The Baltimore City Office of Civil Rights and Wage Enforcement held its inaugural ‘Civil Rights week’ this past week. It began with a talk by Reverend Jesse Jackson and featured 9 events highlighting civil rights activities in the city. This unique week culminated with an award ceremony on Saturday night. It was great to see this office raise up the necessity of the work of civil rights activists and remind us of the work still needing to be done to assure justice for the oppressed. Roland Martin, the keynote speaker at the ceremony, again reminded us that we are the ones needing to do this work. While I enjoyed participating in the ceremony, as I left the Baltimore Convention Center in my ‘evening attire’ I couldn’t help but wonder if I was doing enough as I passed homeless people sleeping on the sidewalks of Charles Street. Continue reading →

‘We who believe in freedom cannot rest’. Sweet Honey in the Rock

It’s another sad moment in our history of freedom in the US. My heart breaks open again. This violence of deportation is forcing the separation of families in an attempt to save the ‘purity’ of America.

Trump wants to make America white again, fearing the projections of the US Census bureau showing an increase in mixed-race Americans and more than 25% of the US population being Latinx/Hispanic by 2060. This translates to a co-occurring decrease in non-hispanic white Americans which diminishes the ‘purity’ of America, something that has been the bedrock of a white-supremacist America. The ‘send them back’ chants of Trump’s constituents are the manifestations of the fear of an ‘impure’ America. This is no different from the sentiments and actions of Americans in 1942 when more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly displaced from their homes and incarcerated in camps. Then there was also the chant of ‘one-drop of Japanese blood’ being sufficient for incarceration, the impurity of America. Continue reading →

Some of the neighborhoods targeted for increased policing, through the Johns Hopkins Private Police force being considered before the Maryland

Five Baltimore city police officers ‘arresting’ one man, North Avenue.

general assembly this Friday February 22 2019, are communities of increased fragmentation and abandonment. These neighborhoods are prone to increased police violence and health inequity. This is not new news… that certain populations: homeless, black and brown people, transgendered people, drug users, those who appear to be poor, those who appear to be immigrants… the marginalized people without power- are targeted by police. (1,2,3,4)

We know also that Baltimore’s police department is currently under a consent decree due to excessive police violence.

We know also that the city of Baltimore has a problem with crime. That neighborhoods with increased fragmentation when violently policed results in stress and poor health contributing to the severe health inequities in our city. These are often neighborhoods with increased poverty,  decreased household income, increased boarded housing and decreased investment and housing inspectors, decreased employment, and increased crime. Continue reading →

‘Giving an intoxicated person the keys to a car is contrary to the safety of all those in their path, and to themselves. This is analogous to allowing the Johns Hopkins institutions to have police powers.’

The Johns Hopkins institutions in the city of Baltimore wants to have its own police force. It proposed legislation for police powers to the Maryland legislation last year 2018, with no success. It spent the time since and leading up to the 2019 legislative season ‘working’ on its game plan. The president, staff, and supporters such as BUILD (Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development) held community meetings to ‘invite’ in neighborhood voices. In the meantime, it has again demonized the communities surrounding its institutions and offered itself as a police power as the solution, the savior. But as one East Baltimore resident said of the meeting convened by the university president Ron Daniels: ‘this is not about us, about this community…this is about the new community they built, the Hopkins staff, and students, their people’. Continue reading →

Baltimore has yet to enter into innovative or courageous community rebuilding. Its community development processes and outcomes continue to gentrify neighborhoods, craving a larger population of the so called ‘creative class’ to right itself. It’s intention is not focused deeply enough on remedying the social and economic situation of its distressed neighborhood. Yes it wants to ‘get rid of them’ but it wants to get rid of the people in them not figure out how to assure that people living in these abandoned neighborhoods are able to participate in the rebuilt areas, better yet own part of the development. And this is where Baltimore continues to lack innovation and courage. Continue reading →

Several weeks ago, I posted about non-violence in our movements of the past and asked how does this look in our movements today. Sometimes, we need to remind each other, as activists, organizers, and advocates, that we too must adhere to principles of justice inside ourselves and within our movements, as we look outward. We can only manifest healing and justice outside if we ourselves are healing and justice. Check out this call to our activists’ community at change.org and join us as we support each other in finding justice inside and outside! Continue reading →

