JANUARY 17: SCHOOLS NOT JAILS ORGANIZERS WILL RETURN TO SITE, DESPITE ARRESTS

Organizers of today’s Schools Not Jails Occupation kickoff rally and action say that they have no plans to cancel the program of events planned to take place at the proposed site of the juvenile detention center in East Baltimore this week, despite arrests and an aggressive police presence earlier today. Tuesday’s program of events begins with breakfast at the site at 8AM, and ends with a 6PM dinner and a teach-in on Youth and the Prison Industrial Complex with Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle at 7PM. All are invited to attend.

The Schools Not Jails Occupation, in collaboration with Occupy Baltimore and the Baltimore Algebra Project, is a five-day action designed to call into question the budgeting priorities of the State of Maryland and the City of Baltimore by highlighting the unnecessary allocation of $100 million in state funds for the construction of a 180-bed youth detention facility–an amount that would cover the annual budget shortfall that threatens to close or privatize the Baltimore City Recreation Centers for 333 years.

Earlier on January 16, after a boisterous rally at the corner of Fallsway and Madison, in front of Central Booking, over 150 people marched to 600 E. Monument, where six organizers entered the enclosure and proceeded to erect a large wooden schoolhouse on the proposed site of the youth jail, and a Baltimore City high school teacher gave a lesson on Frederick Douglass. Earlier in the day, Wendell France, Commissioner of Pretrial Detention & Services at the Maryland Department of Public Safety, had told organizers that they would not be allowed onto the site of the proposed youth jail, stating safety concerns, but said that the State of Maryland’s jurisdiction ended there, and stated that he had no problem with protestors on the sidewalk outside of the site’s chain-link boundary. Baltimore City Police, however, did seem to have a problem with the Occupation’s use of the sidewalk, and brought dozens of police officers in full riot gear to create a barrier between activists and their military tent, erected on the sidewalk to provide shelter for those planning to remain at the site through the night. Police forced members of the press to leave the site, and then tore down the tent, which was taken away in a city sanitation truck. State Police then proceeded to tear down the schoolhouse that had been constructed inside the chain-link fence around the youth jail site.

Organizers say that, despite the six arrests and the loss of the tent, the first day of the action achieved their ultimate goal: calling attention to the planned construction of the youth jail, and demonstrating to the city and state governments that the residents of Baltimore City have different priorities for public spending and want to have a say in how public funds are dispersed. Organizers plan to spend the week discussing alternatives to the problems in Baltimore that the jail is intended to address, and bring proposals to the mayor’s participatory budget hearing at Cylburn Arboretum on January 21.

Video of the day’s events, as well as images, may be found at the Schools Not Jails website shortly: http://schoolsnotjails.wordpress.com | For specific photo requests, especially from the period when press were blocked from the site, please email schoolsnotjails@gmail.com.

For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact the Schools Not Jails Media Team: (410) 849-9626 | schoolsnotjails@gmail.com

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If we want the children to value the King Holiday; we must not only tell them of the Baptist preacher’s life and legacy, but we must also tell them how hard and long Black people and allies struggled to get the U.S. Government to honor him.

Enjoy the clip below.

November 2, 1983: President Reagan Approves MLK Holiday

Maryland Shaw

Thankfully, the “Ella Baker” tradition lives on in Baltimore through young women like Maryland Shaw.

It was in the Baltimore Algebra Project (BAP) that now 22-year-old, Maryland Shaw, got her start in local activism. While a sophomore in high school, she was drawn to BAP after being frustrated by dated and tattered textbooks in high school that she was not allowed to take home to study from. Initially believing that she could do nothing about her problem; she learned of a student-led advocacy group that rejected the notion that youth were powerless to positively impact their own conditions. She joined BAP and not soon after she was helping to organize a three-day strike against educational inequality in the state.

Since that time, Maryland has deepened and broadened her participation in educational activism. In addition to fighting for equal resources for city schools; she is among the leaders of the campaign to halt the construction of a multi-million dollar youth jail in East Baltimore. She has done it all – from organizing community meetings with Baltimore residents about the youth jail to directly confronting Governor O’Malley as he campainged for re-election in 2010.

