Too often, as young people, our voices are overlooked and unheard. We’re deemed too young to have experienced anything that could have deeply impacted our lives. In reality, the opposite is true. According to the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative, 56% of children in Baltimore City have experienced one or more traumatic experiences involving violence, incarceration, homelessness, or substance abuse. More than half of our children in our city will have to grow up with the burdens of life weighing them down. Pent up frustration and anger becomes a formula for violence. It is not a pathology, it is a cry for help. We must listen. 

But creating real change in Baltimore is often a messy business, especially when it involves coming to terms with the legacy of persistent violence in our communities. Many people are so invested in the way things are that they are unwilling to see a way forward. Victims of trauma often see it as an immovable feature of the world they must simply accept, a byproduct of America’s troubled history of racism and systemic oppression. The traumatized often identify with their suffering because surviving it can be a badge of honor. Real change involves a new way of thinking, a new way of seeing how our brains are impacted by the environments they are forced to navigate.  

Additionally, those in authority are often afraid that acknowledging trauma will force them into painful self-examination. Those with power do not like to do the uncomfortable work of admitting how the old ways of doing things exacerbated the suffering of our city’s most vulnerable. It is easier to throw up your hands than to roll up your sleeves.

The hard work of trauma informed care should not be confused with playing the blame game. It is all about understanding how the past can influence the future, sometimes without our knowledge. By refusing to understand what brain researchers are telling us about how trauma influences the developing brain, we are consigning ourselves to a future whose script is already written. We have seen it over and over again. The cycle of trauma repeats.

Learning to see things from this point of view took work for us, too. After a shooting happened at our school, we were asked to testify about the trauma we faced. We decided to speak about how trauma affects our everyday lives as students in Baltimore city. Initially, we were afraid that talking about the obstacles we faced and the trauma we endured might reopen painful wounds. We were frightened that our trauma might be paraded in front of those who simply wanted to feel pity on us or judge us for what we have survived.

It’s scary to say we’ve become accustomed to the violence and traumatic events that happen in our city but it’s our home and we have no choice but to try to survive each day as best we can. We do what we can to make a comfortable life for ourselves inside the endless procession of violence.

People fail to realize that trauma is a generational cycle. It disguises itself as normal for most adolescents living in Baltimore city. But in reality trauma is a distressing event that can scar our lives forever. These specific traumatic ordeals can accumulate inside a person and hang over their head, camouflaging their actual emotions.  

Working with Councilman Zeke Cohen, his colleagues on city council, as well as other stakeholders, we accomplished something that is very difficult: we moved from talk to action. Sharing our trauma became the impetus for change. While the Elijah Cummings Healing City Act is only one step forward, it is an essential step. 

Educating people about trauma is no easy task. We must do this while also ensuring that city agencies interacting with people who trauma are prepared to respond in ways that are supported by research. Doing so will minimize the harm to traumatized individuals and to the city as a whole. 

Baltimore is a beautiful city. Too many of the young people who live here witness horrific things no human should ever see. One day we may be able to change this for good, but for now, this is the reality of the poverty, addiction, and violence that plague our city.

To be numb is to doom the next generation to more and more entrenched traumas. This is why signing this legislation is such an important step for us to take. By doing so, we honor the legacy of the late Congressman Elijah Cummings, who taught us that “Our children are the living messages we send to a future we will not see.” This legislation is an attempt to make sure that it is a message of hope and healing that we send.

Bryonna Harris, Damani Thomas, and Jaionna Santos are students at Frederick Douglass High School. They worked with City Council person Zeke Cohen to push forward the Elijah Cummings Heal the City Act.

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My husband nearly became Baltimore’s seventh homicide of the year. He was robbed at gunpoint a block from our house on a dark street corner just a few hundred feet from the local Safeway.

He noticed a young man who had slipped on the ice and approached to help him up. At the same time, the young man got up from the sidewalk, pulled out a pistol, and sprinted toward my husband. An accomplice restrained my husband and the two men proceeded to steal all his identity documents, his wallet, and his phone.

