“I think I have some sense of what neighborhoods in Baltimore are like and what they need.” -M.J. “Jay” Brodie, President, Baltimore Development Corporation
“I think I have some sense of what neighborhoods in Baltimore are like and what they need.” That was, in part, M.J. Brodie’s response to my critique of his agency’s impact on Baltimore’s Black Community. He knows what our neighborhoods are like and he knows what we need. Really?
On the eve of the two month anniversary of Occupy Baltimore, participants and allies of the emerging movement gathered at the 2640 Space to reflect upon the previous two months of an intensive experiment in mass participatory democracy; it's successes, pitfalls, challenges and potential new directions.
The president of the Baltimore AFL-CIO, Ernie Grecco, along with twleve other union leaders wrote a letter to Mayor Rawlings-Blake urging the city to allow for the Occupy Baltimore encampment to continue. This comes just one day after the city declared the encampment illegal, threatening to evict the near one month protest.
Occupy encampments continue across the country, including in Baltimore, where over the weekend Pan-African theorist Max Rameau gave a teach-in and addressed the General Assembly. Rameau is an organizer with the Take Back the Land movement, which uses direct action to push for community control over land.
Indyreader caught up with community activist, Reverend Heber Brown, at the end of the Stop the Youth Jail march this last Tuesday. He spoke on some of Baltimore's fundamental issues that the majority of the city's population faces, as well as positives and potential challenges that the growing Occupation Movement may have within the city.
Karen Carr, well-known in Baltimore for her highly successful home-birthing practices, has recently gained new prominence in the media's eye. In June, the unlicensed midwife was put on trial for involuntary manslaughter and child abuse, after the death of a client's child, in September 2010.
What does a just and sustainable economy look like? And more importantly, how do we get there from here? We can’t seriously entertain fantasies of a magical overnight transformation to some kind of socialist utopia: any process transforming our alienating, exploitative, environmentally-destructive and inequality-producing economic system with something better is going to be a long process.