Today, Shaw is a student at Morgan State University with plans to study Early Childhood Education. She serves as a mentor and volunteer at the Urban Youth Initiative Project (UYIP) – a program of the Pan-Afrikan Liberation Movement. She is committed to nurturing the next generation of youth activists. When asked about the state of youth activism in the city, Maryland observed, “the more I hear about how we need to look to the youth [for leadership] the less I see it.”

Maryland Shaw is a descendant of Ella Baker in more ways than one and in an activist arena that remains dominated by high-powered and often prideful male egos; Shaw is leaving her own mark on Baltimore City and beyond.

Who knows if I can still kick it, but I used to back on the school bus. In fact, a little known Black History Fact about me was that I was the Battle Rap Champ among my peers. Punch lines for days. Those days are gone, but my love for Hip Hop remains (After all, I am an 80′s baby!)

Which is why I’m anticipating the fruit of the Bmore Mixtape Project – a competition organized by Baltimore activists, scholars, and concerned citizens to use the mixtape to spread the word about important social issues. I can really see this taking off in Baltimore. We have some of the greatest artists anywhere and soon more of the city and world will know that.

Contestants are charged to rap or produce poetry around specific themes. This year the theme is the School To Prison Pipeline.

Shout out to Dr. Lester Spence for the idea and check out his book, Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip Hop and Black Politics.

Now all I need is a bangin’ track and time to get my flow together. Hey – if Dr. Cornel West can spit; you know I got to dust off my mic.

Anybody want to collab with a Pastor on a track? {straight face}

More than symbolic gestures (which certainly has its place); I am more excited to see the development of this kind of direct organizing and activism in Baltimore. There is real potential here to raise the profile of the predatory practices of banks in Baltimore and its impact upon the city’s Black community and the poor especially. It also creates opportunity for people in desperate need of housing to literally come in from the cold this winter.

It is shameful and sinful, in my opinion, to be in a city that on any given night has 3400 homeless people on the streets and at the same time have nearly 40,000 city-owned vacant properties.

The local Occupy Our Homes group draws inspiration from the Take Back The Land Movement founded by Max Rameau. I believe that the conditions are ripe for a new kind of activism in Baltimore and I believe that People of Faith need to be partner with the effort. In this clip, Max Rameau explains Take Back the Land and below you’ll find a flyer inviting you to join your power with Lila’s power to prevent her eviction from her home.

I hope you’ll be moved to support this effort. (Click the flyer for larger view)

Habari Gani? Kujichagulia! which means Self Determination – To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.

Self-Determination is such a beautiful principle which speaks to the freedom that all individuals and people-groups should be able to rightly exercise. Though not always using the term, I have been writing about “kujichagulia” on this site for a long time.

In early 2008, I was blessed to be a part of the Park Heights Community “Dry Out” campaign that sought to expel liquor stores and predatory businesses from the 5100 block of Park Heights Avenue in Baltimore. It’s beyond shameful that there are 4 liquor stores in that one block! It’s also telling that in this overwhelmingly Black community; all of those liquor stores are owned by non-Black people. Under the leadership of Derrick Compton and with the support of others like now-councilman Brandon Scott, Al Watson, and Pastor Kevin Brooks; we put weekly pressure on these establishments to let them know they were being monitored for infractions and targeted for eventual expulsion.

In November 2009, I critiqued the Emerging Christian Movement in the spirit of self-determination, for its exclusion of non-white voices as it presented theological dynamics and features as if they created them while all the while People of Color of other Faith traditions and denominations have been practicing different “emerging” principles for generations.

I wrote about “kujichagulia” back in August 2010 when I proclaimed that “Black People Should Control The Baltimore City Public School System” on the grounds that Afrikan youth make up about 98% of the student population and the city is somewhere around 65% Afrikan. This notwithstanding, Black folks are regularly begging and pleading to have substantive say in the education of their own youth.

Self-determination pushed me back in April 2011 when I talked about the general “whiteness” of the Urban Farming/Healthy Food Movement and the need for people of color to be at the lead of the food revolution just as we are in most cases the ones suffering under the brunt of America’s food deserts.