We have all become sadly resigned to the random violence—especially gun violence—occurring throughout our city. We all hope that our neighborhoods will be spared. We certainly hope that our loved ones will be safe. But two nights ago, my husband very easily could have been shot and killed. He is alive because he was lucky.

My husband was robbed on that street corner, and nearly lost his life, because that street is empty. There were no businesses open at the time of the incident, because there are no businesses. Had there been one restaurant, bar, or other venue supporting patrons at that time of night, my husband would have benefited from eyes on the street, lit storefronts, and a place to call the police after his phone was stolen.

For the past five years, my husband and I have been actively working to improve conditions in our neighborhood. We began by planting trees. We then moved to buying and installing brightly colored benches and chairs to beautify the area. . . . We’ve begun to bring in businesses—we’ve helped Brown Rice open, we supported liquor licenses for Terra Cafe and the Eagle. We currently work directly with investors and property owners to promote the neighborhood.

By now, we would surely have more businesses in the neighborhood, and it would be a safer place to walk at night if our ongoing efforts were not frustrated by the narrow view that the only people who are out at night are predators or prey. For the last nine months, we have faced stiff opposition against all efforts to open new late night businesses in our neighborhood. From the Planning Commission, our elected officials, and the few citizens with enough influence to make demands of both.

Too many people in the city have an unfounded fear of corner stores, bars, and any venue open late at night (not that 10:30 is so late). Too many are opposed to storefronts they subjectively deem “tacky.” And too many have convinced themselves that the only sign of a successful neighborhood is a shiny new Whole Foods with valet parking.

We make it deliberately difficult for small businesses to thrive in our neighborhoods. Healthy cities, safe cities, are those with pedestrians on streets at all hours. Who feels unsafe on New York’s 5th Avenue at 5 a.m.? Or 2 a.m.? Who believes my husband would have been robbed at gunpoint on Baltimore’s own Cross Street?

In recent months, we have had various meetings with Councilman Robert Stokes and the director of planning about simple zoning changes in our neighborhood that would permit more businesses of the type that would have been—at the very least—a place where my husband could have called 911. In a separate meeting, I advocated for a neighborhood business that the mayor herself challenged, with Bill Cole in tow. Each of the businesses we have supported is a source of tax revenue, jobs, and eyes on the street.

Ten small businesses employing 12 people is as good as any shiny new Whole Foods.

The violence that occurs in each individual’s case is sometimes random. But the culture of violence that currently permeates Baltimore most certainly is not.

Every day the people of the city have less and less hope, and the desperate young people with the least hope of all will take what they can get from anyone on an otherwise empty street.

The streets are empty because the city is empty. Stephanie Rawlings-Blake promised thousands of new families would move to Baltimore, but in truth thousands have actually left. To bring them back and to welcome newcomers, the city needs hundreds of new small businesses (hopefully, many of them black-owned) located in neighborhoods where people live. Like my husband, one should not need a car to feel safe while fetching milk. These new businesses will put jobs within walking distance of people who now spend hours on transit for jobs paying less than a $15 minimum wage at the Amazon warehouse.

It goes without saying that small businesses that create jobs also pay taxes. This is tax revenue we need to fund our schools, replace our pipes, and pay for the 6,000 new lights the mayor has promised us.

We cannot solve this problem with more policing. The people who oppose small businesses are the same who have turned the police into the enforcer against every minor act of “trespass and loitering.”

The irony of the situation is that we demand more police to patrol more empty spaces—spaces that are empty because there are no businesses to fund the police.

The worst culprits in the crime that victimized my husband are such policies perpetuated by the mayor and those who share the “Narrow View.”

My husband is shaken by the incident. But he’s alive. And neither of us blames anything other than the city’s policies for the crime that made him a victim.

As a result of what happened, and because of our deep commitment to the neighborhood and the city, we will continue to fight for new businesses here. We intend to continue our efforts until it’s safe to walk from the Washington Monument to University Avenue; and from Penn North to Broadway.