Baltimore! We have it all, like any city in America. Artscape is happening this weekend. One of the few times when all of Baltimore co-mingles: the white L and the black butterfly come together. Also happening this weekend is the continued corrupt arm of government trying to sequester any transparent and accountable process around policing. The Baltimore Police Civilian Review Board refused to sign a confidentially agreement imposed by the city solicitor’s office, after said office confiscated their rights to be an independent board by bringing them under their wings. So we celebrate by enjoying the diverse and amazing art of Baltimore with one hand and with the other we continue to cover and hide accountability regarding police misconduct. This is it folks, suffering and enlightenment together. Continue reading →

Building collectives may be one way out of the mostly fragmented, abandoned and often chaotic communities in low income Black Baltimore and beyond. These collectives can be hubs that co-create communities with the intention to share something beyond money and a profit motive. We can envision collectives that include housing and business interests planning to anchor blocks by living and working with the existing community in the community. These collective businesses would include for profit and non-profits willing to work on the challenging issues facing Baltimore in all its sectors. They would not attempt to make a profit off the problems of the community. They would partner with existing residents and businesses and collectively vision a way to assure that any wealth that is gained from rebuilding the community, is equally shared by those who have lived, worked and learned in these communities over the years.

The rebuilding that has been going on in communities like East Baltimore do not attempt to build wealth for the people who have been living, working, praying, and learning there. The buying, rehabbing, and selling by speculators have benefited developers not from the area; or benefited local organizations supported by investment from capital not interested in sharing in rebuilding the wealth of the existing community. This is how gentrification occurs. When the wealth of the existing residents and businesses does not increase with the increase in the cost of the new amenities and housing, someone has to go. As long as we follow the capitalist market equation for exploitation of those without for a gain of those with, gentrification will continue in the way redevelopment is occurring in communities like East Baltimore and our city. The financing for development in these communities is sparse and when present, the interest rate is greater than standard loans. While we understand the story of ‘high risk’ communities, there is still a hefty profit margin for the community-minded investor. There is still the distinction of ‘their’ community and ‘our’ community. The separation still exists.

Baltimore city programs like Vacants to Value invites in small developers who can afford to rebuild a half a block. The city sells city-owned property for cheap and minimize the paper work and the permits for the developer. Because they have not been willing to work with individual residents, the One House at a Time program went into effect more than a year ago to do just that: work with individuals who could only afford to buy and rehab one house at a time. These rehabs are still more speculation than personal rehab (person buys, rehab, and lives/work in the building) and seldom work with existing community in a collective arrangement.

Rebuilding with a mindset of co-operatives and collectives still require a profit to survive, but are not motivated by the profit incentive; this is not its primary objective. There is a different set of values and ethics they bring into their work. Collectives  such as VOLAR (Village of Love and Resistance) aim to do this. It’s mission is to co-create a cooperative community in East Baltimore owned by Black and Brown people to create opportunities for historical residents to acquire, rehab, and sell/rent property to build wealth. Residents can become the speculators in their own community, selling to friend, family or stranger. Low income people who have been historically exploited to build wealth for those with resources can become landowners and use their land to build wealth. This recipe of small and large developer coming into communities with little or no social capital, buying and rehabbing and selling and gaining profit needs to end. The ethic of VOLAR  assures that affordable housing will be available, along with moderate income homes and that this speculation by local residents/businesses  bring profit back to the individual resident and businesses. If residents/businesses are in the community, their capital will turn around in the community and slowly rebuild the economy of their community [with outside speculation the majority of the profit gets redistributed outside of the community in which the profit is made].  Building market rate homes would not fit into such a model because those able to afford a market rate house often desire market-rate amenities. When the area then builds an economy appeasing the desire of this group, displacement of people who cannot afford these amenities occur. In order for this not to occur, it requires a fairly narrow range of housing cost, attracting a similar set of amenity cost. This model allows capital to stay in and grow the existing community.

Collectives require relationships and trust-building between members. Whether it’s a residential or business collective, the different cooperative arrangements rest in a framework of trust and the principle that ‘we’re in this together’, ‘we share risk and we share gain’. This type of value framework distinguishes and resists a type of rebuilding present in the speculative way community redevelopment is occurring and has occurred, specifically in abandoned communities.

