Back in 2020, I hid behind an abandoned building in East Baltimore with three guys who all used heroin together as they tested their drugs, injected them, and made sure they were there for each other in case any of them overdosed. 

It was about 8 a.m. in the middle of January 2020, sunny but cold, and “D”—Black, in his late 30s, without a home, and requesting anonymity for obvious reasons—held court behind a vacant rowhouse. D saw to it that he and his friends were as safe as possible—he’s more fastidious and more experienced than the others. Heroin had been part of his life for about 20 years.

“I’ve been using off and on,” D told me. “Mostly on.”

In case anybody did overdose, D was ready with naloxone, the medicine that blocks the effects of opioids and reverses overdose. He gripped the small nasal spray bottles of Narcanand got less jokey with me: “Lifesavers, man,” he said.

Overdoses have been increasing for years now because the drug supply has been poisoned with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that has leaked into street drugs, making them unpredictable and lethal. You just don’t know what you’re getting. For the most part, the response to this lethal phenomenon has amounted to the all-too-typical declaration of an “opioid crisis,” mostly focused on addiction and treatment.

For D, who does not want to stop using heroin, just about any kind of large-scale service aimed at people who use drugs is pretty much useless as far as he’s concerned: “I don’t need a bed and I don’t need treatment,” he said. 

What D needs is a safe place to use drugs and to be treated with dignity and respect. Until that day comes, he’ll be here, holed up behind a bent and crumbling building propped up by some two-by-fours, trying to keep himself and others alive. Most mornings back then, D and his friends looked out for one another because they understood that they were most likely to overdose when they used alone. If no one’s there with you, no one’s there to save you. 

“I’m a lifeguard,” D said. “We’re all like lifeguards for each other.”

You know it’s fentanyl because there’s no waiting for it to hit you. 

“It’s a little too good sometimes,” D said.

The threat of overdose feels omnipresent now.

“You think about it and you don’t,” he said. “Everybody tries not to think about dying.”

The first question D asks when he gets a hold of some heroin is: “Is it good?” The next question is: “How good is it?” Then he wonders, “Is it safe?” He has some sense of how safe it is because he tested it. With cookers and strips given out by organizations such as the Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition, he tests his drugs. He mixes heroin with clean—or clean-ish—water, puts it in the cooker, and mixes some more. Then he dips the end of the testing strip into the heroin-and-water mix and waits about 30 seconds. If the strip shows a single line, there’s fentanyl in it. If there are two lines, there’s no fentanyl.

Simply knowing fentanyl’s in there actually calms the nerves a little. There are often murmurs of “bad batches” circulating. D hears the stories, or sees it for himself, and tries to connect the dots. Three people whom he’d seen the day before all found dead in an abandoned building. Some guy told D about how he snorted, slipped out of the alley afterwards, and immediately dropped to the ground. You know it’s bad when the snorters are dropping. Soon there will only be bad batches.

What D got that day—the day I was with him and the others in East Baltimore—was alright, it seemed. His one buddy just wrapped up. The other was deep in a nod. The good kind, though. Now it was D’s turn. He sat down against the vacant, and pulled up the sleeves of his oversized hoodie and stretched out, Narcan next to him.

“Hey, it’s y’all’s turn to watch me,” he reminded his friends, both heavy-lidded and relaxed.

No one overdosed behind that vacant on that day in January 2020. What D was doing that day was essentially running an overdose prevention site, or “OPS”—a place where people can safely use drugs with other people present to monitor them and stop them from overdosing if necessary. If D or one of his friends had overdosed, another one of them would have been right there to provide naloxone and call 911. 

If D didn’t have naloxone or fentanyl test strips, he would still use. If he didn’t have clean needles, he’d still do it, too. D and millions of people like him (and I, for that matter) are going to do drugs. You can’t stop us. And no matter how many bricks of dope the cops seize, drugs aren’t going anywhere. The solution is to make drugs safer and easier to do, because it’s not the drugs themselves tearing communities apart; it is the drug laws that keep people hiding and desperate and that keep the drugs unregulated, unsafe, and, these days, especially deadly. 

“Legalize heroin,” D advised, yelling it like a protester, mocking advocates and advocating at the same time.

In June 2021, I ran into D again. I hadn’t seen him since that day behind the vacant. He hadn’t seen his two friends in months. He worried they were dead—of overdose or COVID-19.

D was thinner 18 months later. His hair was longer. He had a lot to say. During COVID-19, D was encouraged to social distance but he literally had nowhere to go. He’s homeless. Even the rare public places someone like D could sneak into and wash up or fill a water bottle—such as a coffee shop bathroom—were closed, and if they were open and forcing workers to serve lattes during a plague, bathrooms were locked. If D had decided to go to a shelter, he would’ve been surrounded by people who could possibly infect him—or he, them. He also wouldn’t be allowed to use drugs in the shelter.

2020 saw nearly 100,000 lives lost to overdose on top of the 375,000 people who died due to COVID-19. Hundreds of millions learned what it’s like to be neglected and considered expendable—which is how D and so many other people who use drugs have felt their whole lives.

“If you told me last year that the government would treat everybody the way they treat junkies like me, I wouldn’t have believed it,” he said. “They want us all dead. To them, we’re better off dead.”

“We’re Doing This Purely Out Of Love”: OPS installation, July 2022.

In July 2022, I stood inside the NoMüNoMü arts space on Howard Street and got a tour of a mock overdose prevention site. For harm reduction advocates in Baltimore City, the installation was an experiment in what was possible and what absolutely should exist—places where people who use drugs can use them safely and without fear of arrest or even judgment.

Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition’s Dave Fell began the tour. Fell moved a dozen of us through the art space—appropriately decorated with Black Panthers posters and newspapers, a nod to a long tradition of radical, community-oriented healthcare—and into the overdose prevention site (OPS). The installation simulated the intake process, using drugs in the use room, and the ways resources are offered at an OPS.

“When we talk about overdose prevention sites, we are talking about bringing people who are very alienated from organized services in. If there’s one thing you leave with today, it’s that we’re trying to facilitate health, safety, dignity, safe spaces, and just bringing people into love,” Fell told us. “We’re doing this purely out of love for our community and for ourselves too because we’re people who at various points in our lives would definitely have loved to use an overdose prevention site.”

When you enter the site, you’re greeted and you sign in, providing a minimal amount of personal information (mostly a name or even nickname and what drug you intend to use that day) and then you wait to be allowed into the room where drug use is allowed (you bring your own drugs, but clean needles and drug testing supplies are provided). In the meantime, there’s a room of couches to wait and relax. Some people also hang out in the room after they’ve used drugs to get settled or come down a little bit. Indeed, Fell noted, some people often hang out, or even show up to just hang and not even use drugs.

An OPS, it becomes clear, is a community space like any other, bringing people together, being there to help or just hear someone out, and providing access to a number of resources—including opportunities to stop using drugs, if someone is interested in that. 

The use room itself is not complicated: A table, chair, mirror, lots of light, and a curtain for privacy. The mirror allows the person using drugs to do it more comfortably and safely. In an emergency, the person working the OPS can delicately check in on someone using. If the person using drugs is having any problems—including, most importantly, an overdose—there is someone there to help them. People die of overdose most frequently when they use alone.

During the tour, Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition’s Harriet Smith stood before a rolling desk full of safer use supplies—with Narcan nearby—and discussed the role of someone working in the use room: “My job here is really just to make sure people are safe. That they feel welcome and they feel like people are caring for them and watching out for them and not all up in somebody’s space—but just up in their space enough to be helpful,” Smith said.

A press conference about OPS was held at the installation. City officials, including Mayor Brandon Scott, spoke out in support. “We owe it to ourselves, to our city, to our neighbors, and to those that we lost to overdose to try new ways that have been proven—even if they’re going to make some folks in our community uncomfortable,” Scott said at the press conference.

Opening up an OPS in the city is something Scott has talked about for a long time. More than two years ago, Scott told me, “There’s nothing that says we can’t [open OPS], so we can do it.” Since then, all that has happened locally is a handful of hearings and now this installation, which begins to make the idea a bit more tangible.

Commissioner of Health Letitia Dzirasa also spoke in support of OPS, noting a frequent talking point about the benefits of OPS: There are over 150 overdose prevention sites around the world, and no one has ever died of overdose in any of them. Dzirasa also pointed towards the decades-long fight to open OPS in the United States which was finally won by New York City. Last year, two OPS opened up, one in Washington Heights and the other in Harlem.

“New York in 2021 became the first and only jurisdiction in America to open an overdose prevention site. It is my hope that we are poised to be the next city to embrace three decades of best practices and more than 100 peer-reviewed studies that have consistently shown the positive outcomes and impacts of overdose prevention sites,” Dzirasa said. 

In its first three months, OnPoint NYC’s two sites were used more than 10,000 times and staff reversed almost 200 overdoses.

William Miller Jr., a founder of harm reduction group Bmore POWER, spoke at the press conference, as well. Holding his young son, Miller Jr. brought with him the legacy of his father, William Miller Sr., an iconic harm reductionist who died of overdose in 2020. The Millers have been among those most vocal about the need for OPS for the longest.

“William Glen Miller Sr. started this work,” Miller Jr. reminded everybody. During the installation, a photograph of Miller Sr. sat on a table along with information about the BRIDGES Coalition, a large group of like-minded local organizations advocating for OPS at the state level, who worked together to create the OPS installation.

The OPS installation is an attempt to make real here in Baltimore what is real all over the world (and already operating in cities like Baltimore, illegally). It is a place that likely could have saved Miller Jr.’s father’s life and hundreds of other Baltimoreans’ lives each year. It can be simpler than that, though, Miller Jr. stressed: It’s also about giving people who use drugs their own place to be themselves.

“We can do a lot more to make people [who use drugs] feel good about themselves. And these places will have everything and anything that will make them feel comfortable,” Miller Jr. said. “People who will be using these facilities are people that use drugs—and they’re underserved. And they don’t feel comfortable anywhere else. I think it’s my job to make people who feel underserved feel comfortable.”

This story was made in collaboration with The Real News Network.

The post “We’re All Lifeguards”: An Illegal and Legal Overdose Prevention Site appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Lead by student group Students Organizing a Multicultural and Open Society (SOMOS), Baltimore City Public Schools students held a socially-distanced press conference in front of City Hall on May 26. They demanded internet service provider Comcast make high speed internet access available to students across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“In Baltimore alone, 40.7% don’t have broadband access, the third worst connectivity rate for cities with over 500,00 people,” said Baltimore City College High School junior Kimberly Vasquez as three Baltimore lawmakers stood at a distance behind her wearing masks. 

Known as “the digital divide,” low income and communities of color are able to access high speed internet at far lower rates than wealthy communities. Around 200,000 Baltimore households with school-aged children lack access to high speed internet or a computer, a May 2020 Abell Foundation report found.

“Everyday I see the racial gap in internet access. Around 70% white households have access compared to 50% of African American households and 46% latino households,” Baltimore City Schools teacher and advisor to SOMOS Franca Muller Paz said at the press conference. “If Comcast doesn’t take a stand today, they are taking a stance to not educate Black and Brown students.”

Comcast, which holds a monopoly over residential internet access in Baltimore, said it has already taken steps to expand access during the pandemic by making its $9.95 Internet Essentials package available for free for two months to new customers who qualify for public assistance programs. It offers a speed of 25Mbps download and 3Mbps upload—fast enough, Comcast says, to support three Zoom video conferencing calls at a time.

“To confront the COVID-19 epidemic, we proactively offered 60 days of free service to any new customers,” Comcast spokesperson Jeff Alexander said in an email to The Real News. 

Xfinity broadband access netted Comcast $4.72 billion in revenue in 2019, an increase of 9.3% from 2018.  

Teachers and students report that Comcast’s Internet Essentials package is insufficient and its  real world application only supports only one high speed connection at a time. For Vasquez, a member of SOMOS, each morning involves her family deciding which one of them gets to use the internet because they can’t use it all at once.

