This is an election year, and here, in addition to selecting a new president in November, we’re being asked to select a mayor, a city council president, city council members, and other elected officials.
Now is as good a time as any to be extremely thoughtful about who we are voting for, what we are voting for, if we are even voting, and, if we are, why we are voting.
I think it’s boring and unhelpful to cover the election only by reporting who is winning and losing in public opinion. If the people we elect aren’t serving our needs, we all lose. It’s my intent to use the upcoming issues of Baltimore Beat to explore these themes.
In this issue, you’ll hear from Shannon Sneed. A former member of city council, Sneed is running for city council president. Here, in an opinion piece, she gives her thoughts about the best way to move this city forward.
Andy Ellis, a former co-chair of the Baltimore and Maryland Green Party and an appointed member of the Baltimore City Charter Review Commission, is also in this issue with an op-ed. Here, he argues that the Ballot Petition Modernization Act, a piece of legislation sponsored by Delegate Sheila Ruth and Senator Jill Carter, helps regular people have a say in how this city operates.
Also in this issue, arts writer Angela N. Carroll writes about a retrospective happening in various parts of the city examining the work of late artist Elizabeth Talford Scott.
“Talford Scott did not consider herself to be an artist until late in her life. Even then, after years of pushing the bounds of quilting, some still considered her work more craft than fine art,” Carroll writes. “How absurd that anyone could view her conceptually and compositionally intricate genre-defying creations as anything but genius works of art.”
You’ll find a piece of Talford Scott’s work on the cover of this issue.
Also in this issue, check out film critic Dominic Griffin’s review of Tyler Perry’s “Mea Culpa” and writer S. Ireti’s sit-down with the people behind Katie Hileman’s play “I Will Eat You Alive.”
As always, we end with a poem. In this issue, it’s Writers in Baltimore Schools participant Amaris Medina-Pinto with a piece titled “The Anorexic Menu.”