fewer people downtown.”

“One of the things we noticed is how conditioned we’ve become to trying to ignore people in the street,” Vitale adds. “It seems like everyone has blinders on, but once we broke through that and people realized we weren’t asking for anything, just giving things away, most of them were super positive. It was sort of a pep rally for small businesses in a lot of ways.”

The owners plan to continue their presence during the morning commute throughout the rest of the week leading up to Valentine’s Day. Vitale even hints that there could be additional free sweets, including cookies made by bakers in Little Italy.

Johnson says that the hope is for this to inspire other business owners in different areas of the city to start similar projects, or even join in on President Street. (Anna Leventis, owner of SoBo Cafe in Federal Hill, was among those waving on Tuesday morning.)

As Vitale puts it: “When you lead with love, all other things fall into place.”

“I had such a blast, all of us did,” he adds. “Gail Furman told me, ‘You’re going to be reinvigorated by this. You’re going to go back to your business and feel super pumped and charged to be in Baltimore.’ She was 100 percent right.”

After a 25-year-old man entered their school and shot a special-education assistant last February, Frederick Douglass High School students Jiaonna Santos, Damani Thomas, and Bryonna Harris testified in front of the City Council to speak about the struggles and daily stress of living in fear. Rising seniors Santos, Thomas, and Harris all live in the challenging, disinvested communities surrounding the West Baltimore high school.

“If we can’t be safe in this city, and we can’t be safe while we’re in school, where are we supposed to be safe?” Harris repeated in the City Hall office of Councilman Zeke Cohen earlier this week.

More than 56 percent of Baltimore’s children have experienced one or more major traumatic life events, according to data from the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative. Traumatic events include, but are not limited to, economic hardship, witnessing or experiencing violence, having a parent incarcerated, the death of a parent, living with someone with alcoholism, addiction, or mental illness, and experiencing discrimination because of one’s race or ethnicity.

Santos, Thomas, and Harris, who plan to attend college after graduation, said they and their classmates are all too familiar with all of the above: “This city needs to change,” Harris said. “It’s tiring to wake up every day and constantly have to struggle with the same ordeals when there is no hope. It’s exhausting when there is no light at the end of tunnel. Last year was a long year. I lost my Dad.”

Cohen introduced a bill Monday evening that would require city agencies and their frontline workers who interact with families and youth to deliver services in a manner consistent with trauma-informed best practices.

Specifically, if passed, the Baltimore City Trauma-Responsive Care Act would require citywide departments—including Recreation and Parks, Public Works, Transportation, the Fire Department, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Housing and Community Development, and the Mayor’s offices on human services, criminal justice, homelessness—to designate certain staff to undergo formal training in trauma-informed care and ensure those practices are implemented.

City agencies would also be required to submit periodic progress reports to a trauma-informed task force—established by the legislation—which would include clinicians, council members, parents, and youth members.

That task force would submit annual reports to the Office of the Mayor and City Council. The proposed legislation would also reconstitute the current Office of Children, Youth, and Families, renaming it the Office of Children and Family Success. It’s primary duty would be “to lead a citywide initiative to prioritize the trauma-responsive and trauma-informed delivery of services.”

The legislation has since been assigned to the City Council’s Health Committee, which is chaired by Councilman Kristerfer Burnett. Burnett has expressed support for the measure, along with the rest of the City Council, which has signed on as co-sponsors. He also said he’s still waiting from to receive a fiscal assessment of the legislation, but expects the financial burden to be between $100,000-$200,000, largely for training costs.

Community leaders across the city, including East Baltimore pastor Donte’ Hickman and local author and student advocate D. Watkins, regularly highlight how the trauma that so many youth face in the city goes unrecognized and untreated.

Stacey Jefferson, an associate director of policy and community engagement at Behavior Health System Baltimore, described city children as “facing a mental health crisis” in a recent Baltimore Sun op-ed—noting far too few have access to mental health care services.