“Comcast’s digital package isn’t enough,” said Vasquez. “Currently Internet Essentials is only fast enough for one device.” 

Vasquez warned that if internet access isn’t expanded, “schools risk an unprecedented dropout rate.” Vasquez co-authored a letter to Comcast dated May 22 demanding the speed of its Essentials package increase to 100Mbps download and 25Mbps upload, fast enough for five concurrent internet connections: “Baltimore City’s young people are being denied their human right to learn and work. The crisis in education began long before COVID-19 and we must keep the gap from widening.”

The letter also demands the free internet service be extended for 60 days after schools are reopened, as well as access to Comcast internet hotspots for corporate clients: “It is important for Comcast to provide the people of Baltimore with a fast and reliable internet plan during this challenging time. Our families need time to save money after this unprecedented period of job loss.”

First District Councilman Zeke Cohen, a former Baltimore City Schools teacher, signed the letter along with over 100 local organizations.

“The reality is that we live in a city where the internet has been redlined. If you look at how the federal government carved out redline maps and gave them to banks and asked them to not lend in black communities, that’s where we lack wifi today. It’s a shame that 40% of this city lacks high speed internet access,” Cohen said at the press conference. “If you can’t get online, you can’t learn. I hear horror stories all day long, of teachers desperately trying to track down their students, about parents who are overworked, overwhelmed, who are stressed out.”

Cohen stressed that this is not only an issue in Baltimore: “This is not just a Baltimore fight, this is a Cleveland fight, a Philadelphia fight, West Virginia fight,” he said.

Nationally, approximately 4 in 10 low income African-American and Latinx households lack broadband access, Pew Research found. Only 70% of rural areas have access to high speed access, according to a 2018 FCC report. Cohen acknowledged municipal broadband could be a long-term solution to bridge the digital divide. Over 500 municipalities offer broadband access either directly or indirectly, and these providers tend to be more affordable and more accessible to traditionally marginalized communities.

District 13 Councilwoman Shannon Sneed also spoke, and urged Comcast to make high speed internet available free for those who can’t afford it.

“If we say education is important, if we say education matters, this is the way we can show them they matter,” Sneed said. 

Baltimore City Delegate Stephanie Smith, chair of Baltimore’s City’s State Delegation, also urged Comcast to act.

“If you don’t have access to information for your education your future is being stymied and that’s not an adequate response to COVID-19,” she said. “Corporate responsibility has a role in the COVID-19 response.”

The post Baltimore City Students Demand Comcast Increase Internet Speed During Pandemic appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Major League Baseball has pledged $1 million per team for ballpark employees facing financial hardship from the delay of the baseball season because of the coronavirus, but hundreds of concession workers who serve food at Baltimore Orioles games don’t know if they will be paid.

The 700 concession workers are contractors employed by Delaware North and serve everything from beer to hotdogs and popcorn at home games in Baltimore. They are represented by Unite Here Local 7, who organized a conference call with reporters on March 26 about lost wages.

“Me and my coworkers are in desperate need of relief from the economic impacts that the quarantine has had on us,“ said Nnameke Onejeme, the chief shop steward of Local 7. “We know that Major League Baseball has made the money available, and we’re eager to use that money to care for all families during this crisis.”

Roxie Herbekian, president of Local 7, is requesting the Orioles and owner Peter Angelos pay workers for the first 40 home games, which will likely be canceled due to COVID-19: “A lot of our members live paycheck and paycheck,” she said. 

The union has circulated an online petition urging the Orioles to join teams like the National Hockey League’s Chicago Black Hawks and the National Basketball Association’s Dallas Mavericks who have committed to pay stadium workers while sporting events are shut down.

Forbes estimated the Orioles’ worth at $1.2 billion in 2019—up from the $173 million the Angelos family paid for the team in 1993. State taxpayers spent $210 million to help build Oriole Park at Camden Yards. In 2007, 11 members of the human rights group United Workers threatened a hunger strike as part of a successful campaign to gain a iiving wage for the workers that clean Camden Yards. In 2015, tweets by Orioles Executive Vice President John Angelos defending the Baltimore Uprising (sparked by the killing of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in police custody) went viral after a conservative radio host criticised protestors for disrupting an Orioles game.

“There is a far bigger picture for poor Americans in Baltimore … who don’t have jobs and are losing economic civil and legal rights,” Angelos tweeted. “This makes inconvenience at a ball game irrelevant in light of the needless suffering government is inflicting upon ordinary Americans.”

“It’s been our experience over the years that the Orioles have been sensitive to the needs of our members.” Local 7 President Herbekian said, noting that lost wages from games canceled in 2015 were paid.

Local 7 Chief Steward Onejeme, a recent graduate from the University of Baltimore who makes $12.90 an hour after working at Camden Yards for nine years, says working at the stadium usually functions as his second job to pay back college loans.

“Even though my work has stopped my bills have not,” he said. ”I owe tens of thousands of dollars for education, must pay rent, insurance, I need to buy food, I need to be able to get medicine.”

Charlotte Chatel is 62 years old and has worked at Orioles games for half her life. She recently had a  kidney transplant and says she relies on her earnings to pay for medication, which costs $800 a month. 

“Unemployment is not enough, I can’t live on that,” Chatel said. 

Her husband is also out of work right now, and she helps care for her grandchildren. “We could use the help,” she said.

George Hancock, who made $12.50 an hour last year after working at Camden Yards for the past decade, said he is relying on his job to help support his mother who is close to retiring, and a nephew who has a disability.

“We’ve been committed workers, we come to work and smile, even when we don’t feel well,” Hancock said. “We just want them to do right by us.”

The Baltimore Orioles and Delaware North did not respond to requests for comment.

Photo courtesy Creative Commons.

The post Will the Orioles step up to the plate for its concession workers? appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Maryland voters will have an important decision to make on February 4 when they pick who can best represent the 7th Congressional District—the congressional seat left vacant by the death of Rep. Elijah Cummings and includes parts of Baltimore City, Baltimore County, and Howard County. A field of 32 candidates—24 Democrats and 8 Republicans —are running. In preparation for last week’s “Real Talk Tho: Special Election for 7th Congressional District,” the Real News Network and the Beat sent out a questionnaire to all the candidates running.

The answers of those candidates who did answer are below. While we do not want to prioritize candidates over others, we’ve decided to begin with the answers from two of the frontrunners for reasons explained later on.

Jill Carter (D)

Please write a few words about who you are and your background.What makes you the best candidate? Civil rights is a family tradition for the Carters. My father, Walter P. Carter, was the leader of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and led sit-ins, boycotts, and other protests in Baltimore during the 1960s. He died when I was young, but not before we both helped Parren Mitchell’s successful campaign to become the first Black Congressman from Maryland. I went to Western High School and graduated from Loyola College with a Bachelor’s in English. After graduating, I was a journalist with the AFRO and later received a law degree from the UB School of Law, beginning my legal career which continues to this day. I began serving in the House of Delegates in 2003 and I was elected to the State Senate in District 41 in 2018, with a post on the Judicial Proceedings Committee and advocating every legislative session for the people, without pause. 

I believe I am the best candidate for the position because of my record and my background. I first began serving in the House of Delegates in 2003 and have introduced or co-sponsored bills on a whole host of issues that are just beginning to get traction: Ending the lead crisis. Addressing mass incarceration. Adding accountability to government agencies and the police. Universal healthcare. Our district deserves a Congresswoman who has the policy knowledge and the moral compass to get funding for our local needs, advocate for national priorities, and hold government accountable to the people. Maryand is also lacking in women’s representation in Washington, and I am a woman up to the task of representing our proud district.

What is your fundraising goal, and who will you be targeting for fundraising? Our fundraising goal is $750,000 and we are targeting small-dollar, grassroots supporters around the country who want to promote a progressive and independent voice in Congress. We welcome donations to our PO Box and an ActBlue is forthcoming. Unions such as SEIU1199, SEIU500, IBEW, BTU, and NNU are organizations who we seek as donors of both campaign dollars and GOTV capacity. Justice Democrats, Brand New Congress, and the Sunrise Movement, among other progressive issue campaigns, would be welcomed as donors or supporters in this race.

Our campaign will not be accepting donations from corporations or corporate PACs. We will accept the support of union and issue-based PACs and independent expenditures, if they choose to support our campaign in this race and they understand that I won’t change my stances based on my donors. I’ve been a longtime supporter of campaign finance reform and will introduce or co-sponsor legislation to support publicly financed elections nationally.

Rep. Cummings was regarded by some as a lifelong civil rights champion, especially concerning voting rights for all. What makes you the best candidate to continue this work? Like Congressman Cummings, I am a practicing attorney and have the legal acumen to expand human rights legislation in Congress. My record on civil rights, criminal justice, and voting rights is extensive and the Congressman was an inspiration and guide to me in this work. Many of the issues of police accountability and government accountability were issues that I was championing over a decade before the murder of Freddie Gray or the cruelty and lawlessness of the Gun Trace Task Force were unmasked. I served as the Director of the Baltimore Office of Civil Rights and Wage Enforcement prior to my ascension to the State Senate. I have immense pride that Congressman Cummings called me “The People’s Champion”. Not only do I have a history of civil rights advocacy, I also have serious plans on how to take the freedom struggle to Congress. 

I want to author legislation that will work to end the War on Drugs, mass incarceration, homelessness, and the criminalization of poverty. I will fight to make the right to vote, the most sacred right in any democracy, inalienable to the incarcerated and expand the Voting Rights Act. I will fight to end poverty and support a public health approach to addressing the systemic issues that create crime. I will push for a special prosecutor who can investigate police departments and police brutality cases around the country, which would assist the enforcement of the consent decree.

Do you think it’s important to continue investigating the president? If so, why are you the best candidate to continue to hold the powerful accountable? It is very important to continue the investigation of this criminal, cruel so-called president. Like the late Congressman Cummings, I am an attorney and could use my legal skills on the House Oversight Committee, particularly the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties subcommittee, to investigate the corrupt President’s violations of the law and the public trust. However, I want to make it clear that investigating and uprooting government corruption must be complemented by public policy that works on behalf of the people and serves their needs.

How familiar with you with the demographics of the people who live in Congressional District 7 and the challenges they face? How will you meet the needs of the people who live in this district? I am quite familiar with the District, as I have lived here my entire life. I can recall campaigning as a child for Parren Mitchell, our first Black Congressman. In my service as a Delegate and Senator representing West Baltimore, I have advocated for their issues, particularly ending the lead crisis, increasing school funding, and raising wages, throughout my career without ever turning my back or wavering in my solidarity. 

I will serve the whole district by fighting for federal funding for public transportation, education, and infrastructure upgrades for the roads and water systems that we all share. I will support legislation to abolish student loan debt, convert to tuition-free higher education, conserve our forests and parks, and guarantee world-class education, daycare, housing, healthcare, and high-speed Internet for all our neighbors.

Many in Baltimore regarded Cummings as a great supporter of and advocate for the city. Do you agree? What will you do for Baltimore City? Congressman Cummings was a great supporter of the City and stood tall to defend postal workers and working families through his career. Most importantly, Congressman Cummings represented Baltimore well in the halls of Congress. He lived a life as a dedicated public servant and he will never be replaced. I seek to succeed him and honor his legacy by continuing his fight to the very end. And I will continue his work by advocating for public policy that heals Baltimore and addresses the underlying problems in our beautiful City.

For Baltimore City, I will fight for increased funding that can go directly to the City budget earmarked for education, recreation, infrastructure, and public housing. I will also serve as an independent voice that can call out wrongdoing in City Hall and Annapolis. I will also support Medicare For All, which will grant comprehensive healthcare without co-pays or deductibles and save working families hundreds/thousands of dollars a year and end medical debt. I will fight for federal funding to build public housing and end homelessness in Baltimore City and the United States at large. I will bring federal funding to create a community court for our City, based on community courts in Philadelphia. I will fight for a lead-free future so our children won’t be poisoned in their homes and in their schools.