We need alternatives to the current ways we are rebuilding our abandoned communities that engage our affordable housing crisis. Not models that turn currently affordable housing complexes into mixed-income housing and displacing low income residents. We require models that are based in a different ethic than the current profit-driven one that drives development based on separate and unequal, divide and conquer, principles. Alternative models like community land trust also offer us alternative ways to rebuild-it keeps the wealth in the community and grows the existing community allowing historic residents to stay if they choose. In Baltimore we are still waiting on the city government to get on board with this model and financially support alternatives. Without alternative like this and VOLAR, everything remains rhetoric about rebuilding community for its residents while low income Black Baltimore continue to be displaced because they cannot afford to stay and participate in the ongoing changes across the city.

                … justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.

                                                                                 Dr. Martin Luther King

During a recent Baltimore Racial Justice Action (BRJA) panel discussion commemorating Dr. King, we honored Dr. King for many things: his compassionate action and prophetic leadership in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement; his fortitude; his command of the spoken and written word; his generous love; and his belief that non-violent action could move America toward a collective truth of its humaneness.

During the discussion, it soon became apparent that we did not have a shared understanding of what non-violence is. Is it just a tactic? How deep does it reach into our everyday existence? Does it mean not defending oneself when under attack? Does it mean being passive? Indifferent?  And is it an act of violence to take up arms in order to defend oneself? In that case, what do we make of the fact that Dr. King himself used armed guards? Most importantly, how was this tactic of non-violent resistance also a path toward revealing truth about our humanity?

In August 1959, after several years of employing non-violent tactics, Dr. King traveled to India to learn more about Mahatma Ghandi’s teachings on non-violence, which had greatly influenced him. India was newly independent from British colonial rule, thanks to the non-violent tactics employed by Ghandi and millions of his countrypeople for 30 year, tactics which included non-cooperation with the state and its racial, economic, social, political, and spiritual exploitation of India. Dr. King wanted to know if he could learn more from Ghandi’s success to benefit the civil rights struggle.

“I was delighted that the Gandhians accepted us with open arms,” he wrote. “They praised our experiment with the non-violent resistance technique at Montgomery. They seem to look upon it as an outstanding example of the possibilities of its use in western civilization. To them as to me it also suggests that non-violent resistance when planned and positive in action can work effectively even under totalitarian regimes. We argued this point at some length with the groups of African students who are today studying in India. They felt that non-violent resistance could only work in a situation where the resisters had a potential ally in the conscience of the opponent. We soon discovered that they, like many others, tended to confuse passive resistance with non-resistance. This is completely wrong. True non-violent resistance is not unrealistic submission to evil power. It is rather a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love, in the faith that it is better to be the recipient of violence than the inflictor of it, since the latter only multiplies the existence of violence and bitterness in the universe, while the former may develop a sense of shame in the opponent, and thereby bring about a transformation and change of heart. Non-violent resistance does call for love, but it is not a sentimental love. It is a very stern love that would organize itself into collective action to right a wrong by taking on itself suffering”.a

Like Dr. King, Ghandi had experienced many encounters with violence, and both believed in the power of love to transform the beliefs and behaviors of those who might cause harm. In attempting to take a carriage after arriving in South Africa in 1893, Ghandi was forced to sit outside, though there was room inside. He refused and was beaten and pulled while he clung on. He did not yield but he did not defend himself. Seeing this violence, the white passengers were moved to beg for him to ride inside with them. For Ghandi, the response of the white passengers represented the power of non-violent protest to awaken humans to a deep truth—their shared humanity. He called non-violent resistance—fighting without violence or retaliation—a “matchless weapon,” describing it in Sanskrit as “Satyagraha”  or “holding onto truth.” –the truth of our shared humanity.

Such acts of love were based on the premise that those watching would take pity on the resistors while raising the energy of love in those perpetuating such violence. This was considered in the 1963 Birmingham Campaign which sent children to the frontlines to protest. The image of black children being hosed by white police officers and attacked by dogs was a turning point in the campaign for desegregation and freedom for black people in the south and beyond. The hearts of those watching from afar were moved, just like the hearts of the white riders in the carriage.

Black Civil Rights demonstrators attacked by police water hoses. Birmingham, Alabama. May 1963 Photo Credit: Bill Hudson/ The Birmingham News

The consistent use of non-violence was a vehicle for many to become involved in this civil rights struggle, to confront the entrenched system of racism with their body, spirit, heart, and mind.