And of course, my involvement in the struggle against Governor O’Malley’s plan to build a new youth jail in East Baltimore has been fueled by my firm belief that the Black Community should decide what institutions we want or don’t want in our community just like White people and Jewish people decide what will or won’t come in their communities. If White people don’t want a business or even a church to come into their community; chances are it won’t come. If Jewish people don’t want a business to come in their community; chances are it doesn’t come. Why should it be any different for Afrikan people? We don’t want O’Malley’s multi-million dollar youth jail and many of us have committed ourselves to organize, agitate, and protest – even if it means physically impeding the path of construction trucks – until O’Malley bends to our wishes.

This, my friends, is self-determination and in different ways it’s happening all over the world.

I pray that the flames of “Kujichagulia” burn even brighter in the new year for the Global Afrikan Family. As Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. reminded us – “No one can ride your back unless its bent.” No more hunched-backness in the Black community! May we stand up straight like righteous women and men and commit to “define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves” without timidity or apology.

Ashe.

So off the top let me say that yes – I am a follower of Christ and yes – I celebrate Kwanzaa. Some may see these affirmations as incompatible and polar opposites, however, there is no incongruity with me. I am thankful for Kwanzaa and truly appreciate the fact that the day after I join countless millions of Christians in celebrating the gift of new life in Christ; I can immediately keep the celebration going by observing the new life that is possible for the Afrikan community as we embrace sacred values.

Those sacred values in Kwanzaa are called the Nguzo Saba – the 7 principles – and today the principle that is uplifted is UMOJA which means UNITY. With this principle we are invited to “strive for and maintain unity between the family, community, nation, and race.”

In my estimation this is a beautiful way to start this sacred week of observance for the Afrikan community. And leading up to this day of UNITY, my mind was reflecting on Bro. Malcolm X and his speech entitled The Ballot of The Bullet – given in 1964. The whole speech is powerful to say the least, but the first few paragraphs and the closing paragraph are particularly important given today’s focus on UNITY.

Bro. Malcolm goes to great lengths in the opening of the speech to diminish divisions between himself and other Freedom Fighters who embraced different religious perspectives. By 1964, he understood that religion should NOT be a barrier that keeps the Black Community from working together. He shared his position that the Black community has a common fight and a common enemy. At the end of his talk that day, he pledged his support for any of the organizations or ministers (Christian or otherwise) on the rostrum who needed his support. Bro. Malcolm’s evolution in that way can inspire the Black Community today.

There are yet unhealthy levels of factionalism and outright division in the Afrikan community…there is even disconnect within factions that causes greater splintering. As I shared recently on a WEAA radio program; one of the tools of the MAAFA (or Afrikan Holocaust) was Disconnection. African people were forcibly disconnected from their names, their villages, their culture, their land, their religious beliefs, etc. My position is that if DISCONNECTION was the tool used to overpower us; then RECONNECTION and thereby UNITY will be the path that restores our collective strength.

I am excited to see the seeds of this in Baltimore. There is a rising generation of social justice activists and servants of the Afrikan Community that are expressing a greater readiness for strategic unity around shared goals. We are African Spiritualists, Muslims, Christians, Black Nationalists, Pan Africanists, and Integrationists. We don’t agree on every minor point or detail, however, we recognize that no one of us and no one of our organizations will be able to achieve some of the laudable goals that we cherish for the broader Afrikan community in the city.

We MUST work together. We MUST share resources. We MUST lend support to each others initiatives. We MUST begin to identify specific points that we will work together on in 2012. This does not mean that the distinct identities of any of our organizations must be erased. Rather, I believe that our greatest strength is in our varied gifts, organizational identities, and perspectives that when combined can produce lasting fruit.