A former Baltimore public school teacher and founder of a youth leadership development program, Cohen links the trauma experienced to the legacy of segregation and redlining, as well as drug war and mass incarceration policies that have taken their toll on so many city neighborhoods.

He added that the legislation was, in part, informed by his experience as an educator. His effort is modeled after similar initiatives in Philadelphia and Cleveland, whose trauma-informed program is centered on its city recreation centers.

“Getting kicked out of a rec center, for example, can be a source of re-traumatization [for kids],” Cohen said. “Unfortunately, a lot of our staff at our rec centers have experienced trauma as well, and they end up yelling at kids, which exacerbates everything for everyone.”

A bill requiring that all single-use bathrooms be made gender-neutral unanimously passed a City Council hearing Friday, putting the legislation on a path to be signed next month during Baltimore’s Pride Weekend.

Supported by transgender activists and the mayor’s LGBTQ Commission, the bill—if approved by the full council and signed into law by Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young as expected—would place Baltimore alongside cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., which have passed similar laws in recent years.

Earlier this year, the City Council passed a resolution calling on the Baltimore City Public Schools board to create a policy allowing transgender students to access bathrooms that align with their gender, use preferred pronouns, and update school records to reflect their gender. The school board passed those polices in April.

First District City Councilman Zeke Cohen, who is co-sponsoring the new legislation, said the gender-neutral, single-stall bathroom bill is an effort to extend the same bathroom accessibility now a part of the school system to all of Baltimore. “This is about creating a more welcoming, inclusive city in our public accommodations, particularly for our transgender community and our gender non-binary community,” Cohen said.

All five of the City Council’s Youth and Education Committee—John Bullock, Kristefer Burnett, Mary Pat Clarke, Ryan Dorsey, and Cohen—where the legislation is being brought forth, voted to pass the measure out of committee. New City Council President Brandon Scott was also on hand and voiced support for the measure.

The Fairness for All Marylanders Act, a state law that went into effect in 2014, prohibits gender-based discrimination in public accommodations, as well as employment, housing, and credit.

This new City Council proposal goes a step further and would mandate clear, gender-inclusive signage for all publicly accessible, single-occupancy restrooms in Baltimore. Several local business leaders in attendance announced support for the legislation. A representative from a local retailer’s association asked for an amendment that would allow businesses more time to put signs in place before facing any fines.

Ava Pipitone, with the Baltimore Transgender Alliance, testified in favor of the legislation, comparing the effort to make bathrooms and public spaces more welcoming and inclusive to historical civil rights efforts. “We’ve been here before with racially segregated bathrooms,” Pipitone told the Council’s Youth and Education Committee, where the legislation is being brought forth.

Jamie Grace Alexander, also with the Baltimore Transgender Alliance, noted the legislation would help not just transgender and non-binary individuals, but nursing mothers and wheelchair users as well.

Sharon Brackett, an entrepreneur and activist who became the first trans woman elected to public office in Maryland when she was voted to the Baltimore City Democratic State Central Committee in 2018, noted in testimony that the black transgender community today, in particular, faces unwanted scrutiny in accessing public restrooms.

“Public spaces, including bathrooms, have always been battlegrounds for civil rights,” Jabari Lyles, the Mayor’s Office LGBTQ liaison, told Baltimore magazine. “I’m hesitant to draw direct parallels to the segregated bathrooms of the past. But there are similarities in that bathrooms, water fountains, schools, restaurants, and hotels have been battlegrounds in the past.”

The upheaval at City Hall following former Mayor Catherine Pugh’s resignation last week continued Monday night, with now former 2nd District Councilman Brandon Scott earning a promotion from his colleagues to City Council president.

As the next in succession, Bernard C. “Jack” Young, the former council president, officially became Baltimore’s 51st mayor following Pugh’s departure. Pugh, who has not made a public appearance in weeks after taking sick leave April 1, came under fire after receiving more than $800,000 in questionable deals from her Healthy Holly children’s book series.