What is your position on environmental protections here in Maryland and across the country? I strongly support environmental protections and seek to expand them. We need more national parks and conservation areas. We must improve the water quality of the Chesapeake Bay and our tributary systems. We must the air quality of Baltimore City, especially South Baltimore, where the lower air quality leads young Black children to have higher rates of asthma and allergies. Environmental protections should also include converting to 100% renewable energy, more sustainable farming practices, and ending wars abroad that contribute so greatly to climate change.

Are you in support of the Green New Deal? I will be a co-sponsor on the Green New Deal and I will advocate locally and nationally to help pass this bill. For the 7th District, the Green New Deal, will provide federal funding which we could use to build the Red Line, or future transit projects that connect Columbia to Baltimore to Randallstown. This legislation will also convert all public housing to 100% renewable energy and create union jobs that will finally grant economic opportunity to many residents of the district. The Green New Deal is good for the 7th and I will cosponsor this legislation and hold rallies in our district. 

Maya Rockeymoore-Cummings (D)

Please write a few words about who you are and your background. hat makes you the best candidate? I am a change agent, social justice advocate, policy wonk, small business owner, author, and consultant. Only the fourth generation from slavery, I grew up in an Air Force family living in places across the country and abroad. My parents, who were staunch Democrats and civil rights activists, often shared stories of what it was like to live in and survive the segregated Jim Crow South. They instilled in my siblings and I the importance of community service and encouraged us become defenders of human rights and to work toward a more just, inclusive society. This passion led me to earn a Ph.D. in political  science and served as the basis of a twenty year career working as a staffer on Capitol Hill, as the Senior Resident Scholar for Health and Income Security at the National Urban League, as Vice President for Research and Programs at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and as Founder, President and CEO of my own consulting firm Global Policy Solutions. To help advance the cause, I have also served on numerous boards that include the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, National Council on Aging, TransAfrica Forum, National Association of Counties Financial Services Corporation, Baltimore Museum of Art, and Year Up Baltimore among others. It has also been my honor to be elected and to serve as the Chair of the Maryland Democratic Party, a volunteer position, for nearly a year. 

I’m the best candidate because I am a problem solver who has worked  on issues relevant to the Baltimore region for more than twenty years. For more than 11 of those years, I fought alongside Elijah Cummings, the man who represented this district since 1996, and understood and shared his hopes and dreams for the 7th Congressional District. As a former Capitol Hill staffer, I am deeply familiar with its processes, and am willing to roll up my sleeves and work hard and collaboratively to address challenges and maximize opportunities for people and their environment while building on Elijah’s legacy.

What is your fundraising goal, and who will you be targeting for fundraising? My campaign is building a strong coalition of support with deep roots in the 7th Congressional District. In order to fund this campaign in the way it should be resourced, we will be relying on support from an expansive network of neighbors, family, friends, and colleagues who are willing to contribute to my campaign. While I will be accepting contributions from sources that align with my values, I also built a statewide small dollar donor program while I was Chair of the Maryland Democratic Party which increased fivefold during my tenure. I hope to replicate that grassroots energy in my own campaign. 

Rep. Cummings was regarded by some as a lifelong civil rights champion, especially concerning voting rights for all. What makes you the best candidate to continue this work? Elijah stood for civil rights because he was acutely aware that African Americans have been denied the full rights of U.S. citizenship throughout history and within his lifetime. One of his earliest civil rights victories was marching alongside Ms. Juanita Jackson Mitchell to integrate the Riverside pool when he was just a kid living in South Baltimore. We shared a passion for civil rights advocacy because of my own family’s experience with racial discrimination. As the fourth generation from slavery, I am the granddaughter of people who were refused the right to vote and treated inhumanely. My father, a former chair of an NAACP chapter and my mother, a faithful soldier in the struggle, taught us the importance of continuing the battle for equality, equity and justice. Like Elijah, I too have experienced the challenge of racism first hand. I am a graduate of Prairie View A&M University, an HBCU in Texas. While there, I served as the social action chair of the campus chapter of Delta Sigma Theta and as president of the political science club. In 1992, I was leading an effort to register student voters so that their voices would be heard in a local campaign. Student turnout was high in that election but after the votes were tallied the Waller County Police arrested 13 students; claiming that they voted illegally. We then organized a student march to the Waller County Courthouse to demand the expungement of the students record and to fight for our right to vote. In 2004, when Congressman Cummings was Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus I asked him to intercede in yet another voting rights violation at Prairie View. I was grateful that he agreed and, as a result, the George W. Bush Justice Department stepped in to assure PVAMU students their rights. The battle for voting rights at Prairie View and around the country continues. It is something that I am passionate about and will continue to fight for as a fundamental aspect of protecting and preserving our democracy. Another prominent example occurred in August of 2014 when Mike Brown was shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Mo. Images of the unrest filled our TV and I was greatly disturbed, could not rest, and was keenly focused on what could be done to address the issue of extrajudicial killings of people of color. So I came up with an initiative called Beyond Ferguson and partnered with Angela Glover Blackwell of PolicyLink to take out ads in the WashingtonPost.com. We developed a sign on letter that included Elijah and more than 100 prominent people of all backgrounds from across the country and sent it to the Obama White House where it was distributed across departments. Our efforts helped spur the Obama Administration to create the Task Force on 21st Century Policing and it, along with the unrest following the death of Freddie Gray, helped to set the stage for police reform in Baltimore and in places around the country.

Do you think it’s important to continue investigating the president? If so, why are you the best candidate to continue to hold the powerful accountable? Donald Trump wants to turn our democracy into a dictatorship of tyranny and we cannot let that happen. So yes, it’s incredibly important to fight against fascism and to protect our democracy. I’m the best candidate to hold the powerful accountable because I’ve done it before. For example, when Wall Street and George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security in 2005, I was on the front lines fighting against their efforts to steal the hard earned benefits of America’s workers. I’m proud that we were able to stop the Wall Street titans and Bush in their tracks, preserving the program so that seniors, the disabled, and surviving dependents can continue to count on the economic security provided by Social Security for years to come. The Republican agenda to privatize Social Security will continue and I will continue to speak truth to power and fight their efforts to undermine working families. 

How familiar with you with the demographics of the people who live in Congressional District 7 and the challenges they face? How will you meet the needs of the people who live in this district? Very familiar. Maryland’s 7th Congressional District is incredibly diverse. This district ranges from some of the most poverty-stricken to most affluent zip codes in the nation and it includes people from all backgrounds. Heartbreakingly, we also have structural discrimination in Baltimore that manifests in major health and wealth disparities such as a twenty year difference in life expectancies between zip codes that are only five miles apart. I have spent a career 

focused on studying and identifying solutions to these disparities across the areas of health, education, and economic security. I have also walked the streets of Baltimore for twenty years and lived here with Elijah Cummings for twelve. As a result, I am very familiar with the deep challenges and needs of Baltimoreans as well as the diverse concerns facing people in Howard County and Baltimore County. I will focus on leveraging the knowledge and skills I have developed in the areas of critical concern to fight for the needs and aspirations of the people of the 7th Congressional District. My vision includes continuing the fight that Elijah led but also building on his legacy in a way that can bring transformation, healing, and prosperity to the city and region. 

Many in Baltimore regarded Cummings as a great supporter of and advocate for the city. Do you agree? What will you do for Baltimore City? Yes, of course. My husband was Baltimore’s biggest booster. He loved Baltimore, its people, and was one of the greatest leaders in the history of this region and this country. As a City resident, I too love this City and I will fight everyday for our town. That means addressing structural discrimination, supporting ongoing efforts to improve police and community relations, implementing truly universal health care, protecting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, ensuring every child has access to world-class education and training whether they’re in Columbia or Sandtown, and bringing more good jobs back home. 

What is your position on environmental protections here in Maryland and across the country? We only have one planet, and we need to take care of it. Climate change is an existential threat and a global issue. I appreciate many of the environmental protections passed by the Maryland General Assembly and other states, but I think we should go further to ensure sustainable development and responsible growth. 

Are you in support of the Green New Deal?  Yes, absolutely.   

Below are the responses from a few of the other 7th Congressional District candidates. We’d like to add that these answers are printed pretty much as is (save for occasional adjustments for clarity) and that includes some claims that may be controversial or even unsubstantiated.

Christopher M. Anderson (R)

Please write a few words about who you are and your background. What makes you the best candidate? I live in the district, I see the problems we face every day. I helped clean up the district with Scott Presler and others. I also helped Delegate Don Dwyer and Senator Robert Hooper on H.R. 3313 in the Maryland General Assembly. I’ve been a community activist working for change since the Baltimore Uprising. My grandfather, Christopher Bland, owned Bland’s carryout in the district on Riggs Avenue in Baltimore. I know the problems the district faces and I have the passion to solve the district’s issues.

What is your fundraising goal, and who will you be targeting for fundraising? Most of my fundraising goals will be targeted to Baltimore County, Howard County, and conservatives in the nation. I will accept donations from corporations and PACs, I see no reason not to.  

Rep. Cummings was regarded by some as a lifelong civil rights champion, especially concerning voting rights for all. What makes you the best candidate to continue this work? Like Rep. Cummings, I’ve been a community and political activist in Baltimore. I’ve served in the USCG reserves. I helped with the Maryland Committee against the Gun Ban in 1994; I mentored the youth through a nonprofit organization called Project Raise; I was the boy’s youth leader in the Baltimore Christian Warriors; I wrote the first petition in Baltimore for Police body cameras; I marched with the 300 Men, People’s Powers Assembly and the Clergy March during the Baltimore Uprising.

Do you think it’s important to continue investigating the president? If so, why are you the best candidate to continue to hold the powerful accountable? No I don’t think it’s important to continue to investigate the President. I heard Rep. Ilhan Omar say President Trump has over 100 illegal impeachment offense but we are going with the Ukraine phone call because we can not prove anything else. That’s the very definition of a witch hunt and a waste of taxpayers money and time.

How familiar with you with the demographics of the people who live in Congressional District 7 and the challenges they face? How will you meet the needs of the people who live in this district? I’m very familiar with the demographic of the 7th district. I see the issues every day it faces. The increase in crime in Baltimore county will only increase without congressional intervention which no Democrat can solve. Howard county will have that to look forward to as well unless we change course in this District. I will meet all the needs of the people in my District by not voting on party interest over the people of the district. I will make sure the enterprise zones are empowered and the opioid crisis solved for good. 

Many in Baltimore regarded Cummings as a great supporter of and advocate for the city. Do you agree? What will you do for Baltimore City? Rep. Cummings was a great supporter of Baltimore, unfortunately he was not a great advocate for Baltimore. He was a great advocate for Democratic party interest which created most of the problems in Baltimore to begin with. With a high opioid death rate and an out of control murder rate, it’s no reason the $1.8 billion dollars this administration sent to the district hasn’t made a difference & that’s partly the responsibility of the congressional seat. I will vote with the best interest of Baltimore & not vote party interest over the district. 

What is your position on environmental protections here in Maryland and across the country? This is such a tough issue today, there’s not enough being done bipartisan to protect our environment nationwide. Both parties can not agree on the science of climate change and this is hurting the world. 

Are you in support of the Green New Deal? The Green New Deal is a start to making us aware of the issues of climate change but unless Rep. Alexander Cortez gets the help of both parties I can’t support this deal. Most of her own party didn’t support it, it’s time both parties sat down together and work on a deal we all can be happy with.

T. Daniel Baker (D)

Please write a few words about who you are and your background. What makes you the best candidate? I am TDan Baker. I am a very, very concerned District 7 citizen regarding race relations, corporate influence in government, US foreign policy, and especially climate change. Son of a Baptist Minister and high school Math teacher. One of the first graduates of the Virginia Military Institute to join the Peace Corps. Huge fan of JFK’s ‘can do’ vision supporting the ‘moonshot’ and ‘civil rights’. A civilian veteran (US Foreign Service) of Afghanistan (2 tours), International Public Health professional, and recently returned Country Director of an infectious disease prevention and treatment program covering southern Turkey and northern Syria.  