I close this Umoja reflection by giving thanks for some of the Afrikan-centered groups that I know of that are serving Baltimore’s Afrikan community in remarkable ways. I give thanks for Everyone’s Place Bookstore & African Cultural Center, Solvivaz Nation/Reality Speaks Bookstore, Habesha, the Pan-Afrikan Liberation Movement and its various programs, ISA Academy, Nsoroma Academy, Ujima People’s Progress Party, the Marshall “Eddie” Conway Freedom School, and the many others that I don’t even know about (please add other Baltimore-based, Afrikan-centered organizations that you know of in the comments section)

May 2012 be a year of continued blessing to your organizations and I pray that we can lay the foundation for closer cooperation and functional unity for the benefit of our people. If there is anything that I can do to support you, your organizations, and/or initiatives that will benefit our community; please don’t hesitate to ask. I truly appreciate you all and look forward to strengthening the ties that bind us together.

Ashe.

“I think I have some sense of what neighborhoods in Baltimore are like and what they need.” That was, in part, M.J. Brodie’s response to my critique of his agency’s impact on Baltimore’s Black Community. He knows what our neighborhoods are like and he knows what we need. Really?

In an open-air, public meeting with him organized by Another BDC Is Possible (an offshoot of Occupy Baltimore) I, along with others challenged him on the lack of participation, lack of transparency, and lack of commitment to economic justice within the Baltimore Development Corporation. I told Mr. Brodie that his agency operates from a “just trust us to do what’s best for you” mentality, however, that unearned trusts that the Black Community has given the BDC and other Baltimore agencies has produced some strange fruit.

I used that line in my words to Brodie – “strange fruit” – and I almost wished I hadn’t now because he seemed more concerned about proving to me that he knew where the reference came from rather than addressing the central concern of my challenge to him in that the majority demographic of Baltimore – the Black Community – has in essence an extremely limited “official” role in helping to give voice to the vision and future of the city.

I spoke at the mic that night feeling a certain responsibility to the silent workers of Baltimore who clean the skyscrapers downtown while smiling at “Boss” and enduring dehumanizing dynamics because of the economic dependence on less than suitable wages. I spoke with responsibility to the folks who are bused into the Inner Harbor to make sure tables are clean, doors are opened, food is warm, and a pleasurable experience is created for the monied, and privileged “upper economic class” that are said to be so key to the advancement of this Black City. I spoke with responsibility for the Black Youth whose very presence at the Inner Harbor is a protest against a city that creates enjoyable spaces for tourists while closing schools and threatening to shutter recreational centers. I spoke to Brodie with responsibility to 80 acres of a Black Community in East Baltimore that was summarily moved out of their homes in a gentrification project to make way for “other people” who are treated as if they are the promise of a “better” East Baltimore – and those grandmothers, grandfathers, and Black Families that they replaced were a curse that caused the dilapidation of the infrastructure around the behemoth that is Johns Hopkins.

Just trust us, he says. “I know what’s best for you.”

That night I left the polished skyscrapers of the Inner Harbor which stand like monuments to White privilege and power in this Black town and went back to my community where there are about four liquor stores and a dingy Murry’s that serves as the community’s food depot. “Tobacco and Groceries” reads the banner announcing the latest business coming to the block. Vacant buildings, liquor, check cashing, and stale food are the staples of the area of the community where I live which is just south of Belvedere Square – a posh, boutique, and restaurant area partly financed by the Baltimore Development Corporation and definitely designed with the local higher income, White community in mind. To see it and then look at the businesses and buildings in my immediate neighborhood, one would think you’re looking at two different cities – not two pictures of the very same street!

With the BDC’s support, some get high-end food, dining, furnishing, and events and others get….this:

STRANGE FRUIT INDEED

FROM: Baltimore Solidarity with Palestine Facebook Event Page:

On November 15, 2011, young Palestinian activists are planning a bold new assertion of their human rights in the face of Israeli state-instituted segregation, and they are reaching out to American allies for support, especially in cities like Baltimore which know segregation and anti-segregation activism. On Tuesday, November 15, these Palestinian activists will attempt to board segregated local public buses headed to occupied East Jerusalem. Their act of civil disobedience is directly inspired by the Freedom Riders of the US Civil Rights Movement, and activists across the US are planning solidarity actions for the same day.

