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A letter From Teachers: ‘Who Will Replace Us When We Are Gone?’

February 15, 2023 Peter Baum, The Real News Network. , , , ,
From 2020 to 2022, educators faced the unprecedented circumstances of a pandemic, stagnated wages, and the hardships of virtual learning. Rising to meet these challenges put teachers on a strong footing in our ongoing fight for pay that is commensurate with our work. We have done what was asked of us and more, we have accomplished what seemed impossible and continue to work hard to make up for the learning that was lost during the pandemic—and, surely, that is worth the extra money. However, the negotiations between the teachers, Baltimore County, and the Board of Education have been plagued by bad faith, botched rollouts of measures secured in previous bargaining sessions, and confusion to the point that many of our staff simply do not know what they are supposed to make, let alone how valuable they are.

High Schoolers Have Spent A Decade Fighting Baltimore’s Toxic Legacy

January 31, 2023 Andrew Tarantola, Yahoo News. , , , , ,
There was a time in the last century when we, quite foolishly, believed incineration to be a superior means of waste disposal than landfills. And, for decades, many of America's most disadvantaged have been paying for those decisions with with their lifespans. South Baltimore's Curtis Bay neighborhood, for example, is home to two medical waste incinerators and an open-air coal mine. It's ranked in the 95th percentile for hazardous waste and boasts among the highest rates of asthma and lung disease in the entire country. The city's largest trash incinerator is the Wheelabrator–BRESCO, which burns through 2,250 tons of garbage a day. It has been in operation since the 1970s, belching out everything from mercury and lead to hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, and chromium into the six surrounding working-class neighborhoods and the people who live there.

Keith Davis, Jr. And Black Political Corruption

January 21, 2023 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. , , , , ,
Baltimore, Maryland - Keith Davis, Jr. is free after an ordeal which began when he was shot by Baltimore, Maryland police on June 7, 2015. The police claimed to be looking for a robbery suspect and chased Davis into a garage where they fired 44 shots, three of which struck him. The robbery victim testified that Davis was not the perpetrator who attacked him, but the police charged Davis with another crime, a murder which took place in a different part of the city. They did this despite evidence showing he was also innocent of that charge as well. Five trials resulted in either hung juries or judges overturning verdicts. Davis was scheduled to be tried yet again but newly elected State Attorney Ivan Bates dropped all charges against him on January 13, 2023. No one knows how many Black men are like Davis, charged and most often convicted wrongfully due to police and prosecutorial misconduct.

The Grassroots Fight For Housing Justice In Baltimore

December 30, 2022 Jaisal Noor, The Real News Network. , , ,
Baltimore, Maryland - Sonia Eaddy never lost faith that she would be able to save her home at 319 North Carrollton Ave. in the Poppleton neighborhood of West Baltimore. Like they have done to many predominantly-Black neighborhoods, developers have targeted Poppleton for years. Over the past decade, the city used eminent domain to evict residents and raze their houses, resulting in the displacement of longtime residents. But last year, Eaddy, who is a third-generation resident of Poppleton, was able to mobilize a citywide coalition that staged rallies, packed public hearings, and collected over 5,000 signatures to save homes like hers from destruction. Even after most of Eaddy’s neighbors were forced out of their homes, after surrounding blocks were demolished, and after she exhausted legal appeals, she never stopped fighting.

How Baltimore’s Inclusionary Housing Bill Got Hollowed Out

December 29, 2022 Stephen Janis, Taya Graham and Jayne Miller, The Real News Network. , , ,
Today will be the first installment of our series called “Tax Broke”. It’s a five-year exploration of our hometown Baltimore’s policy of doling out tax breaks to developers to stimulate growth. And the centerpiece of the work is a documentary by the same name, which we have screened and we will publish next year. The essence of our findings is that the city of Baltimore has used a variety of tax breaks intended to stimulate growth, but has done far less to track their effectiveness or make the process transparent to account for them. We also found that this idea has primarily benefited wealthy neighborhoods while leaving poorer communities neglected. It has, in a sense, heightened the inequality of an already unequal city. But our 60-minute film only scratches the surface of this topic, but one important underlying question which our film raises is ultimately, how to build affordable housing as efficiently and fairly as possible.

How Private Developers Profited From Tax Subsidies In Baltimore Intended To Revitalize Poor Neighborhoods

December 6, 2022 Mansa Musa, The Real News Network. , , ,
For 50 years, Baltimore city officials have trumpeted the use of tax subsidies for private developers as a way to catalyze economic development. As more and more public funds have gone into the pockets of the rich, the city’s prospects have only worsened. Hundreds of thousands of residents have left or been pushed out of the city, and numerous businesses have followed suit. In their new documentary, ‘Tax Broke,’ TRNN reporters Taya Graham and Stephen Janis team up with veteran Baltimore reporter Jayne Miller to tell the story of how capital has fed parasitically on taxpayer money for half a century. Stephen and Jayne join Rattling the Bars to share what their reporting in ‘Tax Broke’ uncovered.

Anti-Police Activists In Baltimore Protest New University Police Force

October 29, 2022 Kian Seara Rey, Unicorn Riot. , , , , , , ,
Baltimore, Maryland – Students at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and community members in Baltimore protested against the creation of a private university police force by disrupting two town hall meetings on September 22 and September 29, the first of which led to some antagonism with JHU’s VP of public safety, Branville Bard. The creation of a university police force – the Johns Hopkins Police Department (JHPD) – was postponed for two years in response to the anti-police brutality protests of 2020. Now the university is fast-tracking the process with minimal input from students or the community, despite active opposition going back to 2019 when several anti-JHPD activists were arrested for occupying a university building for around a month.

Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library Workers Move To Unionize

September 24, 2022 Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News. , , ,
Employees of Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library system have announced their intention to unionize, citing better pay, benefits for all, and greater employee input into working conditions as their chief motivations. Seeking voluntary recognition from Pratt leadership, Pratt Workers United hopes to join AFSCME Council 67, where workers from Walters Art Museum and Baltimore Museum of Art are also seeking representation. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez interviews Pratt Workers United organizers Marti Dirscheri and Antoinette Wilson on the unionization campaign.

As Heat Islands Worsen In Baltimore, Local Composting Can Relieve It

September 16, 2022 Alondra Sierra and Sophia Hosain, Institute for Local Self Reliance. , , , ,
The urban heat island effect emerges when the temperature in a metropolitan area is significantly hotter than in surrounding areas. Heat islands are largely a result of urban development, where materials like concrete and asphalt replace natural vegetation. In a city’s concrete jungle, materials found in buildings, roads, and sidewalks absorb the sun’s heat and emit it back into the air, raising the surrounding surface and ambient temperatures. Waste heat generated from vehicles, industrial facilities, and other human sources also add to the higher temperatures, leading to greater emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gasses. Urban heat islands pose a serious public health threat to those living in these zones―often people of color, low-income communities, and vulnerable age groups.

Workers At MOM’s Organic Market In Baltimore Vote To Unionize

August 27, 2022 Khiree Stewart, WBAL. , , ,
Dozens of workers at MOM's Organic Market in Hampden voted Friday night to unionize. The vote is the latest in a string of pro-labor pushes from employees in the greater Baltimore area. Workers at MOM's Organic Market voted 58-5 to join Teamsters Local 570. "It was truly an honor to do this with my coworkers. I'm so glad that we get to secure a dignified workplace for right and for future MOM's workers," said MOM's employee Kelsey Oppenheimer.

Why Baltimore Kept Cutting Deals With A Developer Who Didn’t Deliver

August 21, 2022 J. Brian Charles, The Real News Network. , , , ,
Sweat trickled down Dan Bythewood’s forehead under the hot July sun. He promised the West Baltimore crowd he would keep his comments short so the 100 or so people who watched—activists, press, residents, and political leaders—could quickly retreat from the heatwave gripping the city. The developer, who is Black, stood behind a podium placed in front of the technicolor homes on Sarah Ann Street, a narrow stretch of concrete not wide enough for two cars to travel in opposite directions. Bythewood, president of the New York development firm La Cité (“the city” in French), trained his sight on the historic Sarah Ann Street homes almost two decades ago, with plans to redevelop the houses and the surrounding Poppleton neighborhood.

Nancy Pelosi, Taiwan And Baltimore

August 7, 2022 Stephen Millies, Struggle La Lucha. , , ,
Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S House of Representatives, landed in Taiwan Province on August 2. Her trip is a dangerous provocation against the People’s Republic of China. Pelosi arrived on the 58th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson claimed Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin had attacked a U.S. Navy destroyer. The Pentagon Papers later admitted this was a lie, a complete fabrication. That it was a lie didn’t stop LBJ, who used the lie to start bombing Vietnam. Even the United States government concedes that there’s only one China. Because it’s an island, Taiwan is the only part of China that wasn’t liberated in 1949 by the People’s Liberation Army during the Chinese civil war.

Cops Thought They Could Arrest Them For Protesting In Public

August 2, 2022 Taya Graham and Stephen Janis, The Real News Network. , , ,
The growing and eclectic brand of activism known as cop watching continues to invent creative ways to confront overpolicing across the country. In this episode, Police Accountability Report hosts Taya Graham and Stephen Janis examine the arrest of two Youtube activists and how they responded in light of recent pushback from police departments across the country. The story illustrates how the grassroots movement of holding cops accountable continues to evolve in ways both unexpected and productive. A series of arrests that you are seeing here, which show just how hard it is to fight a system that has overwhelming power and is often able to bend the law. But we are also going to show you this: a fake protest staged by cop watchers to prove my former point about how the system is biased towards police and against the preservation of our Constitutional rights.

Leaked Records Of Baltimore Cop Exemplify Limits Of Police Reform

June 10, 2022 Brandon Soderberg, The Real News Network. , , ,
Back in April 2016, a Baltimore news report about “police recruiting perils after Freddie Gray”  focused on a new police hire with an ideal origin story. Luke Shelley, a National Guardsman deployed here during the Baltimore Uprising in April 2015, had recently joined the Baltimore Police Department (BPD). As a guardsman, he had been stationed at Mondawmin Mall, ground zero for the rioting that took place on April 27, 2015, “an experience that convinced [Shelley] he wanted to serve the city,” local ABC affiliate WMAR reported. “I want to be where the challenge is and where the need is for good police,” Shelley told WMAR in 2016. “To have that impact on countless lives—a hundred or a thousand or whoever you meet on a daily basis—I think is a pretty noble and high responsibility.”

The Baltimore Sun Publicly Acknowledges Its Racist Past

February 23, 2022 Keenan Higgins, NewsOne. , , ,
Being a respected news outlet comes with much responsibility, especially one that heavily covers race relations — take it from us! One of the longest-running publications that also happens to serve a predominately Black audience is the Baltimore Sun, and it recently drew public attention to a past history of racism that’s gone ignored for the newspaper’s entire 185 years in print. That is, until now. Lifting the paywall that usually requires readers to subscribe to read online articles, the Baltimore Sun editorial board released a lengthy apology in article form last week to call out its own legacy rooted in its founder, Arunah S. Abell. Here’s an excerpt from the opening paragraph of the Baltimore Sun‘s explanation below.
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