Jack Hits The Road: Head of Baltimore Gentrification Project Bails

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.

And for six years, Jack Shannon, head of East Baltimore Development Inc. has been trying to sell a pig to the residents of the beleagured community surrounding the megalith known as Johns Hopkins. A pig with nice, pretty, bright red lipstick that came in the form of “inclusive” community information meetings, job fairs, negro relocation assistance, promises of better schools, meeting space for neighborhood associations, etc. To their credit, the residents of that community eyed much of what Shannon was pushing with healthy doses of suspicion and apprehension. They’d been lied to before and though the Gentrification Bosses employed the assistance of Leading Blacks like Congressman Elijah Cummings, former City Councilwoman Paula Johnson Branch, and State Delegate Hattie Harrison to sell the pig, the people just wouldn’t bend over and take it.

A resistance that may have led, in part, to Shannon’s resignation last week effective April 30, 2009. In a Press Release dated February 5, 2009, Shannon says that he feels that “the iniative’s momentum might be best protected and advanced to meet the next set of challenges with a new set of eyes and new day-to-day leadership at the helm.”

While I don’t suspect that tears will be shed because of Shannon’s departure, I sense that this is troubling news for this social experiment called “community redevelopment.” Just this past October, the Save Middle East Action Coalition gathered to rally and protest the apparent revocation of support for the House for a House Initiative – basically giving residents the right to return to the neighborhood once the reconstruction was complete. Shannon (of course surrounded by Black “Body Guards”) attempted to allay the concerns of the residents by saying that they needed more time and things would still continue as planned. However, his confession of the project having “funding issues” and not having a contractor on board after losing two previous ones, seems to suggest otherwise.

Shannon jumping ship four months after admitting that things were basically falling apart is not a good sign for the residents who live in the “piano” (the term used for the redevelopment area) surrounding Johns Hopkins. If the powerbrokers of this project – Johns Hopkins, Anne E. Casey Foundation, and EBDI – led by it’s well-heeled, politically connected, Director of the Board, Joseph Haskins, head of Harbor Bank (who has interestingly enough contributed more than $32,000 to Maryland’s political elites since 2000) can’t find the money or construction company for the work then that spells big trouble. Who’s going to come through and save the day now? Mayor Sheila Dixon? – she’s a little tied up at the moment. Governor Martin O’Malley? – he’s putting state employees on furlough and proposing cutting funding to EDUCATION of all things!

As I and many others have maintained over these years, this pig stinks and perhaps the stench of it has finally hit the nostrils of Jack Shannon who’s running for cover before it hits the fan, but most of all I fear that its the residents of East Baltimore who will be the ones left in the slop.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 1:38 am and is filed under baltimore politics, black baltimore, martin o'malley, sheila dixon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.