Wednesday, March 13.

Ceasefire Northwest Public Meeting: First in a series of public meetings leading up to the May 2019 Baltimore Ceasefire weekend. 6-7:30 p.m., 3939 Reisterstown Rd.

The Fight for Transit Equity: Lessons from the Past: Join Baltimore Racial Justice Action, guests from Transit Choices, and Samuel Jordan of Baltimore Transit Equity Coalition to discuss how historical action can inform the current battle for transit equity in Baltimore. 6:30-8:30 p.m., 4709 Harford Rd.

Kirwan Commission Conversation: Dr. William “Brit” Kirwan, who chairs the Commission on Education and Innovation,  also known as the “Kirwan Commission”, talks about ways to make Maryland’s education world class for all students. 7-9 p.m., 4 E. University Parkway.

Thursday, March 14.

Darius James reads from “Negrophobia”: Author Darius James reads from “Negrophobia: An Urban Parable,” his 1991 sci-fi, satire screenplay/novella recently reissued by New York Review Of Books. 8 p.m., Normal’s Books & Records, 425 E. 31st St.

LGBTQ Community Needs Assessment Report Launch: FreeState launches LGBTQ Needs Assessment Report, which is compiled from their 2016 statewide needs assessment. A panel of local service providers and advocates will share their reactions to the report findings. Delegate Gabriel Acevero will give opening remarks. Noon-2 p.m., 700 N. Calvert St.

Parent and Caregiver Training: Workshop offers parents, caregivers, and adult family members of children and youth who have experienced a trauma concrete tools for supporting their children. 5:30-7 p.m., 2300 North Charles St., #400, $12.

Pressure Points: Responding with Compassion to the Opioid Crisis: Attendees will discuss drug use and a range of strategies developed to address it. They will also learn about harm reduction — a set of principles and practices aimed at promoting the health, dignity, and safety of those affected by substance use — and various harm reduction efforts in Baltimore. As an optional part of this event, we will provide opioid overdose response training and distribute naloxone kits. 7-8:45 p.m., 3701 Bank St.

Friday, March 15.

Narcan Training: Get trained in administering Narcan at the Enoch Pratt Central Library, Central Branch. 3-5 p.m., 400 Cathedral St.

Baltimore Abortion Fund Bowl-A-Thon Kickoff Party: Drink, eat, mingle with Baltimore Abortion Find folks who will be guest bartending, find a bowling team to join, form a bowling team, and get pumped on bowl-a-thon. 7-11 p.m. Sweet 27, 123 W. 27th St.

Saturday, March 16.

Zero Waste-Youth Leadership in Action Day: Join youth leaders for the first in a series of research, leadership, and action days. 1-3 p.m., 101 W. Dickman St.

Author Talk, Baltimore Civil Rights Leader Victorine Q. Adams-The Power of the Ballot: Author Ida E. Jones discusses Victorine Quille Adams, the first African American woman elected to the Baltimore City Council. 1 p.m., 830 E. Pratt St., free with museum admission.

That’s What She Said: An Evening of Women-Fronted Comedy and Music. Event features Outcalls, $100 Girlfriend, and DJ Ducky Dynamo. 7 p.m., 120 W. North Ave.

Upila Chisala presents “Soft Magic”: From Malawian storyteller Upile Chisala comes a collection of poetry and prose exploring the self, joy, blackness, gender, matters of the heart, spirituality, the experience of Diaspora, and above all, how we survive. 7 p.m., 1225 Cathedral St.

Sunday, March 17.

Baltimore City Greens Membership Meeting: The March membership meeting of the Baltimore City Green Party. 4-6 p.m., 1401 N. Charles St.

Michael Long presents “We The Resistance”: Author Long discusses his book, a first-person history of nonviolent resistance in the U.S., from pre-Revolutionary America to the Trump years, with Naureen Shah. 2 p.m., Red Emma’s, 1225 Cathedral St.

World’s First $5 Veggie Bag DriveThru: Vegetable giveaway for the elderly, single mothers, widows, and people with diabetes. 9 a.m. – noon., 7 McCann Ave., Cockeysville.

Monday, March 18.

Baltimore City Council: Regular meeting of the Baltimore City Council, 5 p.m., 100 Holliday St., Baltimore.

Friends of Wyman Park Dell Annual Meeting: Meet current and new board members and learn more about the Friends of Wyman Park Dell, future events, and other community engagement ideas. 6-7:30 p.m., 123 W. 27th St.