In the first few days following Young’s ascension to mayor, Scott was essentially locked in a 7-7 stalemate among his City Council colleagues with 6th District member Sharon Green Middleton to succeed Young. Scott, however, won over Ed Reisinger, 69, who represents sections of South and Southwest Baltimore, and Mary Pat Clarke, 77, who represents North and Northeast Baltimore, after reaching out several times to the veteran legislators over the weekend, according to reporting by The Baltimore Sun.

Both Reisinger and Clarke have said they will not be running for reelection in 2020.

Fellow Councilman Bill Henry is planning to officially announce his bid for City Comptroller in June. Altogether, it means more council seats will be up for grabs again after a youthful, majority turnover of the council in 2016.

At the same time, Scott, 35, has all but declared he will run for mayor in 2020.

One Democratic leader, who wished to remain anonymous, told Baltimore magazine the Scott has already signed on with top Maryland fundraising consultant Colleen Martin-Lauer, whose previous clients include former mayors Martin O’Malley and Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. “At this point, I don’t know what he’s waiting for,” the Democratic official said.

Most likely, it was the opportunity to assume the mantle of City Council president, add the title and experience to an already solid resume—and bask in the support of fellow Democratic leaders in the City.

Scott, who grew up in Park Heights, graduated from Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School, where he ran track. He studied political science and graduated from St. Mary’s College in Southern Maryland and then got his start in politics as a liaison in the office of then-City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

First elected at 27, one the youngest ever elected to citywide office, Scott serves as chair of the City Council’s high-profile Public Safety Committee and co-founded the anti-violence group 300 Men March. He also is a member of the Budget and Appropriations and Judiciary and Legislative Investigations committees.

Scott would be significantly younger than the average U.S. mayor—56, according to a recent study—should he throw his hat into the ring as expected. But the ambitious Scott would be the same age as Martin O’Malley, another ambitious former councilman, when O’Malley took office and actually possess a few more years of elected office experience.

“Brandon is hard-working, there’s no doubt about that, he’s smart, and capable,” said former 1st District City Councilman James Kraft, who was not making an endorsement, but expressed confidence in his former colleague’s ability to handle the city’s top job. “He’d also surround himself with smart, good people.”

Pugh’s reelection was by no means a done deal before the recent book scandal and FBI and IRS raids. It’s broken wide open now.

Former Deputy Attorney General of Maryland “Thiru” Vignarajah has announced he’s running. Most observers expect former Mayor Sheila Dixon to run again. State Sen. Bill Ferguson and former Baltimore Police Department spokesman T.J. Smith are said to be considering bids. State Sen. Jill Carter, who proposed the legislation that helped launch the Healthy Holly and University of Maryland Medical System investigation, and state Sen. Mary Washington are two more credible potential candidates.

Then there are folks like business leader David Warnock, former Maryland AG Criminal Division head Elizabeth Warnock, and state Del. Nick Mosby, who all ran in 2016 and could conceivably take another crack.

A potential bid by former NAACP chief Ben Jealous, who won the Democratic nomination for governor and recently bought a house in Baltimore, is also garnering a lot of interest in local Democratic circles.

There is always the chance that Young, who has said he’s not interested in running for mayor, could decide he likes the job of mayor and try to win election to the office.

And that’s just the short list.

The Baltimore City Council delivered a short, but strongly worded letter to Mayor Catherine Pugh early Monday morning, urging her resignation.

In a response just before noon Monday, Pugh vowed to return to office. In an emailed statement from spokesman James Bentley II, her office said the Mayor “fully intends to resume the duties of her office and continuing her work on behalf of the people and the City of Baltimore” once she has fully regained her health following a bout of pneumonia.