We would like to thank the members of the Baltimore City Police Department who responded to this incident. And we would like to especially thank them for their extra effort in calling the Department of Public Works to replace the failed streetlight at the corner where it all happened.

Kelly Cross is president of the Old Goucher Community Association and a former Democratic primary candidate for 12th District City Council. He is on twitter @Kelly4Baltimore.

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For the past five years, I have taught full- and part-time for public schools that serve students  considered to be at-risk in Baltimore City, Baltimore County, and Washington, D.C.

Urban education invites a much different approach from the standard white middle class framework for education. As an early career teacher, I have had to pick up most of the unique, unspoken rules by trial and error, but the concept of a warm demander is something I recently acquired from taking certification coursework.

A warm demander is a term used to describe the most effective urban teachers. Warm demanders have a style of behavior management that could be misinterpreted by outside observers as harsh but is based on the concept that Black students are accustomed to a more direct style of management outside of school.

It could be that this style of teaching comes from the different ways Black and white children are parented. At home, Black students might hear, “go to bed, or “put down that remote control,” whereas white parents might ask “Isn’t it time for bed?”

Throughout my time teaching in Baltimore City and Baltimore County, I was encouraged to take on a more aggressive “warm demander” tone as a method to connect with my majority-Black students. I felt like the expectation was even higher for me to be an enforcer because of my status as Black and female. It was assumed by administration and students that because I am a Black woman, I could be “Mama mean” and this would naturally be something I could access in my “teacher toolbox.”

I once asked a student who was coaching me on becoming “more mean” why I needed to be that way. I asked her if I were a white woman, would I need to be “more mean?” She responded by saying “No! You’re Black! The students don’t respect you because you’re not mean enough!”

I gradually learned that this mode of behavior management would not consistently work unless trust was established. I had such a short amount of time with my students to establish the trust necessary to become a warm demander that I reverted back to my cool, soft spoken, authentic persona. Immediately the students seemed to mirror my tranquility and I found that I had less behavior adjustments to make.

I entered the field of education to fight in solidarity for the struggle for opportunity through education and share my love of learning. I have nothing against warm demanders. If it is done correctly, I am confident that it is effective. But I think what it takes to be an effective warm demander is striking a fine balance between discipline and punishment. And too often what I have seen as a teacher in urban settings is the misuse of punishment spilling over to abuse.

It is an open secret that profanity and corporal punishment are used as tools for behavior management with Black students in urban schools. In my experience, the teachers who receive the most positive feedback regularly rely on inciting fear as a method for managing behavior, which only conditions students to an inappropriate dynamic with authority. If students are conditioned to respond to aggression and violence, that only leaves them more vulnerable to interactions with police, which can potentially result in excessive use of force.

The intent of sharing my perspective and experience is not to “call out” urban schools that are already fighting the uphill battle of navigating generations of systemic racism. Anyone can point out what’s going wrong in a broken system. My intent is to begin a call to examine the long term ramifications of using fear to manage the unique challenges we face as urban educators.

It is the norm for many students in urban settings to have experienced chronic exposure to trauma. As a substitute teacher at Digital Harbor, I can recall stories from my students of being in the back seat of the car as their parent was murdered, or having discovered dead bodies in their neighborhoods. A child usually will not make connections between their past experiences, present conditions, and their actions. This is often difficult for adults to understand or accept. This reality can create an environment of mistrust, chaos, and violence if teachers are not well equipped to manage behavior with discernment between discipline and punishment.

Because there is no de-escalation training or discipline and punishment training, fear has naturally been adopted as the primary tool of behavior management and as a path to achievement in urban settings.

In my opinion, the mainstream framework that’s being used is egregiously inappropriate to humanely meet the needs of students in urban settings. All schools, but primarily urban schools, are at the convergence of every unaddressed social issue in one place. To use the same tools in such different environments shows a blatant disregard for the human rights of our children and evidence of a widely accepted devaluation of Black and Brown life.