I believe in Telling the Truth, Rule of Law, and The Constitution. I believe that America’s diversity is her greatest strength. I believe that there is serious denial in government – that needs to be called out and addressed at the federal level – regarding the realities of race relations and climate change. I believe that there is serious corruption in government – that also needs to be called out, investigated, and addressed – regarding corporate influence in government and foreign policy.

I believe that most folks in District 7 want: to have the financial boot off their throats – even if a little bit – so that the income they are making today stretches a little bit further each month (perhaps by reducing the work week to 4 days); to feel safe and secure from violence – both domestically and internationally; to have access to decent health care, food, and education for their kids.

And I believe that the following policies can help achieve these wants! Equal Pay:  Same salary for same job; Minimum Wage: = A living wage!;Drug Use Decriminalization: For non-violent offenders; Education: Pay teachers their real worth! Ensure curriculum is preparing our children for their future; Female Reproductive Rights: It is a woman’s right to choose and have access to health care services!; Universal Health Care (Plus Public Opt) : It is a Human Right! People should have the right to choose the kind of care they want; Gun Control:  License and registration to own; Immigration: Far enough back, aren’t we all immigrants?;  Legalization of marijuana: And new research into medical use; Gay marriage & adoption:  We all need love & loving parents!; Improving Transportation and Infrastructure. 

I’ve been fortunate over my career as an international health & development professional to have visited many countries of the world, and I have seen with my own eyes the changes which have befallen other countries suffering from poor governance, corruption, and lack of leadership to address climate change.  We must fight to prevent this from happening to the United States!

Given all the changes that are coming our way–as a country and as a species–I am the best candidate for the position because I’ve seen just how ‘bad’ things can get in such countries and have spent 20 plus years working from the national down to the local country level attempting to prevent and then provide treatment when such things occur. 

Finally, the US Congress is in need of leaders who not only directly represent the will of their constituents but who also understand the global realities of what we ALL will be facing in the coming decades … leaders who can make balanced, informed, and measured decisions for how best to respond to the Global Climate Crisis working on behalf of our Districts, our States, and our Country…I am one such leader.  

What is your fundraising goal, and who will you be targeting for fundraising? Given the short timeframe of this special election primary, my fundraising goal will be a modest $250,000 which I hope to raise through crowdfunding and individual donations. As one of my key platform issues is to repeal Citizens United thus removing the influence of corporations in government, I will not be seeking nor accepting donations from corporations nor PACs. 

Rep. Cummings was regarded by some as a lifelong civil rights champion, especially concerning voting rights for all. What makes you the best candidate to continue this work? Who can replace Congressman Elijah Cummings?  The short answer is no one.  Congressman Cummings will be remembered as champion and true believer in the ‘idea of America’ and American Democracy.  Any American seeking to succeed this “mentor, civil rights activist and stalwart advocate for Baltimore” (Baltimore Sun) and District 7 will be required to not only bring an ‘A Game’ but heart, passion, smarts, tenacity, creative thought, patriotism, and belief in a better tomorrow worthy of Rep. Cummings’ and District 7’s endorsement and respect.

No easy task, but to climb a mountain, one must take the first step.  Herein—with the utmost respect and appreciation for the work and legacy of Congressman Cummings—I humbly present myself as one citizen who will work to give it his all to rise to the challenge of following ‘a great’ as Maryland’s next Representative to District 7 championing those policies and positions that District 7 wants.  

Do you think it’s important to continue investigating the president? If so, why are you the best candidate to continue to hold the powerful accountable? I fully support The Constitution and thus the impeachment process continuing on its due course.  This said, I despise bigotry and I despise any hint of white supremacy.  Though I respect the office of the President, I am deeply disturbed by the hubris and arrogance of this single individual who thinks that he alone knows better than the 243 years of experience encapsulated in the 44 Presidents who preceded him.  

How familiar with you with the demographics of the people who live in Congressional District 7 and the challenges they face? How will you meet the needs of the people who live in this district? Many politicians will tell you that they already know all District 7’s concerns and thus what the district needs. I have lived in District 7 for 15 years, and while ‘I think’ most people of the district want: their income to stretch a little further; to feel safe and secure from violence; and to have equal access to health care, good education, and adequate food, ‘I also think’ that the approach, championed by many of my opponents, lacks flexibility, open mindedness, team work approach, and a level of humility that most voters of District 7 – and throughout the United States – would prefer in their representative.

What I present in my campaign website (VoteTDanBaker.com) is ‘Who I am’ and then ‘What I believe’ in order to give District 7 voters a quick glance opportunity to know me and my thoughts. However, when it comes to ‘District 7’s Concerns?’, I’m asking that all perspective voters visiting the site take 2 minutes to complete a brief poll to identify those issues, which are of greatest importance to them.

In the days prior to computers, high speed internet and smart phones, a district voted for a ‘representative’ who alone went away to Washington, D.C. to speak ‘for’ their district.  The present day approach I will take is to go a step further and to work directly ‘with’ District 7 voters to identify the majority (or at least plurality) position for how constituents want me to vote on any and all major legislation.  My hope (and pledge) then is to vote ‘with’ – not just ‘for’ – District 7 100% of the time!

What is your position on environmental protections here in Maryland and across the country? As a trained member of Vice President Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership Corps, I’ve believed in the need for US leadership and an aggressive response to the Global Climate Crisis for many years now.  The UNEP report that came out this week provided evidence and stated emphatically that the global community of countries is not effectively reducing its Green House Gas emissions to meet the pledges of the Paris Climate Agreement signed in 2015 to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 C.  Though several states and cities across the US are working diligently to meet the Paris Agreement, including Maryland, clearly much more needs to be done.  To this end in my website platform I propose a “stretch goal” to begin Reversing Climate Change – while establishing new jobs – starting right here in District 7 by: Establishing the first all renewable energy municipality (including all residences and businesses) in the United States and by training District 7’s unemployed and underemployed in solar and wind turbine manufacturing, grid conversion, and systems installation.

In establishing the first all renewable energy municipality in District 7, what is required first and foremost is citizen and distributor incentives to convert from fossil fuel based electric supply to renewables only supply. To be clear, several outside companies have attempted this in District 7 in the past, but households remain hesitant to switch their electricity supply for fear of a mishap in billing or getting stuck with an incorrect increase in cost. *As a point of fact, renewable energy costs per kilowatt hour are typically 3 to 5 cents less than that of fossil fuel-based supply.

As Representative for District 7, I would work with local communities and all levels of Maryland state and local government: first, to identify the economic and environmental benefits of conversion to ‘renewables only’ for municipal electric supply; second, to move such popular initiatives forward while overcoming key roadblocks to making such a conversion successful; and third, to entreat and lobby the US Congress to provide support for this cutting edge, first of its kind, state and locally run, initiative.

Developing a model for the “GREEN AMERICA” renewable energy employment initiative in District 7 will require integrated investment in both rural (solar array and wind turbine component manufacturing) and urban (grid conversion, electricity storage, and installation) development. To attract such investments will require incentives – for small and large businesses alike – in the form of favorable terms of land use and taxation so that existing and startup green manufacturing companies can in turn offer attractive and favorable terms to their newly recruited and trained District 7 employees.

Are you in support of the Green New Deal? Absolutely!  However, given that the U.S. has been misdirected over the last three years by a climate denialist while shirking decades of successful environmental policies and protections at the now hollowed out EPA, we are now faced with the stark reality of unstoppable climate chaos unless we reduce GHG emissions by 7.6% each year over the next decade. (UNEP)

The cost of such a massive intervention is now estimated to cost @ $2.5 trillion – the same amount expended in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.  So while the effort is absolutely necessary – albeit very late – the question then becomes … Where does the money come from?  If under a Democratic Executive and Congress, the USG could begin to cut back certain redundant or outdated programming at the Department of Defense. *The United States government spends +50% of each year’s budget, some +$600,000,000,000 ($600 Billion), on defense, with one result being that the DOD has itself become the single greatest consumer of fossil fuels in the United States as well as the single largest institutional emitter of Green House Gases in the entire world. (Brown University).

As a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, I fully support maintaining a force more than capable of defending the borders and shores of the United States but otherwise: It’s time to begin eliminating force redundancy while reducing emissions at the DOD and it’s time to retrofit and convert the DOD from the single largest institutional polluter on the planet, to the institution that is leading the charge to reverse climate change.  

Join me in calling for a rationalizing of future DOD spending—presently greater than the defense budgets of the next seven countries combined—to more appropriately align with the greatest national security threat that exists to the United States today, climate change.      

Terri L. Hill (D)

Please write a few words about who you are and your background. What makes you the best candidate? As a physician and an experienced legislator, I bring a perspective that’s unique from anyone else in this race. I’ve treated patients in this community for 30 years, so my insights about healthcare are invaluable to the discussion. I know the barriers to care that they face and I’ve used that experience to craft successful legislation to remove some of those barriers. But there is more to be accomplished and Congress needs my kind of experience to pass good laws that ensure every person has access to quality healthcare. 

I’ve been a resident of this community for 50 years. I am a graduate of the public schools and I earned my undergraduate degree in bioelectric engineering from Harvard University and my medical degree from the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. I returned home to set up my small business and have practiced in the Baltimore metro area for almost 30 years. I am an experienced legislator, first elected to the House of Delegates in 2014 and reelected in 2018 where I represent Legislative District 12, which includes sections of Baltimore and Howard Counties lying within the 7th Congressional District. Although my focus has been on healthcare, my legislative successes extend to education, the environment and improving the lives of the underserved. In the most recent session, I sponsored successful bills that improved access to prescription drugs for patients with chronic illnesses, created programs and funding mechanisms to assist seniors wishing to age in place, provided access to HIV prevention medication to minors, and ensured better public and jurisdictional notice of contaminated rivers. Ensuring that every child has the opportunity to succeed, that every person has access to good healthcare and that every worker receives a sustainable wage is central to my vision for the people of Maryland 7^th Congressional District.

What is your fundraising goal, and who will you be targeting for fundraising? 

Rep. Cummings was regarded by some as a lifelong civil rights champion, especially concerning voting rights for all. What makes you the best candidate to continue this work? Like many of us in the race, I considered the Congressman my mentor. His encouragement nurtured me. 

His vision inspired me. His courage emboldened me to step up and do more. And, like many in this race, my work has been focused on civil rights and social justice. And, l share with some of my fellow competitors, deep roots in this district that bind me to its wellbeing. I am humbled by the opportunity to continue his work, and to build solutions to our problems by focusing on our promise. The issue of voting rights and the national campaign to suppress votes and disenfranchise citizens was THE primary issue which propelled my decision to run for office in 2012. I proposed legislation to address gerrymandering in my first term in General Assembly and the stakes have only gotten higher since that time, particularly on the national level , with the slow assent of propaganda, and the clear commitment of some to usurp the will of the majority in order to obtain and retain power by any means necessary. 

Do you think it’s important to continue investigating the president? If so, why are you the best candidate to continue to hold the powerful accountable? Yes, if the President has not been removed from office, I will continue to hold him accountable. And if he isn’t held accountable through the prescribed process, I will work to ensure that the process is changed so that the imbalance of power between branches of government is corrected. Lastly, I will remind us all that the ultimate power to affect change lies in the ballot box and I will work to restore the rights of disenfranchised voters and rally every citizen to exercise their right to vote, the ultimate tool of accountability. 