Signed by the entire membership of the City Council and delivered to the Office of the Mayor, as well as City Council President and Ex-Officio Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young, City Solicitor Andre M. Davis, and Bruce Williams, the mayor’s chief of staff, the two-sentence letter urges the mayor “to tender your resignation, effective immediately.”

The call for Pugh’s immediate resignation comes as the first-term mayor remains embroiled in a children’s book scandal that is now under investigation by the state prosecutor. In a story first broken by The Baltimore Sun, Pugh received $500,000 from the University of Maryland Medical Center while she sat on UMMS board for 100,000 copies of her self-published Healthy Holly book series. In addition, The Sun has reported, Pugh received another $300,000 allegedly for copies of her book by companies and organizations with business before the City.

Most of the books, the majority of which were said to have been donated to the Baltimore City Public School System, have yet to be located. Currently, Pugh remains on an official leave absence while recovering from pneumonia. City Council President Young has been assuming the official duties of the mayor in her stead.

“It is beyond thinkable that she should ever return to a role in government,” said 3rd District Councilman Ryan Dorsey in a Facebook post while sharing the council’s letter to the Mayor. “If she has any ability whatsoever to put the welfare of the more than 600,000 residents of Baltimore City ahead of her own self-interest, she will not delay in offering her full resignation.”

‪First District City Councilman Zeke Cohen, who along with Dorsey was among the first elected officials to call for Pugh’s resignation last week, said in a post that in addition to “this unprecedented step,” the City Council “is discussing several structural reforms to our city’s code and charter.”

That said, Cohen told Baltimore magazine, with the General Assembly coming to a close Monday there is no time to make a change to the city code and charter this session that would enable the City Council to remove the mayor from office.

As the City Council and Baltimore residents learned during the criminal investigation of former Mayor Sheila Dixon, removing even a mayor convicted of a crime might not be legally possible. In 2010, Dixon resigned as part of a corruption plea deal after she pled guilty to perjury and embezzlement. As part of that deal, Dixon got to keep her $83,000 pension.

Prior to serving as mayor, Pugh served two terms on the City Council and 10 years in the state senate. The book saga has begun receiving national attention in recent days, including a skewering take from HBO’s John Oliver. Washington Post book critic Carlos Lozada recently “reviewed” Pugh’s Healthy Holly: Exercising Is Fun!

On Friday, the fundraising consulting arm of Pugh’s 2020 reelection organization, TruBlu Politics, cut ties with the mayor over the ongoing book scandal. “In light of recent events, we decided to end the relationship with Mayor Pugh,” David Goodman, a TruBlu partner told Baltimore. TruBlu, which has worked with a roster of politicians in Maryland and beyond, signed on to Pugh’s election campaign in October 2017.

Also on Friday, Jim Smith, a top Pugh advisor and former Baltimore County executive and former judge, who was cited for an illegal loan to Pugh’s 2016 campaign, resigned from his cabinet post as chief of strategic alliances.

Another source close to the Pugh campaign and familiar with TruBlu Politics told Baltimore that the mayor has decided to suspend her 2020 re-election bid even as she plans to fill out her current term. No formal announcement has yet been made, however, regarding her reelection effort.

According to a January filing with the Maryland State Board of Elections, Pugh’s re-election committee has $968,790 in cash reserves. With more recent fundraising events that have yet to be reported, the number could be above $1 million at the moment. In an off-election year, she will not be required to file another financial report until next year.

Campaign chairman Steve Sibel, a partner with Caves Valley Partners, a Baltimore real estate development company, would not comment when reached Friday and asked if the Pugh had decided to suspend her 2020 campaign.

If Pugh does decide not to run for re-election, she will have several options regarding the money in her campaign coffers. She can return funds to donors. She can also donate the funds to charity, as the widow and sons of former Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz did after he died unexpectedly during his bid for governor.

Pugh may also reimburse herself for any personal loans she gave her campaign. She may also pass funds to other politicians, although who would accept that kind of financial gift from the mayor while she remains under investigation isn’t clear.

