Baltimore City will soon be on the receiving end of a windfall of money by way of settlements the city reached with several companies over their roles in the city’s opioid epidemic. The people who will provide guidance on just what to do with the funds, writes Logan Hullinger, are those who know the impact of addiction firsthand.
In this issue, Hullinger examines who the newly sworn-in members of Baltimore’s new Opioid Restitution Advisory Board are, and explains why their experience matters.
“I believe that the people who are closer to the problem are the ones with solutions,” Ricarra Jones, political director for the 1199 Service Employees International Union and acting president of the Baltimore City NAACP, told Hullinger. “I lived in a home with family members who dealt with addiction for the majority of my childhood. It’s just something that is very personal to me — being a child and living through it and having lost family and friends to overdose and addiction.”
Also in this issue, Aaron Wright documents the heavy toll high utility bills are taking on city residents — and what elected officials want to do to provide some relief.
“We are hearing from Baltimoreans all over our city — and really this region — that these rate increases are going to cause devastation for our people,” City Council President Zeke Cohen told Baltimore Beat.
Bry Reed attended Enoch Pratt Free Library’s 37th Annual Booklovers’ Breakfast and heard acclaimed author Imani Perry discuss her latest book, “Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People,” along with, in Reed’s words, “the long arc of Black resistance movements that she believes offer guidance for surviving the present by haunting the past.”
“The efforts made at the lowest points [of Black suffering] made the gains of the Civil Rights Movement possible,” Perry told the crowd.
This issue is packed with lots of other good stuff to read, too. Dominic Griffin reviews freewheeling sci-fi satire “Mickey 17,” our news roundup has bite-sized bits of news that you need to know, our photostory page captures images from a very special performance of “The Lion King,” and we have a new poem from Jaden Lemessy, a participant in Writers in Baltimore Schools.
Thanks for reading!