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.

Continue reading here

Runners4Justice will run through Middle East Baltimore on September 12 to bring awareness to the 88-acre uneven development of the Johns Hopkins Bioscience Park by Forest City, East Baltimore Development Inc, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the city, state, federal policies. While Eager Park, the new 5.5 acre park in this development was funded by state dollars and previously categorized as a public park, a spokesperson for Forest City recently stated in a public meeting that the park is a private park. When residents in the meeting asked for clarification the spokesperson confirmed that the park is private. The committee which raises funds and controls the finances for security, management, and development of the park consists of no historic Middle East Baltimore resident. The schedule of events occurring in the park has not been available to the public but is announced to the Johns Hopkins Medical community. This lack of accountability and segregation through privatizing function and control of the park continues to exist and only surfaces to the public through listening to residents living in the Middle East Baltimore community.

Eager Park is a park that sits in the middle of neighborhoods where drug dealing and shooting occurs frequently. The recently hired security services, Broadway Services, a unit of the Johns Hopkins University and Medical System won the bid for the park. This is an interesting development because security for the remainder of the 88-acre  development is provided by a locally-owned security firm, Frontline Management whose offices are located in the 88-acre development. Some local residents are asking why they were not involved in selecting the security services for the park. They are also asking what other decisions are occurring, in which they are not involved.

5.5 acre Eager Park sitting in the middle of the 88-acre Johns Hopkins Bioscience Park

The quarterly public community meetings held by EBDI and Forest City are the only easily accessible opportunity for local residents to learn about the plans for development in their community. There is little opportunity to meet directly with representatives from these two organizations who control what happens in the 88-acre development for the Johns Hopkins Bioscience park.

This lack of accountability and transparency of how public dollars benefit the public good  is nothing new to Baltimore. Baltimore is a city with more than 65% African American and approximately 20% of family households living below the poverty line- more than half in some neighborhoods like those surrounding the new 5.5 acre Eager Park. Baltimore’s economic elite, like the Johns Hopkins University and Medical System, control the government and therefore what happens in the city. Promises are made by government that its policies and actions will benefit the public but after election or passage of bills that provide tax credits to wealthy developers there’s little accountability of the benefits back to the public. But in spite of this history, there is a growing movement to hold government and ts private partners accountable in the neoliberal1 political machine that exists in Baltimore today.

It’s imperative to hold our policy makers and their private supporters and partners accountable for our public dollars. Specifically we must continue to look  at how the different promised public spaces, financed by public dollars, will actually serve the public. The use of eminent domain to remove more than 750 households to develop the 88-acre Johns Hopkins Bioscience Park requires that a greater benefit to the public occurs. Who will measure this equity of benefit? It may be time for our city council representative for the area to invite Johns Hopkins Bioscience partners to show how benefit is being accrued to the local residents and businesses in affordable housing and amenities, jobs, transportation, and local business ventures.

On a recent walk through the public waterfront park of Harbor Point, also funded by public tax subsidies, I was asked by the restaurant staff adjacent to the park where I was going. This made me wonder how the residents of nearby Perkins Homes are treated as they walk through the park. Accountability as to whether publicly-funded spaces are freely accessible to the public is a critical part of assuring that public subsidies benefit public good. In the past physical walls around spaces was the way to deny access to the public, in effect privatizing spaces and maintaining segregation. Today security guards and attendants are replacing these physical walls. But in effect, the outcome is the same, segregation of public spaces. The accountability to assure that the health and wealth gap in Baltimore does not continue to widen will only occur if we monitor these spaces, listen to the local businesses and residents there, and request that our political leaders hold private interests accountable for public subsidies they receive.

Harbor Point is a 27-acre water front property developing a mixed-use site with a projected cost of $1 billion and at least $107 in public subsidies. Included in this development are five distinct public urban parks including areas for both passive and active recreation, culminating in a 4.5-acre public waterfront park space.

1. Neoliberalization is the action of the government to assure that private interests have as much opportunity as possible to grow their interests, regardless of whether this results in decreased benefit for the public good