“You saw how fast Johnny O [Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski] returned the campaign contribution he’d received once the news broke,” Goucher College political science professor Mileah Kromer notes. “My guess is very few politicians will touch it. It’s tainted money.”

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh announced Monday that she will be taking a leave of absence, citing her health. A number of city and state politicians have expressed growing concern and distrust in her holding the office at all.

According to a press release yesterday afternoon from the mayor’s office, she has been “battling pneumonia for the past few weeks.” Physicians have advised her to take time to recover and focus on her health. According to The Sun, Pugh will continue to be paid her $185,000 salary.

“At this time, with the Mayor’s health deteriorating, she feels as though she is unable to fulfill her obligations as Mayor of Baltimore City,” reads part of the release. “To that end, Mayor Pugh will be taking an indefinite leave of absence to recuperate from this serious illness.”

The Baltimore City Charter states that if the mayor is unable to fulfill her obligations as mayor of Baltimore City, the President of City Council is to step in as ex officio mayor. As such, City Council President Jack Young will take over during the interim of Pugh’s absence. Young has said he has no plans on running for mayor in 2020 and intends to run for City Council President again.

Pugh is currently under fire after revelations of a $500,000 children’s book deal with the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS). Pugh served on the UMMS board while receiving payments for book orders, tallying a $20,000 net profit from each deal. She has since resigned from the board.

Pugh also recently gave back $100,000 from a 2018 book deal with UMMS. The order for 20,000 copies from the mayor’s Healthy Holly children’s series had not yet been filled due to the illustrator suffering from illness.

The Sun reported that Kaiser Permanente also paid Pugh more than $100,000 to purchase copies of her books from 2015 to 2018. Pugh oversees and controls the city’s spending board, and awarded the health insurer a $48-million contract to provide health insurance to city employees from 2018 through 2020, with options to renew.

The announcement from the mayor’s office came hours after Gov. Larry Hogan asked the office of the state prosecutor to begin a criminal investigation into the allegations against Pugh.

There have also been calls for Mayor Pugh to resign among growing scandal. State Comptroller Peter Franchot, City Councilman Zeke Cohen, and City Councilman Ryan Dorsey have all expressed these sentiments. Congressman Elijah Cummings, who supported Pugh in her election campaign, said he supports the investigation into her book deal with UMMS. As does Baltimore City’s senate delegation in the General Assembly.

“Baltimore City is more than just one person, or one mayor,” the city senate delegation wrote in a statement. “We, as Baltimoreans, first and foremost, must hold our City’s officials to the highest standard. Our state cannot sustain any further erosion of trust in our institutions.”

Pugh was elected mayor in 2016—winning the Democratic primary by securing 37 percent of the vote—and would be up for reelection in a Democratic primary next year.

In solidarity with scheduled demonstrations in Washington, D.C. and more than 600 cities across the U.S., hundreds of Baltimoreans joined a “Keep Families Together” immigration rally in Patterson Park Saturday afternoon and called for the Trump Administration to reunite families that have been separated at the border.

“I reacted in absolute intrinsic horror when I saw what was happening in my country,” said Tiana Gianci, referring to recent media reports that showed children being pulled from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. “This issue is a priority for me, it’s at the top of my list,” added Gianci, who attended the rally with her husband and two young boys. “I am descended from East European Jewish and Sicilian immigrants. Humanity has been through this before. Enough is enough.”

Hosted by Baltimore Women United in coalition with CASA, Indivisible Baltimore, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the ACLU, Teachers Defending Immigrant Families, Peoples Power Assembly, Jews United for Justice, and other local groups, more than 1,800 people registered to attend the demonstration, according to Lisa Oelfke, a Baltimore Women United organizer. Baltimore Women United was formed out of the January 21, 2017 Women’s March that followed the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

“There are a lot of women everywhere, including Baltimore, that were outraged by the family separations at the border—that was a tipping point,” said Oelfke, explaining the impetus for the rallies this weekend. “More broadly, it’s about the criminalization of immigration and Trump’s anti-immigration agenda, which includes changing the rules for seeking asylum and the Muslim travel ban.