Tuesday, March 19.

March on Annapolis for Jobs and Justice: The Job Opportunities Task Force, Out For Justice, Inc., and partners take part in annual advocacy day. Includes march and rally. 9 a.m.-3 p.m., Annapolis.

City Council Monthly Oversight Hearing of Baltimore Police Department: Monthly oversight hearings are split into two parts: 1. Budget Oversight (dealing with staffing, recruitment, payroll, and overtime); and 2. Council State (dealing with crime statistics and strategies in each of the 9 Police districts). 5-9 p.m., 100 Holliday St. 

Overdose Prevention Training for Baristas and Bartenders: Learn how to identify and respond to an overdose, including how to use naloxone. Also discuss harm reduction and ways to add your voice to work towards linking people into care. Registration required. 6:30-8 p.m., 2640 Saint Paul St.

Baltimoreans for Educational Equality Meeting: Monthly gathering to strategize and prepare for education actions at the district, city, and state level. 7-8:30 p.m., 2601 N. Howard St.

Leah Penniman presents “Farming While Black”: Author Penniman discusses the first comprehensive manual for African-heritage people ready to reclaim their rightful place of dignified agency in the food system. 7 p.m., Red Emma’s, 1225 Cathedral St.

Wednesday, March 20.

Baltimore Sun Career Fair: Talk with representatives from local businesses and get immediate answers to your questions about open positions and company hiring processes. 10 a.m.-1 p.m., 4 W. University Parkway.

Community Cooking Demo: Demo features locally grown produce and highlighting the Double Dollars Program of the Farm Alliance of Baltimore. Learn how to eat healthy on a budget. 11:20 a.m.-noon, 3510 Ash St. 

Community Relations Commission Meeting: Monthly meeting of the Baltimore City Community Relations Commission, a city agency that investigates claims of discrimination and assists people who have been discriminated against by enforcing the laws that protect them. Noon, 7 E. Redwood St.

Consent Decree Community Briefing: Get updates from the Consent Decree Implementation Unit. 6-8 p.m., 26 N. Fulton Ave.

The post Government Meetings and Activist, Social Justice Events—3/13-3/20 appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

State of the State Address. Governor Larry Hogan delivers his State of the State address. Jan. 31, 1 p.m., State House, 100 State Circle, Annapolis, baltimorecitycouncil.com/content/state-state-address.

West Wednesday. Tawanda Jones, the sister of Tyrone West, a man killed in police custody in July 2013, has been gathering every Wednesday with other activists in the city to call attention to West’s death and police brutality in Baltimore. Jan. 31 and Feb. 7, usually held at the intersection of 33rd Street and Greenmount Avenue, check facebook.com/justicefortyronewest for details.

Baltimore City Office of Civil Rights Wage Commission Meeting. The commission is responsible for the administration and proper operation of the minimum, living, and prevailing wage laws. Feb. 1, 3:30 p.m., Office of Civil Rights, 7 E. Redwood St., civilrights.baltimorecity.gov/wage-commission.

Baltimore Ceasefire. Events to promote unity and peace throughout Baltimore City. Feb. 2-4. Visit baltimoreceasefire.com for more information.

Winter Swap at the Community Center. Share some clothes and take some clothes, for free. Feb. 3, 1-4 p.m., The 29th Street Community Center, 300 E. 29th St., facebook.com/events/218947808648562.

Baltimore’s Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Schools. Baltimore joins the efforts of more than 20 cities to bring a Black Lives Matter Week of Action into local schools. Feb. 5-10, bmorecaucus.org/black-lives-matter-week-of-action-2.

Baltimore Water Affordability Volunteer Meeting. Learn more about the water crisis and how to work together to ensure that everyone has access to safe, affordable water. Feb. 6, 6:30-8 p.m., Food and Water Watch Maryland, 3121 St. Paul St., Suite 28, (410) 394-7652, foodandwaterwatch.org/state/Maryland.

North Avenue Rising Open House. Part of a series of meetings focused on obtaining specific community feedback regarding design elements for the North Avenue Rising project. Feb. 6, 4-7 p.m., Enoch Pratt Library-Penn North, 1531 W. North Ave., northavenuerising.com.

Baltimore Day in Annapolis. Mayor Catherine Pugh and other city leaders discuss funding and local legislative efforts for the 2018 session. Transportation available from various Baltimore locations. Feb. 7, 6-8 p.m., House Office Building, 6 Bladen St., Annapolis, (410) 396-4735, mayor.baltimorecity.gov/events/baltimore-day-annapolis.