How familiar with you with the demographics of the people who live in Congressional District 7 and the challenges they face? How will you meet the needs of the people who live in this district? I’ve lived here for 50 years and practiced medicine in hospitals throughout the Baltimore region for 30 years. My longtime faith-based community lies within Baltimore City and I’ve represented portions of Congressman Cummings’ district in Baltimore County and in Howard County. I am uniquely aware of the diversity of this district and the problems and opportunities it faces. We have problems including the lack of good health care, jobs that pay enough to sustain us, and public transit to get us to those jobs, but we also have the promise of living in a diverse community with world-class hospitals, good employers and successful small businesses. As their state representative for the last five years, I have worked to meet the needs of many of these constituents through direct constituent services, through successful legislation that addressed the needs of seniors and of children, and through established partnerships with public schools, local governments, service organizations and private businesses. I will continue this work at the federal level to ensure funding levels that are commensurate with the needs of District 7. 

Many in Baltimore regarded Cummings as a great supporter of and advocate for the city. Do you agree? What will you do for Baltimore City? Yes, Congressman Cummings’ heart and home was in Baltimore City. Like the Congressman I have a vision for Baltimore City that builds on its promise. I see young people choosing to invest in parts of Baltimore City and companies who wish to expand and employ residents. Citizens are newly engaging in restoring parks, cleaning debris, and ensuring its waterways are clean. New local leaders are emerging with energy and fresh ideas to tackle the problems that have created barriers to success. I know as a state representative that Maryland’s success is tied to the success of Baltimore City. The City does not stand in isolation. I will fight for that success through innovative federal programs to address addiction,  improved services for the homeless, meaningful housing subsidies, and programs to solve intractable unemployment. I am committed to ensuring that federal investments and funding are commensurate with the need, reflect a correction for the disproportionate burden borne by these communities over multiple generations, and are obligated for the many years required to effect the needed changes and sustained results. So, he was absolutely a supporter and advocate for the city and its residents. But his reach encompassed much more. He was an advocate for his entire district and the state. He looked to what was best in each part of the community and looked to how to use its example as a solutions roadmap for other areas. 

What is your position on environmental protections here in Maryland and across the country? In July, I asked the Attorney General to issue an opinion on whether local jurisdictions were following federal and state forest conservation laws pertaining to our priority forests. The opinion has triggered local jurisdictions to review and strengthen local laws across the state. In October I filed a joint resolution asking the General Assembly of Maryland to officially declare a climate emergency, the first step needed for rapid response. Last session I introduced successful legislation that required better downstream jurisdictional and public notice of contaminated rivers and streams. I sponsored successful legislation to allow local jurisdictions to limit the use of plastic bags. I did not succeed with legislation that sought to conserve energy in state funded buildings and to evaluate construction projects with a goal towards limiting bird strikes. We can do better to protect our steep slopes, to lessen impervious surfaces, to protect trees and to reduce impacts from development. Additionally, at the state level we try to fight against the rollback of environmental protections by the federal government. These rollbacks related to water quality, chemical regulations, fuel consumption and emissions have devastating effects, especially in our poor and urban communities. We must take action now, to restore our protections and to survive climate change. 

Are you in support of the Green New Deal? I support the far-reaching goals of the Green New Deal Resolution to reduce consumption of fossil fuels and limit greenhouse gas emissions and to translate these efforts into high paying jobs in clean energy industries. 

Liz Matory (R)

Please write a few words about who you are and your background. What makes you the best candidate? I’m the unicorn. Before unicorns were cool. Having been a democrat operative and now vocal conservative advocate, I have fought through a lot of the persistent issues still facing our community. Like so many other voters, I grew tired of the lip service and empty promises of my former party. We need someone who can remain nimble and passionate to fight for all of us. Not tow the party line, but have the power to discern the best answers for our district. If we elect a traditional lifelong fill in the blank, we will not find solutions, only continued frustration. And if we nominate a republican who has built their reputation on bashing the last representative, we will not make any progress either. 

I am also the only candidate who has received a nomination for congress in the 21^st century meaning almost 78,000 voters in 2018 wanted me to represent them in congress. No other candidate has had that honor from recent history. I was born and raised in DC. Attended Sidwell Friends, Columbia University, Howard Law and received my MBA from the Robert H Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. I am a part of the lost generation of lawyers, those who finished law school around the economic downturn so I went to non-profit fundraising instead of practicing law. After working on the Hill for congressman from California, I got to serve on the founding team of the first all-girls public charter school for girls in Washington. It was then when I realized that one or two schools in Southeast were not enough to address generational poverty and the miseducation of our youth. I returned to my alma mater Howard University School of Law to serve as the director of development under Mayor Schmoke and my sense of urgency led me to pursue by MBA. By the end of B-school, I had already started my first campaign at the state level. That was also the year that I saw how the sausage was made by being a democrat field organizer for the 2014 gubernatorial election. The greatest spark of consciousness was when I reconnected with Christopher Barry for his special election to fill his late father, Marion Barry’s seat on the DC City Council. Chris actually said he would be a republican because his entrepreneurial and patriotic spirit is more aligned with that party. Christopher succumbed to his drug addiction on August 14, 2016 and my life was permanently altered from his death. In many ways, having lost my first love, I have no choice but to fight and push forward. As of 2018, the 2^nd congressional district was the most viable seat for a political convert, and graciously I received the republican nomination and garnered almost 78,000 votes for congress.  On November 30, 2018, I accepted Jesus as my personal lord and savior and do believe wholeheartedly that only He is the way, the truth, and the life.

What is your fundraising goal, and who will you be targeting for fundraising? My goal is to raise enough money to connect with the right voters first in the primary and then later in the general. I am targeting former supporters from both Maryland and across the country, since my message resonates with other disenfranchised voters from other states who are also interested in conserving our republic. Corporate donations are not allowed on the federal level. Though PACs are. If I share the same values as the PACs, I will accept the contributions. And since the teacher’s union is the largest special interest group in our state, I have to have something to counterbalance the goliath that feeds the political establishment here in Maryland.

Rep. Cummings was regarded by some as a lifelong civil rights champion, especially concerning voting rights for all. What makes you the best candidate to continue this work?  Both Congressman Cummings and I graduated from Howard University. Our alma mater has instilled in us the same understanding and love for our cultural heritage. It is because of the encouragement and support I personally received from Congressman Cummings that I am running for the 7^th. The moment that he passed away, I knew that no other Republican would have the ability to honor what was good and be honest with what was not as good. I am running to ensure that our country remains the greatest country on earth and that every citizen knows and values that he or she is the most powerful citizen ever created in the history of humanity. I wholeheartedly believe that we must return to our shared conservative and Christian values. Most of us live by conservative principles and we don’t even know it. What people claim to want in their representative will never be achieved by condoning socialist/communist ideologies. The party that Cummings started out in does not exist at the time of his death. Most democrats know this and that is why you see so many running despite his widow’s candidacy.

Do you think it’s important to continue investigating the president? If so, why are you the best candidate to continue to hold the powerful accountable? I think everyone in office or formerly in office should be scrutinized at the level that the current administration is being scrutinized. I look forward to identifying the several missing pieces starting with who slaughtered Seth Rich and why 70% of our uranium is now owned by foreign countries and companies. If you investigate one, investigate the last four administrations. It’s only fair.

How familiar with you with the demographics of the people who live in Congressional District 7 and the challenges they face? How will you meet the needs of the people who live in this district? Having spent the last five campaigning through the region either as a candidate or a campaign worker, I am extremely familiar with the gerrymandered districts and their demographics. 

One of the best things to ever come from CD7’s gerrymandering is that it now includes rural, suburban, and urban communities. Since 2012 sadly many of the citizens in CD7 did not think that their representative cared very much about their needs because he only spent time in heavily democratic voting areas. And it turns out that much of the issues that were in existence since 1983 are still present and perhaps have gotten worse over the years. 

What else can voters do, but to vote for some who refused to continue that dead end and found better more sustainable solutions. I have had the honor of hearing directly from voters and I have heard them loud and clear. This election for this district is the best way to represent citizens and help us get back to our shared values of individual liberty, God-centered living, personal responsibility, and economic sustainability.

Many in Baltimore regarded Cummings as a great supporter of and advocate for the city. Do you agree? What will you do for Baltimore City?  Cummings was a very vocal supporter of his city, but many civic leaders acknowledge that the 2012 gerrymandered weakened his representation by dividing the city among three congressional districts, giving some to Sarbanes and some to Ruppersberger.  These other two congressman have been able to glade down easy street while Cummings had to do the heaviest lifting and received all the negative attention for what was ultimately a shared responsibility for every elected official related to the city. The best thing I can do for the City is learn from the people who have been in the trenches for decades. They know what works and they also know who are the crooks. I don’t have any cut cards, so we need someone who is willing to listen but have the brains to figure things out. Very few people have had the opportunity to connect with the several sides of society. Our congressional representative must be able to respect the city, honestly and prayerfully – that is what I offer. We will not find solutions, unless we return to our Christian values.

What is your position on environmental protections here in Maryland and across the country? We have very strong environmental protections in our state, but has we have found out there needs to be collaboration between the states that share resources. Federal regulations, while some are necessary, ultimately favor corporations who want to protect their market share from competitors who could offer better services to consumers. Congress has lost a lot of its credibility because of the deals made with such cronies who pay to keep their favored representatives in office. The longer someone is in office (especially through the several levels of government – local then state then federal) they have become beholden to their donor base more than their constituents. As we have seen so brilliantly in Maryland politics, Baltimore specifically.

Are you in support of the Green New Deal? Absolutely not. I think it’s a very ingenious way for communism to take hold of our constitutional republic. As with many overreaching government efforts, they start off sounding nice and altruistic, but in the long run were only ways for individual liberty and constitutional rights to be relinquished and muted.

Saafir Rabb (D)

Please write a few words about who you are and your background. What makes you the best candidate? 

For too long Maryland’s 7th Congressional District has been underserved by Washington despite the District sending more than its fair share of earnest public servants to Congress. There is lots of potential here but it’s been hamstrung by the old ways of politics at both the federal and local level. I have spent my life in the service of this district’s residents: building affordable housing, helping addicts rebuild their lives, and creating jobs in Baltimore and beyond. People are tired of hearing platitudes and promises, and throughout my career I’ve worked across difference to get meaningful work done for ordinary people. We have arrived at a point in this country where office holders at the highest levels of our government routinely attack our allies abroad and our own citizens, including this very district. Our district is not the “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” that our President would have our fellow Americans believe. Our district needs forceful leadership, and means that stepping up to serve is an obligation.

Saafir Rabb is a business strategist, community developer, and advocate for cultural competence. Born in Baltimore City and growing up between Baltimore and Howard County, he has spent his life working behind the scenes in the communities of Maryland’s 7th district, promoting social enterprise, expanding addictions recovery efforts, building low to moderate income housing, and creating jobs for residents. Saafir went on to build a business career with global philanthropic reach. Throughout this career, he has remained committed to changing the circumstances of District 7 for the better. Saafir is proud of his Maryland heritage and is dedicated to improving the apparatus through which communities connect with their representatives. Saafir’s story starts out like many others in the 7th district. He was born in a city rife with failed programs that have divided Baltimore City, Baltimore County and Howard County. His neighborhood, like many others in the 7th, lost close to half of all residents due to financial woes, violence that has taken lives and a never-ending drug epidemic now being felt throughout the region, and has witnessed program after program fail to make real change. As the son of a teacher and a union steelworker, Saafir is dedicated to promoting workers rights, strengthening unions and protections, and raising the minimum wage. Our friends, family and neighbors should not have to work multiple jobs in order to put food on the table for their families; this is why Saafir has a strategy that reprioritizes middle class Americans. Saafir has developed an accomplished business career that spans the globe. He has focused his business efforts on promoting diversity and inclusion, building a broad international network of business leaders in the process. This has given him a unique lens into international problems. Saafir will champion diplomacy, working to find common ground solutions that promote peace while opposing irresponsible policies that hurt American credibility at home and abroad. Saafir graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, earned a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland, and received a Masters degree from Johns Hopkins University. Saafir served as an advisor to President Barack Obama’s transition team and is currently a board member with the Coalition for Black Excellence and Words Beats and Life.