Ref. Alycee J Lane, ‘Non-violence now: Living the 1963 Birmingham Campaign’s promise of peace’

But the embodiment of non-violent resistance as a tactic and as a way of being was a training. Even when fear was present in demonstrators, after praying and singing together, the powerful spirit of collective resistance would again and again guide them into battle for freedom. This required training, this ‘non-violent army’, conducted by Dr. King and others. They taught about non-retaliation, enacted the brutality that would occur during non-armed protest, and invited those ready to commit to this teaching into this ‘non-violent army’.  Alycee J Lane’s book, ‘Non-violence now: Living the 1963 Birmingham Campaign’s promise of peace’ offers details of the rigorous training that each participant in the ‘non-violent army’ would participate in before signing the ‘commitment card’ to engage in demonstrations.

Acting into truth required training, again and again, especially in the midst of state and personal violence day in and day out. In the midst of this violence, these committed demonstrators were able to touch the heart of humanity that issued a power so courageous they could enter the fray armored only with this truth.

Protesting against evil action instead of hating people acting in evil ways was the teaching and practice of both Dr. King and Ghandi. This non-hatred acknowledged the right to resist harm without violence as often as possible. But the act of armed self-defense was also very present during the 1960s Civil Rights movement. This alternative way of defending oneself with arms was not only present but necessary to assure that people survived to have the opportunity to live into love in action as they struggled collectively for their freedom during public protest: a middle way was forged. For example Dr. King’s home was sometimes referred to as ‘the arsenal’ because of the presence of guns to defend himself and his family against the many attacks they survived. Before demonstrations a basket would be passed around, to collect guns demonstrators carried for self-defense. These acts of armed-resistance must be appreciated in light of the times of the 1960s Civil Rights movement when black people were continuously targeted for violence and submission through brutality not limited to lynching, shooting, and beating. Charles Cobb’s book ‘This nonviolent stuff′ll get you killed: How guns made the Civil Rights Movement possible’ describes the history of the need for armed-resistance to white supremacy as a necessary means to assure survival of black people, since enslavement through the 21^st century. Cobb writes: “Even King, his commitment to nonviolence as a way of life notwithstanding, acknowledged the legitimacy of self-defense and sometimes blurred the line between non-violence and self-defense.” Perhaps this line was not so blurred for Dr. King because he maintained his clarity of the human connection even when violence was targeted toward himself or his family.

Cydiera Tinae Kyler Drake

Some may argue that the white southerners who hunted out black people to kill and brutalize felt they were acting in self-defense also; defending their reign of supremacy. Similarly they could argue that brutality against non-violent protesters was in defense of a legal system which condoned and maintained their supremacy in place. This sort of thinking might ‘justify’ any perceived act of violating this culture of white supremacy as illegal, requiring to be put down. Because white supremacy is built on a foundation of oppression, internalized white superiority, and fear of the black body, -a fear that the black body is violent and necessarily revengeful of the history of brutal oppression since enslavement and therefore ready to harm its historic and current oppressors- seeking out and destroying blackness would also be socially acceptable whether through physical, economic, social, spiritual, or educational systems.

But equating armed-resistance by black southerners during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement with the armed offense by white supremacist is like comparing apples and oranges.

This logic rests on the truth that a white supremacist system is an unwise, unjust, and inhumane system. It is a system whose ethic requires separation by skin color and white-skin superiority. It affirms that eurocentricity is superior over all other racial/ethnic identities and cultures. This is a violent, untruthful, and disconnected way to think and be in the world. It was this wrong view that Dr. King’s non-violent action resisted. It resisted this inhumanity and believed that to act into love would bring a different norm, a different truth to bear where the ethic of white supremacy reigned in terror and violence. This ethic of love, attempted to normalize love and the truth of human connection in the midst of hatred, to be the seed of change in a field sowed with separation, discrimination and superiority. When we celebrate Dr. King we must remember to include not only his visionary leadership in moving us closer to ending racial segregation. We must celebrate his aspiration and action for love and interconnectedness through non-violence, to live into a more truthful existence of our shared humanity. At the same time we must act into this collective power to end the war against our humanity: the war of poverty, racism, and militarism.

This is the first part of a two-part series. The next part will look at our current day struggles for justice and whether we practice non-violence; if we do, is tactic and truth? Your comments are invited.

The work of assuring equity in all sectors requires us to be clear-headed and clear-hearted: WOKE.

Join us as we take the time to stop, nourish ourselves in community, and heal; that we may do the work of healing outside of ourselves.

Mindfulness Retreat for People of Color

Feb 2-4 2018

Scholarships available.