The post Activist, Community, and Government Events: Jan. 31-Feb.  7 appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Last week, Devin Allen, the Baltimore photographer who continues to make a name for himself with his arresting, graceful shots of this city and the people in it (go get his book “A Beautiful Ghetto”), agreed to take the cover shot for this, the first issue of our new weekly newspaper.

Separately, organizer Erricka Bridgeford, fresh off the second Baltimore Ceasefire, agreed to talk to us about what she’s learned since she launched the city-unifying effort aimed at stopping Baltimore’s troubling murder rate.

The two agreed to meet me on a cold and rainy Tuesday in Bridgeford’s old West Baltimore neighborhood for a photoshoot. Allen looked at Bridgeford. Bridgeford looked at Allen.

“Were you . . . a teacher?” Allen asked her.

Yes, she was, she confirmed. Then, she was known as Ms. T. (short for Thomas, Bridgeford’s maiden name). It turns out Bridgford was Allen’s kindergarten teacher.

The two screamed, hugged, and snapped a photo together.

This coincidence—this little bit of magic—in what would turn out to be a busy, stressful week taught me some things. First, Bridgeford has been a nurturer from way back. Second, according to Bridgeford, Allen was curious, high-spirited, and whip-smart, even when he was a little guy.

Everything has to start somewhere. Roots run deep.

We’re starting now with this very newspaper. But we grow out of the journalistic roots of Baltimore’s old alt-weekly, the Baltimore City Paper, and other alt-weeklies around the country, staffed by people who work hard to fill in the details that traditional media often miss, and tell stories that people from all walks of life can appreciate.

In these pages you’ll find that interview with Bridgeford, along with information about lots of other events happening in the city. You will also find an interview that some local students conducted with famed writer and essayist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. We’d like to note here that in explaining her particular brand of feminism Adichie has made some troubling comments about trans women, comments that deserve to be challenged. But in this instance we’ve chosen instead to focus on the young people and how they wielded their opportunity to interview one of the most celebrated authors of our time.

When we announced that we intended to start a new newspaper, the support that we got before we’d even printed a word was overwhelming and positive. Journalism isn’t dead, print isn’t dead, and people will always search out ways to communicate with one another.

Thank you for your warm welcome. Please keep reading, but also hold us accountable. We want to make this a place where people from all parts of the city are seen and heard. Welcome to the Baltimore Beat.

Lisa Snowden-McCray
Editor

The post Letter From The Editor: Welcome to the Baltimore Beat appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Just a few days after the second 72-hour Baltimore Ceasefire weekend, which ran from Nov. 3-5, Erricka Bridgeford and I are sitting in her car in her old Rosemont neighborhood escaping the cold and rain.

She has a bit of a cough and she’s just off a speaking engagement at the Community College of Baltimore County’s Essex campus, but Bridgeford has gamely agreed to take a few moments to share her thoughts about the second ceasefire, meant to pause the violence in the city and connect with and create community.

“The ceasefire movement has made me become more actively spiritual in relation to death,” Bridgeford says. “I did not expect to be the person people call when their child gets killed. And they don’t want me to do nothing, just come and hug them ‘cause they feel like there is something about my energy.”

She has started doing something she calls pouring light into the concrete—going out and placing her body into the places around the city where someone has been killed. She started this during the first ceasefire when 24-year-old Lamontrey Tynes was found shot (he later died at Shock Trauma), and again when Washington, D.C. officer Tony Mason was killed on Nov. 4—the first homicide of the second ceasefire.

“We lost Tony Mason at 24.5 hours in,” reads a post on the Baltimore Ceasefire Instagram account. “People responded by showing up in the place where we lost Tony, and by pouring love into the murder spot and into the residents who live in that neighborhood.”

Bridgeford implores people not to be numb, to allow themselves to stop and feel the impact of each of the city’s murders and what the loss means for the city and for the family of the deceased. It’s part of a kind of spirituality that she says she’s been thinking about and building on for a while, but is just now able to really put into words.

“People really only accept spirituality if it’s said in a religious frame that they understand, so when you talk about Jesus’ blood making you not be sinful people are like ‘oh yes, yes, yes,’” she says. “But then when you say, ‘Well we have the power to pour light into the concrete,’ that sounds like devil work. People don’t like it.”

