Baltimore

Will We Stand Up For Black Trans Lives Too?

March 31, 2021 Eddie Conway, The Real News. Resistance Report Baltimore, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Transgender Rights

Last summer, during what some have called the largest social justice uprising in United States history, the lives of Black trans people were ignored. While many rightly raged against the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, few know the names of Black trans people like Kim Wirtz, who have also been murdered by a racist policing and prison system. In Baltimore, trans activists from the LGBTQ organization Baltimore Safe Haven protested, demanding an end to police violence and an end to the erasure of the Black trans community. The Real News’ Eddie Conway talks to activists on the ground in Baltimore about their fight.

Baltimore Is Democratizing The Economy, One Pint At A Time

February 14, 2021 Oscar Perry Abello, Next City. Create! Baltimore, Cooperative, New Economy, Worker Ownership

On your first day working at Taharka Brothers, a majority-Black-owned ice cream maker in Baltimore, you can join the flavor committee and help create flavors like the limited holiday edition Sweet Potato Crumble. Or you can join the social justice committee and vet local organizations to support through ice cream sales, like the Baltimore Action Legal Team. If none of those are to your liking, there are other committees you can join. If you work there for at least 15 months and earn top marks on your most recent performance review, you can become a part-owner of Taharka Brothers, and have not just a say but also a final vote on major business decisions and policies like those performance reviews.

Understanding The Politics Of Urban Apartheid In The United States

January 25, 2021 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Apartheid, Baltimore, Equity, Racism

Baltimore Maryland is a majority-black but hyper-segregated city. Following the uprising in Baltimore in 2015 in response to the police murder of Freddie Gray, Dr. Lawrence Brown, a public health expert at Morgan University, a historically black university in Baltimore, found that historical context and data were missing from the conversation about what was happening. Thus, he wrote "The Black Butterfly: The Politics of Race and Space in America." In this book, Dr. Brown describes the history of and the players who created the urban apartheid and how Baltimore became a template for many cities across the country. His book, available through Johns Hopkins University, provides the data, language and solutions necessary for the struggle to dismantle systemic racism.

Teachers Union Urges Parents To Boycott School Reopening

October 20, 2020 Jaisal Noor, The Real News. Resist! Baltimore, COVID-19, School reopening, Teacher's Union

When Baltimore City Schools announced last week that 25 schools will reopen next month to increase in-person instruction for high need students, officials promised it could be done safely and with transparency. The district has received little guidance from state or federal authorities on how to reopen safely, and teachers, who will be required to return to the classroom, say they were blindsided by the announcement. They are now calling attention to problems with the recent reopening of Student Learning Centers (SLC) as an example of their concerns.

Baltimore Teachers Demand ‘Masks, Tests And Plexiglass!’

October 4, 2020 Struggle La Lucha. Resist! Baltimore, COVID-19, PPE, Public schools

On Sept. 30, the Baltimore Teachers Union (BTU) held a protest and die-in in front of the Baltimore City Public Schools headquarters in Baltimore City. Diana Desierto, BTU member and speech language pathologist, explained: “I am out here for the National Day of Resistance to make sure that our students, families and staff in Baltimore City are prepared and will be accommodated with all the things they need to return to school safely. “I’m here to support my students and their families. It’s been a struggle for them and for all of us. Of course we want to go back to school, we just want to go back safely.”

Leadership Begins At The Bottom

September 26, 2020 Ron Kipling Williams. Educate! Activism, Baltimore, Grassroots, Leadership

Let’s be clear. A title does not make you a leader. Look at Capitol Hill. Leadership begins in your home. You are the executive, manager, administrator, foot soldier, all wrapped up in one. No President of the United States is responsible for a booming economy. The people are. People make businesses, employ people, produce products and services, and in turn support communities. This ripple effectuates the nation. The President is the ambassador of the nation, and is the moral and ethical leader therein. The true change makers are the boots on the ground that makes the nation work.

Shut Up, History

September 8, 2020 Susie Day, Counterpunch. Strategize! Baltimore, Black Panthers, Prison, Systemic Racism

Awhile back, a friend and I were talking about History and rebellions, and I lamented how the 1871 Paris Commune had failed. My friend, a self-avowed psychic, said, “Yes, history records very few total victories over oppression. That’s because, on this worldly plane, most things are not supposed to work out. It’s all about the trying.” So this will be a short essay on trying. On how, in the late 1960s, two Africa-American men met at the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and tried to build “The Revolution.” And how, for the past six years, I’ve tried to write a book about them.

Defund The Police Movement Can Learn From Corrupt Gun Trace Task Force

August 20, 2020 Jaisal Noor, Waging Nonviolence. Strategize! Baltimore, Corruption, Defund the police, Police abuse

“I Got A Monster” is a page turner that’s as hard to put down as it is disturbing. What’s more, it could not be more relevant to our times. Through extensive reporting, authors Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderberg show that repressive police tactics — like throwing civilians into unmarked cars and fabricating and planting evidence — are more than recent national news topics. They have been used for years against Black communities. Immaculately researched, the authors use court documents, wiretaps, interviews, and body camera footage to recreate the unraveling of one of the greatest police scandals of our lifetime: the corrupt Gun Trace Task Force, or GTTF.