Oelfke added that many immigrant supporters from Baltimore had headed to Washington to participate in a rally at Lafayette Square, which was expected to draw 50,000 protestors.

Although Trump signed an executive order reversing the administration’s family separation policy a week ago, CNN reported that only six children—of more than 2,000 in limbo—had been reunited with their parents six days after the executive order was signed.

Luis Lavin, an 35-year-old immigrant from Guatemala “still worried” about his status after living and working in Baltimore for 12 years, said he believes the U.S. would be better served by using its resources to help improve economic conditions in Central America than jailing immigrants seeking to escape poverty. “I just came out of economic survival, the same as many other immigrants, to support my mother and sister who are alone in Guatemala.”

Elected officials on hand included U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, Rep. Jon Sarbanes, and City Councilman Zeke Cohen, whose district includes Patterson Park and Southeast Baltimore, a traditional home of earlier waves of German, Irish, Polish, Russian, Jewish, Ukrainian, Slovak, Italian and Greek immigrants to the city—and home today to much of Baltimore’s Latino community. (Baltimore’s February cover feature examined the city’s historic immigration story and the challenges facing the newest groups arriving in Baltimore.)

Cardin, in particular, and not normally given to raising his voice, blasted Trump Administration immigration policies. “Diversity is our strength,” Cardin told the big crowd, many of who tried to find protection from the 90-plus temperatures under the park’s shade trees. “Donald Trump created this crisis and he can stop it tomorrow. This is an absolutely appalling policy.”

Ruppersberger and Sarbanes appealed to those in attendance to take their grievance, or grievances, to the polls in November.

“Put your voice in the ballot box,” Sarbanes said. “Put your power in the ballot box.”

After the rally, demonstrators took to the outskirts of the park, lining Eastern Avenue with the signs and waving to passing motorists.

“It’s heartfelt,” said Liz Alex, senior director of community organizing with CASA, of the turnout. “What’s especially beautiful is there are a lot of folks here who brought their kids and a lot of people who I haven’t seen before. They’re telling me this is the first rally they’ve been to and it really matters to them.”

When Tina Giles Forrester spoke with her husband Jim Forrester on December 18, 2017, she didn’t know that it would be the last time she would hear his voice. Just outside the Baltimore Tattoo Museum, where he worked as a body piercer, two men approached him while he was on the phone, shot him, and ran off. Through the phone, that was now laying on the sidewalk, Tina heard everything—people yelling, sirens, and first responders saying that her husband was gone.

“I heard them say, ‘We got nothing,’” she said. “I know what that means.”

Instead of letting her grief consume her, Tina decided to use it as fuel. City Councilman Zeke Cohen reached out to see what he could do to help her with her plan to help the at-risk youth in Baltimore. 

“I sat down in his office and went off like a rocket,” she said. “He just sat there and listened to everything I had to say. Afterward, he told me he had someone I needed to meet.”

That someone turned out to be Victory Christine Swift whose son, Victorious Swift, was killed on March 26, 2017 just weeks before graduating from the Baltimore Design School. Mama Victory, as she’s affectionately known, developed Our Victorious City, an organization dedicated to continuing her son’s work in the community. Although something so tragic brought the two women together, they shared the same determination to prevent someone else from feeling their pain.

“Victorious loved Baltimore,” Victory said. “He loved his school, and he loved helping others. We created Our Victorious City out of that same energy and his commitment to serving others. We just want to help young people in Baltimore to have a better future.”

Joined by Cohen, the two women came up with the Swift and Forrester Scholarship Fund to honor the legacy of both Jim and Victorious with the hopes of ending violence and providing an opportunity for the next generation of children in Baltimore to thrive. 