What is your fundraising goal, and who will you be targeting for fundraising? Sadly, due to the nature of American campaign finance this race will require several hundred thousand dollars in order to win. Our nation is long overdue for campaign finance reform at the state, local, and federal level. Until such time, I plan to accept donations from people who see promise in my ability to represent and serve the residents of Maryland’s 7th District in Congress. I will not be accepting donations from corporations or corporate PACs. We welcome support from groups dedicated to electing leaders who will improve the conditions of working Americans, our schools, our environment, and our community. I will evaluate each group on its individual merits when accepting or declining contributions.

Rep. Cummings was regarded by some as a lifelong civil rights champion, especially concerning voting rights for all. What makes you the best candidate to continue this work?  I was born in the district, have served the district, and understand the district. Turning that service into legislative influence to continue a legacy of pragmatic and progressive priorities in Congress is my chief goal. To that end I would create legislation to expand federal funding for states implementing automatic voter registration and push for additional oversight over states and localities that pursue voter roll purges.

Do you think it’s important to continue investigating the president? If so, why are you the best candidate to continue to hold the powerful accountable? Yes without a doubt. The President and his administration have consistently engaged in a series of potentially illegal activities, which have tainted the image of our nation both at home and abroad. Like most Americans and residents of the 7th District, I too have low regard those who are corrupt and will not hold the powerful accountable. This nation needs leaders whose lives and work reflect the hope and promise of America. We need to show moral courage and hold the powerful accountable, especially those in elected office, now more than ever.

How familiar with you with the demographics of the people who live in Congressional District 7 and the challenges they face? How will you meet the needs of the people who live in this district? I was born and raised in the district. My life is in the district. My business is in district. We are not the victims that President Trump would have our fellow Americans and the world believe. While he may target and criticize our city, his administration represents an expression of moral decay and is emblematic of the kind of government that has neglected its constituents time and time again. We are Americans in need of tangible proof that we have awoken from this collective American nightmare; affordable housing, good schools, criminal justice reform, and jobs. I have the experience of working across difference to bring jobs and addictions recovery to the residents of this district. I have dedicated my life doing that. That dedication comes from an awareness of the district and its unique challenges. I ask for the opportunity to continue to dedicate myself to the residents of Baltimore, Baltimore County, and Howard County in our nation’s capital.

Many in Baltimore regarded Cummings as a great supporter of and advocate for the city. Do you agree? What will you do for Baltimore City?  I believe that Cummings was a great supporter and advocate for the city. It will be impossible to fill his shoes but we can continue on the path that he was walking. Like Rep. Cummings, I will be an advocate for the city and the district as a whole. Many challenges we face here in the 7th often bleed across county lines, across socio-economic lines, and racial divides. The scourge of addiction plagues residents of White Marsh and Columbia, just as it does residents of Park Heights. We need to tackle addiction, vagrancy, and economic stagnation which have held us back from our full potential. My life’s work will inform how I tackle those issues in Congress, issues I’ve dedicated two decades to at the local level.

What is your position on environmental protections here in Maryland and across the country? Addressing climate change is a top priority and we need to reinstate Obama-era protections for our natural resources as a first step. This administration’s efforts to undermine America’s natural heritage are deeply unpatriotic and must be rolled back. We must recommit ourselves to that fight beginning right now. In Ellicott City, for example, we’ve seen how climate change has led to excess flooding. In recent years, Maryland has experienced some of the worst storm seasons in memory, including flooding compounded by climate change. 

Are you in support of the Green New Deal? Climate change is a global challenge. I support measures like the Green New Deal to address fundamental issues of environmental health, which have gone unaddressed or under addressed by our government. 

The post Real Talk Tho Questionnaire: 7th Congressional District candidates respond appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

On Thursday night, members of Communities United’s Youth Organizing Leadership Academy (YOLA) gathered in Harbor East to demand corporations who receive millions of dollars in tax breaks each year pay their taxes like the rest of us.

“Say no to corporate greed,” Community United’s Steven Merrick yelled.

His chants bounced off the glitzy glass buildings of Harbor East neighborhood and were repeated back to him by the crowd of 20 or so.

“Stop stealing from our kids,” Merrick added.

The group stood between the Under Armour Brand House and the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront hotel in Harbor East for a protest focused on how tax money not collected from corporations such as Under Armour and Marriott would help fund Baltimore City schools if were collected.

“I came because I’m tired of looking at cracked paint on the walls and broken chairs, broken tables,” said Shakerra McDonald.

“I’m here because I pay my taxes and I make less than $20,000 a year, I honestly don’t make a whole lot of money and big corporations make tons, millions of dollars—probably even billions—a year,” said Olivia Smith. “That’s not ok. And I want to be heard because I haven’t been heard in a very long time and it’s time to speak up.”

And Communities United came with research. They stress that Under Armour reported its pre-tax profits in 2017 at $157 million, did not pay any state taxes that year, and received $8.3 million in state tax credits.

That’s not to mention the historic Tax Increment Financing (TIF) the Under Armour-adjacent Port Covington project receives. A report in July by ProPublica revealed that Maryland Governor Larry Hogan used a mapping error to get “Opportunity Zone” status—usually reserved for poorly funded areas of the city in need of support—for Port Covington. Currently, Under Armour is the subject of a federal accounting probe.

Communities United also explains how Marriott International’s cumulative profits for 2016 through 2018 were $7 billion while financial disclosures show the company paid no state taxes. During that same 2016-2018 period, Marriott received $287 million in Maryland tax credits. 

While Under Armour and and Marriott get millions in tax breaks, the Kirwan Commission found Maryland’s schools are underfunded by $2.9 billions of dollars every year. The commission has said that Baltimore City needs to increase its local contributions by $300 million by 2030 for its schools to be adequately funded.

“We cannot fund Kirwan if we don’t close corporate tax loopholes and improve our upside-down tax system,” said Communities United Executive Director, Jane Henderson. “The top one percent in Maryland pay the lowest tax rate—that ain’t right.”

Communities United’s Tia Downer has a child who attends Sandtown Achievement Academy, a school Under Armour helped renovate for the 2019-2020 school year with a $250,000 grant. Downer stressed that while donations are appreciated by the community they do not make up for not paying taxes.

“I am thankful that Under Armour makes charitable donations to some of Baltimore’s schools. At my child’s school, they recently funded the renovation of the gym,” Downer said. “But charity does not replace them paying their taxes. Under Armour and Marriott need to pay their fair share.”

Under Armour’s net worth is around $2 billion, which means that $250,000 grant is .0125% of the company’s wealth. 

“I’m tired of seeing youth like us being overlooked every freaking day. I’m tired of being treated like I’m a little man,” Community United’s Kuijuan “Woogie” Jackson said. “I’m tired of always having to struggle to make ends meet when people like this get to eat whatever they want. I’m hungry.”

The group marched throughout Harbor East chanting “Tax the rich, fund our schools,” and “Stop stealing from our kids.” At one point, police ordered the group—who were primarily marching on sidewalks—to disperse. They did not. 

On the bull horn, Communities United’s Henderson and Jackson discussed the terms of Kirwan and taxation in front of the crowd.

“The Kirwan Commission has recommended a 4.4 billion dollar annual increase in school funding, to be phased in over the next 10 years, our schools need it. That works out to be about two million dollars a school. Imagine for your school, what that could mean,” Communities United Executive Director, Henderson said to the crowd.

“We need a lot of work,” Community United’s Jackson said, interjecting. “It’s a start but nah, I’m not happy with that.”

“On average. Some schools would get more. Schools that need more are supposed to get more,” Henderson explained.

“Do we ever get what we need?” Jackson said, laughing.

“Well that’s what we’re fighting for,” Henderson said.

Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly called the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront “Marriott Four Seasons” on first mention. The Beat apologizes for the error.

The post Baltimore youth demand Under Armour and Marriott pay taxes like the rest of us appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

They say when it rains, it pours. In Baltimore, when it rains, shit pours— human shit from the city’s sewers pours into the Chesapeake Bay, into the street, and into people’s homes. 

These basement backups—shit streaming into people’s homes—will be the subject of an investigative hearing today to help residents deal with sewage the city’s programs aren’t doing much to currently help.

Baltimore’s decades-old sewage system was designed to allow excess raw sewage to flow directly into city streams and the Chesapeake Bay. In 2018 alone, rainfall washed 260 million gallons of wastewater into the Inner Harbor.  

Baltimore City is also currently under a federal consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency and Maryland’s Department of the Environment to reduce these polluting sewage overflows into streams and the harbor. As officials work to close sewage outflow points into waterways and adhere to the consent decree, excess sewage flows out of drain pipes and into city residents’ homes. And these sewage backups can expose residents to bacteria, viruses, and parasites, which can cause infections. And they’re not just unhealthy and gross—they can also be costly, damaging floors, walls, furniture, and appliances such as washing machines.

In April 2018, the Department of Public Works (DPW) created an Expedited Reimbursement Program for residents experiencing sewage backups—a mandate under the consent decree. Yet according to environmental advocates with Clean Water Action, Blue Water Baltimore, and the Environmental Integrity Project who have reviewed DPW’s reports, the reimbursement program is seriously flawed. 

According to their analysis, of the 4,632 reported building backups from April 2018 to March 2019, the city only processed 74 applications for the program. Of the 74 processed, only 10 applications were accepted. The consent decree required that the city set aside $2 million per year for the reimbursement program, but they only doled out $14,775. 

So on Wednesday, Nov. 13 at 5 p.m., Baltimore’s City Council will hold an investigative hearing to assess the Expedited Reimbursement Program, and explore what else the city could do to help mitigate and prevent sewage backups.  Environmental and public health advocates will hold a press conference beforehand at 4 p.m.

Jennifer Kunze, an organizer with Clean Water Action discussed many of the problems with the current program with the Real News Network.

“From the beginning, [the Expedited Reimbursement Program] had a lot of shortcomings,” Kunze said.

One shortcoming was the amount of money the program offered.

 “It was capped at a reimbursement of $2,500 which is not adequate to how much these incidents can really cost people,” Kunze said. “It only covers cleanup costs, not property loss, which is where the big damages can really rack up, especially if sewage floods into someone’s hot water heater or furnace.” 

Kunze also says the program should apply to a broader range of backups: “It only covers sewer backup that are caused by wet weather events—rain water getting in through cracks and holes in the sewer system and flooding things, flooding the pipes, forcing the sewage to back up.” 

Heavy rains aren’t the only things that can cause backups, Kunze said: “If someone has a really terrible sewage backup that’s caused by a fatberg [editor’s note: a fatberg is a mass of improperly flushed materials held together by cooking grease and other fatty products which can clog pipes], a clog down in the city sewage line, the main line under their street, or even from contractor error of someone who’s working on the sewage lines…that wouldn’t be eligible for reimbursement.”

Often, multiple factors work together to create backups. A clogged pipe, for instance, may only pose problems during a rainstorm. 

“Both of those two things together are going to interact with each other and make a sewage backup that might’ve been minor if there was wet weather surcharging going through a perfectly clean pipe, turn into a major problem,” said Kunze. “And so to make this determination that if there’s a clog in the pipe, wet weather didn’t contribute and someone shouldn’t be able to get help from the city that they need is not an equitable way to make that decision.” 

DPW has not made public how they determine whether or not a backup was caused by a “wet weather event” or heavy rainfall.

Another factor that can exacerbate these backups: The climate crisis. 2018 was Baltimore’s wettest year on record, and more rain puts more stress on the city’s pipes, creating more sewage backups. 

“It’s only right that a responsible amount of that money is going back to help people who are experiencing this really, really awful problem in their homes,” Kunze said. “And I mean, people’s water bills are going up.” 

The repairs and replacements the city is mandated to undertake under the federal consent decree will eventually cost city ratepayers $2 billion. To raise this revenue, the city has imposed a series of water and sewage rate hikes. This year, the price of water increased by 10%, and two more 10% rate hikes are planned over the next two years. Even before the latest increase, water rates had doubled since 2012. These rate hikes have prompted calls to implement an income-based water billing system.