In Baltimore, there will be a demonstration at Penn Station during the evening rush hour, telling the story of the current Palestinian Freedom Rides through dramatic art and song. We will also explore the connections between the Palestinian and American struggles for human rights and against racism and exploitation. For example, the governments of both Israel and Baltimore City outsource large and unfair infrastructure projects to Veolia, a multinational corporation. In Palestine that looks like these bus lines which only serve Jewish-only settlements and solidify the settlements’ illegal land grabs. In Baltimore, Veolia’s projects are those like the Charm City Circulator, which serves only central, privileged neighborhoods, and heating and cooling systems for the highly subsidized, yet exclusive corporate projects of the Baltimore Development Corporation.

Tuesday’s action promises to be fun, educational, and a strong way for us to show our solidarity with these courageous and historic Freedom Rides.

Please mark your calendars and plan to join us on Tuesday, November 15th between 5:00 and 7:00pm.

Click here for more background on the Freedom Riders Protest in Palestine/Israel.

I was already a bit on the fence about my primary bank which was Wachovia. Though I had been with the bank for some years, I began to give Wachovia the side eye when I learned about 8 years ago that it had history wrapped up in the enslavement and sale of my Ancestors. I would not have learned this if it had not been for former Chicago Alderman Dorothy Tillman who introduced the Slavery Era Disclosure Ordinance in 2002.

But Wachovia went from being on the fence to getting kicked to the curb when Wells Fargo acquired the bank earlier this year. Wachovia fully transitioned into Wells Fargo in Baltimore this past October.

That pretty much did it for me. Wells Fargo’s lending practices have been particularly predatory as it relates to the American African community. Consider these findings from a 2009 National People’s Action Report entitled, The Truth About Wells Fargo: Racial Disparities in Lending Practices.

• Over 37% of all loans made by Wells Fargo to African American borrowers were high cost loans; compared to 12% of loans received by White borrowers.

• 45% of all refinance loans received by African American borrowers were high cost, compared to 19% for White borrowers.

• For low- and moderate-income borrowers, 48% of all Wells Fargo loans to African Americans were high cost loans as compared to 20% of the loans for equivalent White borrowers.

• For middle and upper income African American borrowers, 34% of Wells Fargo loans were high cost loans as compared to 11% for equivalent White borrowers.

• African Americans were charged higher interest rates on high cost loans than other borrowers.

• African Americans paid an estimated $137 million more than Whites for their high cost Wells Fargo loans.

How could I continue allowing this bank to have my business considering its role in helping to manufacture the hardship that so many people are facing!

As if that wasn’t enough, I learned that Wells Fargo has 3 1/2 million shares in the private prison industry valued around $90 Million dollars. Wells Fargo is helping to prop up the Prison Industrial Complex – that same system that preys disproportionately upon Black and Brown people in the so-called United States.

I cannot in good conscience continue to do business with Wells Fargo.

In her book, Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of our Daily Choices, Julie Clawson helped me to think about my everyday actions as either helping to foster social justice or helping to maintain systems of oppression. Down to where I buy food, what clothes I purchase, what gas station I buy from, and in this case – where I bank. It’s not always that cut and dry, but in this case where I bank is a moral decision.

And today, I have decided to join countless others on November 5, 2011 in withdrawing my money and business from Wells Fargo. It’s been a long time coming, but I will no longer cooperate with a bank that fosters injustice and disharmony the world over. I will no longer support a bank that preys on my people and the impoverished of the world.

I will be formerly closing my Wells Fargo bank account on Saturday, November 5, 2011 and designating my credit union account at MECU as my primary account. Instead of making stock holders and investors first like corporate banks; credit unions serve their members and support the communities in which they are located in a myriad of ways.

Will I miss having my bank’s ATM on every corner or flying to any city in America and seeing my bank there – sure. That convenience will be missed, but now I’ll feel much better while banking because I’ll know that I won’t be actively participating financially in the exploitation and subjugation of others. Instead my money will be helping to support small business start ups, assisting families in purchasing their first home at reasonable rates, and will support community projects that help empower the place where I live.

For those who wish to learn more about this effort or to find a credit union or community-oriented bank in your community, you can visit the Move Your Money Project website among many other sites.