The writer is a teacher who currently works in D.C. Public Schools and has in the past taught in schools in Baltimore City and Baltimore County. She has asked to remain anonymous out of fear that her comments could lead to workplace retaliation.

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The “middle class” dominates political discussion, and the new Republican tax bill is no exception. This focus neglects those at the bottom, including the third of Baltimore’s households that earn less than $25,000 a year. While they pay little in income tax, we cannot ignore how the inequality perpetuated by this tax bill could exacerbate poverty in Baltimore’s vulnerable communities.

Maryland has the highest concentration of millionaires in the nation, even as 32.6 percent of Baltimore’s children live in poverty. The bill only widens the gap between low-income and privileged children. Baltimore’s millionaires will now be able to leave $11.2 million of their accumulated wealth tax-free to their children—up from $5.6 million in the status quo. This results in a wider wealth gap, reinforcing inequality. Wealth matters because it is a buffer against economic shocks, and enables long-term investments into education, new businesses, and retirement. Most egregious is the bill’s massive corporate tax cut. The cut will naturally increase corporate profits, but 91 percent of available corporate profits are currently directed to stock buybacks and dividends. Since the poor lack the financial resources to invest in stock, the tax cut only exacerbates the income gap.

Income inequality is more than an ideological issue, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. In a world of limited resources, it ensures the rich can buy privileges for their children that the poor cannot afford, impeding social mobility. Poverty becomes concentrated in particular neighborhoods when only the rich can buy their way out. The exodus in turn weakens community institutions like stores and schools that provide essential support to families. Take, for instance, McElderry Park, a once middle-class neighborhood that descended into poverty with population loss. Higher income inequality also means higher political inequality—it increases the ability of rich donors to crowd out the poor’s already diminutive voices in policymaking. Ultimately, the bill buttresses rich children at the expense of poor children’s social mobility.

Furthermore, the revenue lost from tax cuts for the wealthy may soon be used to justify major cuts to vital anti-poverty programs. Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, have suggested changing the federal Medicaid and food stamp programs to state-controlled block grants. When Bill Clinton made similar changes to the cash welfare system in 1996, states siphoned off grant money to fill budgetary gaps, while inflation eroded the grant’s value. The poor may similarly lose out in the case of food stamps and Medicaid. This would directly affect the nearly third of Baltimore’s residents on Medicaid or food stamps.

A weaker safety net could also mean more family instability, detrimental to child development. Research by Kathryn Edin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, shows that many impoverished single mothers see financial stability as a key prerequisite for marriage, a potential source of family stability. 64.8 percent of Baltimore’s children are in single-parent households, with the percentage at 93.5 percent in some neighborhoods. Cuts to anti-poverty programs as a result of the bill could severely affect these children’s futures.

It will be hard for states and localities like Maryland and Baltimore to compensate for any federal cuts with new or expanded initiatives. The bill’s cap on the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction makes it politically difficult to raise taxes. Moreover, a bias against poor minority communities might already exist in public spending. City planners recently uncovered that Baltimore spends more on public infrastructure in low-poverty than high-poverty areas. Should federal cuts occur, we fear low-income minority neighborhoods will take the brunt of federal cuts with little help from the state or city.

To be sure, individual aspects of the bill soften rather than worsen inequality. Though capping SALT is problematic, the deduction is disproportionately used by the rich. The Child Tax Credit has also become temporarily more refundable for the poor, though its expansion to the wealthy is troubling. By themselves, these reforms might have been signs of progress. Unfortunately, they have only been stomached to pay for massive tax cuts for the rich, dwarfing the benefits.

As the tax bill comes into effect, and as income inequality widens in the long run, Baltimore’s low-income residents are most at risk. Our city should monitor the effects of the tax bill as they play out and find ways to protect our most vulnerable from its consequences.

Serena Goldberg (sgoldb30@jhu.edu) and Teresa Ng (tng11@jhu.edu) are social policy students at Johns Hopkins University.  Submit your own op-ed to The Baltimore Beat by emailing it to opinions@baltimorebeat.com.

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