Kunze says there are several ways to improve the existing reimbursement program which she hopes officials will address. “Reimbursement should not be capped at $2,500, as that does not reflect the cost of one of these incidents,” she said. “Reimbursements should not only be for clean-up costs, also for property damage, and you should be able to get reimbursement for an incident that’s caused by problems in the city side of the sewer line, whether that’s wet weather or a fatberg or anything else that isn’t on your property and your own responsibility,” she said. 

She hopes the discussion doesn’t stop there. 

“More broadly, I think that we should really be looking to cities like Cincinnati, Ohio that have been more proactively dealing with this through a public health lens,” she said. “In Cincinnati…when you call to report that there is sewage in your basement, the city will send someone out within four hours and then provides a cleanup crew that is able to handle this hazmat situation in your home and then clean it up for you.”

Wednesday’s hearing will give city officials an opportunity to sort this shit out.

“We need to make sure that we are prioritizing stopping sewage backups from happening because of their really enormous public health impacts that they have on Baltimore City residents and the financial impacts,” Kunze said. 

The post Baltimore Reckons With A Shitty Sewage Situation appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

On Thursday, Nov. 7 Maryland teachers and supporters will protest a fundraiser being held by Republican Governor Larry Hogan aimed at fighting increased spending on public schools. 

The popular, term-limited Governor who frequently spars with teachers unions and has even called them “thugs,” is through, Change Maryland Action Fund, a Super PAC, courting wealthy donors to build a two million dollar war chest, funding lobbying efforts and a PR campaign to turn public opinion against a plan to dramatically boost education spending. Hogan has said the plan to equitably fund public schools “is outrageous pandering to special interest groups.”

The fundraiser is being held at the Live! Casino & Hotel outside of Baltimore, and guests are encouraged to give $25,000 for a VIP table, The Washington Post reported. “There is no limit on the amount that you can donate to Change Maryland Action Fund,” an ad for the casino fundraiser states. Because Change Maryland Action Fund identifies as a “political organization” and is not immediately connected to Hogan’s official campaign committee, it can bypass the $6,000 limit for direct donations to a political candidate.

Diamonté Brown, president of the Baltimore Teachers Union, is one of many attending the protest.

“Governor Hogan may want to learn a lesson from Kentucky’s recent election about what happens to the political careers of governors who choose to make public schools, teachers, and the students they serve their enemies,” Brown said. 

Hogan has maintained he has budgeted “record” funding for public education, and that schools are not underfunded, rather plagued by rampant mismanagement—a common Republican talking point. But a state panel known as the Kirwan Commission tasked with studying how to make the state’s schools competitive in the 21st century found schools are underfunded by $2.9 billion each year. 

“It’s important for folks in Maryland to see what this governor is really up to—shameful,” said Rob Helfenbein, Associate Dean of Education at Loyola University. “We know that children deserve access to high quality pre-kindergarten programs. We know that Baltimore City has been repeatedly underfunded and underserved by the state.”

Democrats have vowed to pass Kirwan without large tax increases, and can point to broad public support. A recent Goucher College Poll found 70% of those surveyed believe the state spends “too little” on public education, with 74% saying they “support personally paying more in taxes to improve public education.”  

In 2008, Maryland voters approved Casinos with the promise their revenue would give a big boost to schools. But that money never actually reached classrooms and instead only supplanted existing funding. Voters finally approved a new ballot measure in 2018 that phased in that increased revenue to schools, amounting to hundreds of millions a year through 2022.  

Hogan has claimed that funding Kirwan would mean “a 535% increase to property taxes”, or would cost families “$6,200 in additional taxes per year,” statements even The Sun’s editorial board (who endorsed Hogan) called “alternative facts.”

“It’s disappointing that Governor Hogan is focused on misinformation, scare tactics, and raising dark money from wealthy donors rather than rolling up his sleeves to help lead on this once-in-a-generation opportunity to make sure that every student in every neighborhood has a great public school,” said Adam Mendelson, a spokesperson for the Maryland State Education Association(MSEA), the state’s largest teachers union.

One of the wealthiest states in the country, Maryland schools are marked by stark disparities; the state spends 4.9% on lower income school districts than wealthier ones, the Kirwan Commission found. Its recommendations include expanding Pre-K, increasing teacher pay, and ensuring all students are college and career ready before they graduate. The plan comes with a nearly four billion a year price tag to be phased in by 2030, through increases to both local and state contributions. 

Hogan has repeatedly lashed out at the Commission’s recommendations, calling it the “Kirwan Tax-Hike Commission”: “We cannot recklessly expand the state’s deficit to $18.7 billion, as the Kirwan Tax Hike Commission’s proposals require,” Hogan recently posted on Facebook. “And we absolutely will not impose billions in crippling state and local tax increases on Marylanders.” Cleaning up Maryland’s tax code and closing corporate tax loopholes could raise close to $2 billion a year towards funding Kirwan, The Maryland Center on Economic Policy argued in a recent report. 

Before becoming Governor, Hogan served as a director for the Maryland Public Policy Institute, a libertarian think-tank, that’s been described as the “policy-arm” of his administration. As The Beat has previously reported, MPPI’s members frequently appear on outlets like Baltimore Sinclair-affiliate Fox 45, to make the case that privatization, not increased funding will help underperforming schools.

“It is a disgrace that Hogan prefers to throw a party with the 1% to raise money against the children of Maryland,” said Khalilah Harris, Managing Director, K-12 Education Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and a former Real News Executive Producer. 

The Gov.’s office has yet to respond to a comment for this story.

Additional reporting by Brandon Soderberg. 

The post Hogan hosts dark money fundraiser to fight Kirwan— educators plan to protest appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

The most recent Baltimore Ceasefire wrapped up on Sunday night with a reading of the names of those lost this year to to murder and a plea for no more shootings. In front of City Hall, with tears in her eyes, Ceasefire youth ambassador Destini Philpot read out the name of another homicide victim.

“Meredeth Parry,” Philpot said. 

The few dozen who gathered, candles in hand, repeated the name—“Meredeth Parry.”

The group did this for the nearly 300 homicide victims Baltimore has endured this year. Meredeth Parry was 25 years old, shot and killed on the 900 block of Cator Avenue on May 31—the 126th homicide of the year. As of today, there have been 288 homicides in 2019.

The all-volunteer Baltimore Ceasefire, which since summer of 2017 has organized once per season and asks as always that, “Nobody Kill Anybody” for the duration of the weekend, holds cookouts and basketball tournaments and more to build community, offer recreation options, and display acts of love and compassion. Ceasefire also provides some of the framework for Baltimoreans to build skills, change their lives, and get involved through job trainings, record expungement sessions, and voter registration. 

In a city seemingly hell bent on taking so much from its poor and working-class residents while spending half-a-billion dollars on policing every year (as the murder rate remains among the nation’s highest) Ceasefire is a response from those most directly impacted—the next generation, represented by Baltimore Ceasefire youth ambassadors like Philpot.

“All the resources that we’re putting back into the community, it’s working, because you can’t look at violence and be like, ‘Well, hey, this is because they’re bad people.’ No, these are broken people in a broken city, in a broken society, in a broken system,” Philpot said. “It’s a recurring cycle of trauma that’s developed the violence in our city, and so we’re seeing a decrease in trauma and seeing a decrease in murder.”

“We just want to make the statement that murder does not have dominion over us as a city, and that we can come together and have a loving and peaceful environment, and just create that energy for the entire city,” fellow Ceasefire youth ambassador Olivia Koulish said.

Ceasefire doesn’t only build community, it is truly effective in reducing shootings and homicides. Data analyst Peter Phalen found in his recent study, “Modeling the Effect of Baltimore Ceasefire,” that the city sees anywhere from 30 percent to 66 percent fewer shootings during Ceasefire weekends—and that even accounts for seasonal trends in violence.

“Ceasefire is the people. It’s the citizens of Baltimore that makes the Ceasefire successful,” Philpot said. “So when I see that those numbers increased and that the murder rate is going down every Ceasefire weekend, you have to be able to applaud the people of Baltimore for taking the peace challenge and pledging to choose life over murder,” 

Phalen’s research also found that the impact can extend well after those three Ceasefire days are over, sometimes lowering the rate of gun violence for nearly two weeks. A “worst case scenario” reduction in shootings during Ceasefire, Phalen recently explained at The Real News Network’s Real Talk Tho event, is a one-third reduction, still an impressive reduction in and of itself.

“There are a lot of shootings in Baltimore, so the deaths that you hear about are about 30 percent of the shootings, so about 30 percent end in death. So when we hear about 300 homicides this year, that means there were like, 900 shootings, almost a thousand shootings—that’s a lot of shootings,” Phalen said. “So Ceasefire can be massively effective and there can still be shootings every day of Ceasefire, we’re talking about reductions here not zero-ing out the numbers.”

From the beginning of Ceasefire, the expectation of a murder during the event was ancipated by one of its key organizers, Erricka Bridgeford. “We would love it if nobody gets killed that weekend and ever, and we recognize this Ceasefire is not a cure for violence—which means somebody might get killed,” Bridgeford said back in 2017 before the first Ceasefire. 

As always, when someone is murdered during Ceasefire, that victim is honored by Bridgeford during Ceasefire. Over this past weekend, one life was lost. On Saturday, November 2, 24-year-old Daquan Chambers became Baltimore’s 286th homicide victim of 2019, shot and killed in a double shooting on the 1000 block of North Monroe Street.

Ceasefire’s youth ambassadors show that change is possible in a city often defined by hopelessness, and they have a simple demand for the city’s leaders and potential 2020 mayoral and city council candidates: Step up and address the root causes of violence.

“Candidates need to focus on attacking the roots of violence, especially in urban communities,” Koulish said. “Because we’re the communities that are often forgotten about in the gun violence conversation in general.” 

“How do you combat the root causes of violence like poverty and trauma and hyper-segregation?” Philpot said.

“Yeah, and putting money into our education system.” Koulish said.

“How do you combat the school to prison pipeline? What are you doing to put the future and the hope back into black and brown youth and urban communities?” Philpot asked our next mayor, whoever it might be.

Additional reporting by Lisa Snowden-McCray and Brandon Soderberg.

The post Baltimore Ceasefire’s Youth Ambassadors remember the city’s homicide victims appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

City Council advanced a bill on Monday that will drastically reform Baltimore’s water billing system, and advocates are elated.

“To deny citizens the ability to have affordable water is to deny them access to a basic human right,” said councilperson Sharon Green Middleton. “People in our communities have been suffering and worrying about their water bills for way too long.”

At Monday’s hearing, City Council approved the Water Accountability and Equity Act (Council Bill 180307) which would discount customers’ water rates based on their income. Residents who make 50 percent of the poverty limit would be required to spend no more than 1 percent of their income on water. Residents who make 100 to 200 percent of the poverty level would have their bills capped at three percent of their income.

The bill would also create an office to hear disputes about erroneous bills, and expand the city’s definition of a water customer to allow renters to manage their own water accounts. Currently, renters are only eligible for water bill assistance if their landlords agree to add their names to a property’s account. The legislation will move to a final vote on Nov. 4. If it passes there, it will go to Young’s desk for final approval, where it is expected to pass.

Mayor Jack Young—who announced this weekend that he is running for re-election—introduced the bill in December 2018 when he was City Council president.

Previously, the Department of Public Works (DPW) attempted to gut the bill, but a spokesperson from the department told the Baltimore Sun that they no longer oppose its passage. Middleton said the coalition’s and council’s tenacity made it difficult for DPW to keep opposing the bill: “I think they saw that the advocacy groups, the [Taxation and Finance] Committee, the council president’s office, none of us would back down. And they saw that we had lots of data. So having all that together and being organized helped them to understand we weren’t gonna let them keep procrastinating on the bill.”

Water affordability advocates said that since they began working with Young on the bill in summer 2017, getting the DPW on board was their biggest challenge.