That spirituality is why she’s been able to tackle the seemingly impossible goal of stopping deaths in a city that has experienced over 300 murders this year. We shouldn’t just hope for miracles, Bridgeford says—we should expect them because we have the power to make them happen.

“All religious traditions teach that we’re made in God’s image in some kind of way, but then man’s doctrine gets in it and it makes us think we don’t have the same creative powers that God has,” she says. “So we keep limiting ourselves to what we can do in this earth.”

Knowing this, Bridgeford says that she must continue to challenge herself, and people in the city.

She decided to launch the first ceasefire because, despite her work with the group Community Mediation Maryland, she felt she wasn’t doing everything she possibly could do to stop violence in Baltimore. Now, with two ceasefire events under her belt, she’s still pushing herself to do more.

“This whole movement has made me stand in my power,” Bridgeford says. “I can’t ask other people to look at murder in this more spiritual, public health kind of way if I’m not willing to not just do outreach on drug corners in the west, I gotta go over east in those drug markets and hop out my car too. Because they’re still people and they got spirits.”

Speaking of what this looks like when she reaches out to others, she talks about harnessing the positive power of Baltimore City’s ego. People here are quick to challenge somebody who is trying to overstep their personal boundaries, she observes, but are less aggressive in combating systemic problems that go deeper than face-to-face conflict.

“We don’t remember that kind of swag as when it comes to social issues,” Bridgeford says. “What has happened to us for so long, we don’t notice that they trying to bitch us. If we looked at it like, ‘They say we got to live over here, we gotta live in these conditions, we can’t have good food, our schools gotta be bullshit?’”

That’s why the ceasefire had to be community-driven.

“If the police had said there was a ceasefire, people would have been like, ‘You not gon’ tell me what to do.’ Had the mayor said it they’d be like, ‘She not gon’ tell us how to live,’” she says.

Because it was the community’s own thing, done of their own volition, more became involved.

Since the beginning, Bridgeford has maintained that the ceasefire events weren’t just about stopping murders. She’s been clear about the societal and structural forces that keep violence going—changing those, she’s said, isn’t something that can happen overnight.

But the ceasefire has created a shift in the energy of the city. Leading up to both events, Baltimore Ceasefire signs could been seen in shops all over. People here took the impetus and ran with it—organizing marches, food giveaways, and more. Eager community members packed the room at a post-ceasefire event held in August. All of this has happened with Bridgeford at the center, as the movement’s most public organizer. She says she’s coming to terms with her more public position, and the negativity it can open her up to. For example, there are people who will never believe that Baltimore is anything but a haven for uncivilized, murderous black savages. For them, Bridgeford can be a target for their derision and hate.

“I have learned to show up in my wholeness, being a black girl from this neighborhood with one hand,” she says. “Every hard thing that I’ve been through has prepared me for this. Ever since I was born, people have been looking at me like I’m broken, thinking that I’m not as good as them, thinking that I’m something to pity.”

She gets scared a lot. She also gets angry. It’s a process, she explains, to walk away from anger and into peace and compassion.

“It’s so many people, I think, need to be punched in their face,” she says, but adds that she pushes herself to move past that feeling. “It takes me a minute to come to, because we are socialized to think that love is weak. We don’t understand that love really don’t take much shit. In real life, it really does not because it is honest and it’s transparent and it is long-suffering and it’s strong as fuck, so love is really not the one to come for. But we don’t view it that way so it takes me a minute to find something that would be a God-like response.”

She says she never reads the comments on stories written about her or the ceasefire. She also remembers that if people are coming for her, it’s because the work she is doing is successful.

“It makes me remember, well, when they thought I wasn’t doing nothing they ain’t pay me no mind,” she says. “It must be now that I’m a big enough target. I must be doing something so big that now they can just hit it from anywhere in the city if they want to because you can see it everywhere now.”

Bridgeford says that ceasefire events will happen quarterly, and the next one is scheduled for February. Her goal is to for everyone in the city to be aware when a ceasefire is going on.

Bridgeford imagines a day where ceasefire events are ingrained in everyone’s minds, but at the same time she’s realistic about what she can accomplish.

“I’m really aware that the next time, four people might get killed,” she says. “I understand how things go up and down, and at the same time, I know that there will come a time where this is an institution in Baltimore and it is seen as something that is sacred. It’ll start to seep out into the days before the ceasefire and after the ceasefire because that’s just what light does. It just starts seeping out into everything that is around it.”

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