Opposition To ‘Pause’ On Johns Hopkins Private Police Force Grows

July 14, 2020 Jacob Took, Baltimore Beat. Resist! Baltimore, Education, Johns Hopkins, Police violence

Two weeks after Johns Hopkins University administrators announced what they called a two-year “pause” on a controversial plan to establish their own private police force, about 100 students, faculty and community members marched to the home of Hopkins President Ronald Daniels to tell him that this proposed pause is not enough. Wearing masks and trying to keep six feet apart, demonstrators gathered on June 29 at Tubman Grove near Wyman Park Dell, holding up signs with familiar slogans like “NO JHU PRIVATE POLICE” and new messages like “ABOLISH, NOT DELAY” and “IN 2 YEARS, COPS WILL STILL BE KILLERS.” Professor of Political Science and Africana Studies Lester Spence cited the reasons he has been opposed since Hopkins first announced plans for a private police force in March 2018.

The US Should Stop Lying About Its History

July 8, 2020 Jaisal Noor, The Real News. Resistance Report Baltimore, Christopher Columbus, Education, Statues

Well, it’s amazing how quickly we can not only respond, but call for the prosecution of people who are rightly tearing down and removing lies, because that’s what it is when we erect statues and edifices to people who have brutalized, who have murdered, who have stolen, we are lying, as a country, not just to ourselves, but to the world. And so, I think what we saw on July 4th in Baltimore City, was truth-seekers and truth-tellers, in essence, saying, “We are no longer going to condone this lie,” and this is a lie that is not only represented in statues, but it’s also represented in school curriculums. This is why we need to have a conversation about how school curriculums perpetuate white supremacy, and we continue to teach our children an inaccurate account of history, and we continue to glorify and deify people who should not be placed on a pedestal, but who should be understood as murderers, as thieves, as liars.

Activists Paint ‘Defund Police’ In Front Of Baltimore City Hall

June 17, 2020 Jaisal Noor, The Real News. Resistance Report Baltimore, Defund the police, Police Abolition, Police violence

Jaisal Noor: On June 12th, activists painted ‘defund police’ in front of Baltimore City Hall, head of a committee hearing on the Baltimore Police Departments proposed a $509 million budget. Speaker 1: The City Council is voting on a $509 million investment into police at the expense of resources that are necessary to communities. And so we want the Baltimore City Police Department to cut the police budget by $270 million and take that money and invest it in community-based solutions. Speaker 3: The process to abolition is actually a process that’s not going to happen overnight. I know that removing the police in their footprint in our city and redefining public safety is going to be a long process.

Freddie Gray, Five Years Later

April 25, 2020 Justine Barron, The Appeal. Educate! Baltimore, Freddie Gray, Legal System, Police abuse

On April 12, 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray Jr. was arrested in the Gilmor Homes housing development in West Baltimore by three officers on bike patrol. Less than an hour later, a medic was called to the Western District police station, where Gray, 25, was unconscious and not breathing. On April 19, Gray died from complications due to a cervical spine injury. Baltimore resident Kevin Moore captured some of Gray’s arrest on video that was widely shared. The video showed Gray screaming as he was restrained on his belly by a heavyset bike officer, Garrett Miller, and then loaded into a police transport van, his legs dragging. “I hear the screams every night,” Moore later said. “‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I need help, I need medical attention.’ This is the shit that play in my mind over and over again.”

Reclaiming A Neighborhood In West Baltimore

February 19, 2020 Staff, Afsc.org Create! Baltimore, Urban Farming

Community farms and gardens play a vital role in building more just economies, improving community well-being, and addressing climate change. AFSC has a long history of supporting communities impacted by oppression gain more control over their own food system. That includes working with community members in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of West Baltimore...

Black Alliance For Peace – Baltimore Demand End To Policing “Surge”

January 21, 2020 Staff, Blackallianceforpeace.com Resist! Baltimore, Militarization, Police

JANUARY 7, 2020—Baltimore City is one of 7 cities, including Detroit, Albuquerque, Cleveland, Kansas City, Memphis and Milwaukee, selected for the Trump Administration’s “Operation Relentless Pursuit” which is intended to “surge” federal, state and local resources into cities where violent [horizontal] crime rates remain high. This newest version of the so-called war on crime must be seen for what it is – the latest incantation of the State’s relentless war on Baltimore’s Black working class and poor and should be categorically rejected by Baltimore’s public officials,” according to BAP organizer Vanessa Beck.

Black Alliance For Peace – Baltimore Demands End To Policing Surge

January 12, 2020 Hood Communist. Resist! Baltimore, militarism, Operation Relentless Pursuit, Police abuse

Baltimore, MD - At the end of October, during the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Chicago, President Trump announced, “In coming weeks, Attorney General Barr will announce a new crackdown on violent crime—which I think is so important—targeting gangs and drug traffickers in high crime cities and dangerous rural areas.” Attorney General Barr announced, right before the holidays, the initiative known as Operation Relentless Pursuit at a news conference in Detroit, Michigan. Joining him were leaders of the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and U.S. Marshals Service. Baltimore City is one of 7 cities, including Detroit, Albuquerque, Cleveland, Kansas City, Memphis and Milwaukee, selected for the new crime program intended to “surge” federal, state and local resources into cities where violent [horizontal] crime rates remain high.

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