“We delayed the introduction over a year just trying to get their input on the bill,” Rianna Eckel, an organizer with Food and Water Action and convener of the Right to Water Coalition, said.

In July, DPW attended a meeting in the City Council’s Taxation and Finance Committee on the bill without written amendments to show. Then last month, DPW proposed a suite of amendments which would have gutted the bill. They said the legislation would be incompatible with the current billing system because it would require up-front discounts instead of reimbursements, and require the department to change the definition of a water customer to include renters.

“Essentially, they took away the entire bill and substituted their business as usual policies, which we know are not working for the people of Baltimore,” Eckel said.

DPW director Rudy Chow said that the department was committed to making bills more affordable for low-income residents, as evidenced by their progress implementing their new Baltimore H2O Assists and H2O Assists Plus programs: “I’m not saying the system we have in place is the best, and it should never got modified or changed,” Chow said at a September hearing on the bill. “As I’ve said before, we’ll continue to adjust that program.”

Last week, Chow announced that he plans to retire in February.

Eckel said DPW’s new programs are insufficient because they offer a flat percentage discount on bills, rather than tying bills to customers’ incomes: “With this flat discount, some families may still be unable to afford their bills, especially as rates are set to rise.” Eckel added that income-based billing is the only method that responds to low-income Baltimoreans’ needs—“his legislation is long overdue for the people of Baltimore, and it’s been a long journey to pass it.”

Advocates say the bill is especially necessary because city water bills are rising. This year, the city increased the price of water by 10 percent, and they plan to increase it by another 20 percent over the next two years. Even before the latest increase, rates had doubled since 2012. Officials say the increases are necessary to repair Baltimore’s aging water and sewer infrastructure.

Baltimore also has a problem of incorrect bills. In 2016, hundreds of residents received bills of over $50,000 each and last week, Mayor Young’s office announced they will conduct a sweeping audit of the city’s water billing system after WBAL reported that the city did not collect any water bills from the waterfront Ritz Carlton Residences for over a decade. The condominium complex owes around 2.3 million dollars.

Councilmembers did approve some amendments to the bill.

One proposed by the Law Department would make the new customer advocate office a part of DPW instead of a separate entity. “You can put language in to say DPW can’t touch them,” said Law Department Attorney Hillary Ruley at a July hearing on the bill. “But it’s a crime under Maryland law to look at other people’s information.”

Bill advocates would have preferred the office to be completely independent from DPW, but realized that would have required amending the city’s charter. The Council also approved an amendment from the Department of Finance, which would remove a provision that would have lowered the interest rate on tax sales for owner-occupied properties to five percent.

“Of course, we’re sad to see it removed, but because water bills are now removed from tax sale, it will no longer determine a family’s access to water,” Eckel said, referring to a bill that Maryland’s General Assembly passed last year which disables the city from seizing residents’ homes and putting them up for tax sale due to unpaid water bills.

Councilperson Ryan Dorsey also proposed an amendment that would require the city to begin researching another reform, which would require residents with larger properties to pay higher infrastructure bills.

“This legislation is about structural change,” said Council President Brandon Scott. “I’m proud that the Water Affordability and Equity Act is back before the full council. We know it was a tough process.”

At Monday’s hearing, City Council also passed a resolution to reopen and renegotiate the Baltimore’s Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) agreement, which allows large nonprofit institutions such as Johns Hopkins University and Hospital to make yearly payments to the city instead of being taxed a percentage.

“The big relationship between the Water Accountability and Equity Act and the PILOT program is that by [major nonprofit institutions] paying so low in their tax rate, it causes the cost of public services to be raised,” said Morgan State University professor of public health and activist Dr. Lawrence Brown.

Brown said that if all institutions were required to pay more, city residents could see untold benefits.

“We could have affordable housing that’s produced in this city. We could have a universal basic income that supports that the folks that are on the corners cleaning windshields. We could have universal healthcare in this city,” he said at a press conference before the hearing.

“We could have affordable water, too,” Brown added in an interview with the Real News though he stressed the water affordability legislation could have been stronger: “The Water for All program should be automatically applied for entire [low-income] neighborhoods. People shouldn’t have to sign up,” Brown said. “But we definitely should be looking for ways to make taxes and the general fund and the spending we do in this city more equitable.

Though advocates were delighted that the bill advanced, recent news cast a long shadow over the hearing: Longtime DPW spokesman Jeffery Raymond died on Sunday.

“The entire Department of Public Works extends our sincere and heartfelt condolences to Mr. Raymond’s family,” DPW’s Chow said in a statement, which councilperson Mary Pat Clarke read at the hearing. Despite the sad news of Raymond’s passing, as well as the recent losses of Michigan representative John Conyers, Maryland representative Elijah Cummings, and Former Baltimore Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro, Middleton said supporters should remember to celebrate the bill advancing.

“It’s going to be a bright day in Baltimore,” said Councilwoman Middleton.

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United States Representative Elijah Cummings died early Thursday morning at a Maryland hospice due to health complications. Cummings was a political powerhouse in Maryland and especially in Baltimore, the city he represented since 1996. As the Chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, he was an outspoken foe of President Donald Trump. His wife Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, who serves as Chair of the Maryland Democratic party, said Cummings worked until his last breath. He was 68 years old. The Beat’s Lisa Snowden-McCray spoke to the Real News Network’s Marc Steiner about Cummings’ legacy and his personal relationship with Cummings (this interview has been slightly condensed and edited; the full interview is available above and here).

Lisa Snowden-McCray: Now Marc, you have a long history here in Baltimore. And we were talking a little bit before we started the cameras that you and Elijah Cummings actually kind of knew each other before you knew that you knew each other. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Marc Steiner: So it was 1962. Elijah is five years younger than me. And he was one of these young kids who were trying to integrate Riverside Pool, which is in South Baltimore, which is a really overtly racist white neighborhood. And so they chased them away—went after him. And I was part of the civic interest group which was the local arm of SNCC [The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] here in Baltimore. I was 16 then. And we went down to demonstrate and protect the kids and walked him to the pool. And so our joke between us sometimes is, “We must’ve met back then and didn’t even know it,” because he was just a little kid. He’s five years younger. I’m 16, that means he was 11 or something. So we always thought that’s where we met. We really met years later. We became to be really friendly back in the early ’80s. He was in the House of Delegates. I was running Billy Murphy’s campaign for Mayor back in 1983. And that’s my first real remembrance of intense conversations with Elijah at that point when we were running–actually the second time–a major black candidate for Mayor of Baltimore.

LSM: That story about him kind of integrating that pool in Baltimore shows how deeply entrenched Cummings was in the city.

MS: He’s 11, right?

LSM: So what does his loss mean? We’ll kind of start small and go big. What does his mean here in Baltimore? What kind of space does he leave to be filled here?

MS: Well, Elijah was, whether you agreed with everything he did or not, Elijah was a deeply spiritual force, and he was a good human being in his heart and soul. So it wasn’t just me. If I texted him, he would text back. But I hear from lots of people who didn’t know him as well as I did, and he would do the same thing. He was just always in touch with the community; never left living in the community, he always stayed in the community. He was just dedicated to that. And so that’s a real rarity. And he filled some shoes. I mean, this is a seat that was created in some sense and won by Parren Mitchell and then Kweisi Mfume, and then Elijah Cummings, so you know that’s a legacy of that seat. And to me, he reaches back even to Parren who had a real radical vision for the future, and Elijah did too. I mean, he was caught in the establishment a lot and stuff. He’s a Democratic leader. But he had a real passion for the people and for the human rights and civil rights and ending poverty and fighting racism, and it was in his heart and soul. And he also knew how to do–despite that stuff in taking on Donald Trump and stuff–he knew how to cross the aisle when he needed to get something done. He was a very honest and special human being.

LSM: Let’s talk a little bit about what he did on national stage. People were really looking to him as kind of a solution to the mess that we’re in with Donald Trump. So can you talk a little bit about the role that he occupied on a national stage and kind of some of the work that he did maybe even before Trump came into office?

MS: He built himself into a Democratic powerhouse. Everybody knows the name John Lewis because John Lewis is John Lewis from SNCC. And so he had a reputation from Alabama and Selma and the rest. Elijah was only second to that in terms of notoriety inside the House; people respected him. He fought hard for bills, for economic justice. He fought hard around every racial issue in and then giving power to black men and women in Congress and lifting people up with him, and so then he became Chairman of the Oversight Committee. And in that role, he really proved himself. He took no prisoners.

When you saw him ask questions, when you saw him interrogate people–especially from the right–he just went after them and would not let go. And he tried to get to the truth. And in this process of impeachment, he became one of the political and moral leaders in the battle for impeachment eventually. I mean, he did wait for some of the Democratic leadership to come around and then he did it. But he became one of the ones who really pushed the issues with Trump. And so he always played that force as a kind of a progressive voice. Some people may argue, “Was he really a progressive voice?” I think he was.

LSM: I remember, I want to say it was AOC who said that he was very welcoming. He first wanted to make sure that she kind of knew her stuff and then was very welcoming with her to Washington. She’s been her own very polarizing figure. So what’s next? Does anyone know kind of what the steps are to begin thinking about who can fill his gigantic shoes?

MS: Yes. So let me just say that what you mentioned with AOC and Elijah. That is Elijah Cummings would embrace the young people, especially young people of color and black women who came to Congress. And he would just really push them and welcome them into this space. I’m not surprised. I didn’t know that story; I should know it. I don’t know it, but I’m not surprised at the story about Elijah and AOC, I’m just not surprised at all. That is him. So what happens now? From what I understand they’re going to have a special election. The governor has to call it–I think I’m right about this–the governor has to call it. He hasn’t set a date. And then, you know the city, it’s going to be a free for all; it’s going to be a scramble. I wouldn’t be surprised if his widow, Maya Cummings, runs for that seat.

LSM: Oh—really an accomplished politician in her own right.

MS: She’s Chairman of the State Democratic Party. But then you’ve got all these other people. You’ve got the most views who probably want to run. You’ve got the state senators, all of whom may run for his seat. Like Jill Carter, I’m sure is considering running for the seat, I would imagine. And Mary Washington’s probably considered running for his seat. There’re numbers of people who were thinking about this. This doesn’t open up much. Congressional seats do not open up. And the history of this state and the country is that when you’re in Congress, you get voted in election after election after election. And so when it opens up, it becomes a free for all. This is everybody’s chance to go to Congress.

LSM: So I feel like our job as journalists and the jobs of people here in Baltimore are going to be: how do we make the right decision? How do we kind of keep on the right track?

MS: We have to ask really tough questions for everybody who’s running and really push it and let the people know where these people stand, how these people stand, how effective they can be in the halls of Congress, and how they would fight for us or not fight for us. I live in his district. His district, you see, is interesting. Because the bottom line is, I consider Baltimore, Maryland one of the gerrymandering capitals of the country. And his district is ridiculous. I mean, it’s this huge piece of Howard County and Baltimore City where a lot of black folks live, and it snakes up in this little thin line and goes to Baltimore County in this really white conservative district. And so the danger here would be if somebody conservative and white is going to try to run up the middle and win the election. That’s not impossible. And so people have to be very vigilant about what happens; to look for an even more progressive voice to take Elijah Cummings place in Congress. And so it’s going to be a free for all battle. It’s going to be a short, quick fight and that person getting elected will be probably hard to unseat.

LSM: Thank you so much for talking.

MS: Oh, it’s my pleasure. I just want to say one last quick thing and that’s just my heart goes out to his wife and his kids and the people who loved him and were around him. None of us knew he was this sick. Nobody knew he was this sick. I mean, I thought… We thought he was getting better and he was going for treatments. We thought he was out because he wasn’t feeling well. And this was such a total shock to all of us who knew and loved him. And that goes beyond whatever my agreements or disagreements we might’ve had in life or in politics. He was just a generally decent, powerful, lovely human being. And he’s gone and it’s a shock and a shame, and so my heart is with the family.

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