The memorial fund will be split across three different scholarships. Through Our Victorious City, there will be a scholarship awarded to families of homicide victims. In order to memorialize Victorious’ commitment to community service, a graduating student from the Baltimore Design School will be awarded a scholarship to pursue higher education. The last scholarship is for a Baltimore City Public School student who wants to pursue a degree in music to honor Jim’s legacy and love of music. 

These scholarships are not for any typical student. Although logistics are still being worked out, the pair want to target the youth in the city who are “typically forgotten about.”

“I wanted to find a way to provide an opportunity to kids who are completely off track,” Tina said. “I don’t want to give this to kids who are already on the right path, there are already programs out there for kids like that.”

Currently, Tina and Victory are raising funds for the scholarship programs through a GoFundMe page. To date, the campaign has raised more than $3,600 towards the $10,000 goal. Tina says that every little bit helps, and they are grateful for the support they have received thus far.

“Sometimes in life, we are either born into situations or we put ourselves in these situations where we feel like there’s no turning back,” she said. “We want to eliminate that for as many people as possible. We know that if someone was there to help the troubled youth, Jim and Victorious would still be here. If you can affect one kid, it will multiply.”

1st District: Zeke Cohen
A 30-year-old educator with a master’s degree in public policy from Johns Hopkins University, Cohen founded The Intersection, a nonprofit “dedicated to shifting expectations for Baltimore’s young people,” with two other city social studies teachers in 2011. Cohen is married and lives in Canton.

3rd District: Ryan Dorsey
A 34-year-old arts and community activist, and lifelong resident of the 3rd District resident, Dorsey earned a degree in music composition from the Peabody Conservatory. A Mayfield resident, he has worked full-time as a project manager at Soundscape, a local, third-generation, family-run audio and visual business.

8th District: Kristerfer Burnett
An social justice advocate with community, labor, and affordable housing organizing experience, Burnett is a lifelong Baltimorean with master’s degree in public policy from UMBC. Burnett is married and Edmondson Village resident.

12th District: Robert Stokes Jr.
A 58-year-old with six years of experience as an assistant to former 12th District City Councilman Carl Stokes (no relation), Stokes Jr. received his boss’s endorsement and won a wide-open primary. Stokes has a long history in local politics, working as community representative under former Mayor Kurt Schmoke and assistant to former City Councilman president Lawrence Bell. He studied at Morgan State University and is an Oliver resident.

5th District: Isaac Schleifer
A 27-year-old software entrepreneur, Schleifer won an upset victory in a contentious primary to become the first Orthodox Jewish City Councilman in decades. Schleifer, who goes by “Yitzi,” is a graduate of the University of Baltimore Merrick School for Business and a married father and Cheswolde resident.

7th District: Leon Pinkett III
An assistant pastor and project manager for the City of Baltimore, Pinkett has significant political experience, serving as chief of staff for former City Councilman Keiffer Mitchell Jr., with a background in economic and neighborhood development. He is a married father of two and resident of Reservoir Hill.

9th District: John Bullock
A political science professor at Towson University, Bullock also recently served as executive director of the Downtown Baltimore Family Alliance. Previously, he worked as planner in District of Columbia’s city government. A married father of two young sons, Bullock lives in Union Square.

13th District: Shannon Sneed
A recruitment specialist for a mentoring agency, Sneed, who lost a 2011 bid for her district’s City Council seat by 43 votes in 2011, has served as a board member of two local nonprofits, Belair Edison Neighborhoods and Banner Neighborhoods. She is a graduate of Morgan State University and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, a new mother, and lives in Ellwood Park with her husband.

Returning City Council Members

President: Bernard “Jack” Young

2nd District: Brandon Scott

4th District: Bill Henry

6th District: Sharon Green Middleton

10th District: Edward Reisinger

11th District: Eric Costello