On Saturday, Tawanda Jones, whose brother Tyrone West was killed by Baltimore Police and Morgan State University cops in July of 2013, was out protesting the death of George Floyd with a thousand or so others who traversed much of the city and ended up in front of City Hall.

She put a speaker on top of her car and chanted, “No justice, no peace, no racist police,” and played N.W.A’.’s “Fuck the Police,” as she drove down North Avenue.

“The protest earlier was beautiful. Everyone was in their cars, everyone was safely social distancing,” Jones said. “Everyone is caught up in their emotions. We were trying to be effective and trying to be safe.”

When protesters arrived at City Hall in the evening, Jones broke off with a smaller group headed to Baltimore’s Chief Medical Examiner’s Office to call attention to medical examiners’ roles in vilifying victims of police violence.

“[Medical Examiners] are basically the reason why these killer cops get off,” Jones said.  “We talk about the blue code silence with the officers, it transfers over to them too.”

The autopsy for Floyd was released on Friday May 30—the same day Officer Derek Chauvin, who kneeled on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes as Floyd told him “I can’t breathe,” was arrested. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner said he found no evidence Floyd died of “asphyxia”—the body losing oxygen as a result of an inability to breathe. Instead, underlying health issues Floyd had were blamed for his death.

Jones points out that West’s autopsy made similar claims: That his death was a result of the extreme summer heat and pre-existing health issues rather than “asphyxia.”

“[Medical Examiners] cover up for [police],” Jones said. “They make it seem like victims have drugs in their system. They’re doing the same thing in George Floyd’s case.”

Jones and her family challenged West’s initial medical examiner’s report and had two independent autopsies conducted, both of which said asphyxia was the cause of West’s death. None of the officers involved in her brother’s death were ever charged. 

When Tawanda Jones saw the video of George Floyd’s death, she also thought of her brother Tyrone West: “When I first saw the video of George Floyd, I heard a grown man call for help saying ‘I can’t breathe,’—that hit home,” she said.

During the July 2013 traffic stop that resulted in Tyrone’s death, police officers beat, kicked, and tased Jones and then one officer, David Lewis, kneeled on West’s back.

While Jones protested at the Medical Examiner’s Office, police began gathering in front of City Hall. Among the many officers there monitoring was Jorge Omar Bernardez Ruiz, one of the officers implicated in West’s death. Bernardez Ruiz and Nichole David Chapman were the cops that initially stopped West. A popular chant at West Wednesdays—the weekly event held in honor of West—goes, “Chapman and Ruiz you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”

Activists at City Hall on Saturday took Bernardez Ruiz’s photo at City Hall and posted it on Twitter.

“Seeing someone that murdered my brother,” out monitoring a police brutality protest, Jones said, made her “outraged.”

Into the evening, the police presence in front of City Hall grew and police officers in riot gear fired tear gas and pepper spray bullets at the group of 200. Protesters threw plastic bottles. A police van was spray painted with, “Fuck the Police.” More police in riot gear were called in and in the downtown area, there was property damage.

“It’s amazing how white racist people can go into capitals and no one pulls a weapon, no one was shot—you don’t see pepper spray,” Jones said. “But when we go out there, because our bodies are being killed everyday, they still want to kill us.” 

For the fourth night in a row, people in cities across the United States took to the streets demanding justice for George Floyd and in multiple cities, looting and causing property damage. Law enforcement has responded with heavy handed tactics, such as tear gas, flash bang grenades, and rubber bullets as well as brute force, attacks on journalists, and driving police vehicles into groups of protests. Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami and Philadelphia were placed under curfew.

“George Floyd was lynched,” Jones said. “It was a modern day lynching.”

The post Tawanda Jones Responds to George Floyd’s Death; Police Aggression at City Hall appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

On Thursday night, members of Communities United’s Youth Organizing Leadership Academy (YOLA) gathered in Harbor East to demand corporations who receive millions of dollars in tax breaks each year pay their taxes like the rest of us.

“Say no to corporate greed,” Community United’s Steven Merrick yelled.

His chants bounced off the glitzy glass buildings of Harbor East neighborhood and were repeated back to him by the crowd of 20 or so.

“Stop stealing from our kids,” Merrick added.

The group stood between the Under Armour Brand House and the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront hotel in Harbor East for a protest focused on how tax money not collected from corporations such as Under Armour and Marriott would help fund Baltimore City schools if were collected.

“I came because I’m tired of looking at cracked paint on the walls and broken chairs, broken tables,” said Shakerra McDonald.

“I’m here because I pay my taxes and I make less than $20,000 a year, I honestly don’t make a whole lot of money and big corporations make tons, millions of dollars—probably even billions—a year,” said Olivia Smith. “That’s not ok. And I want to be heard because I haven’t been heard in a very long time and it’s time to speak up.”

And Communities United came with research. They stress that Under Armour reported its pre-tax profits in 2017 at $157 million, did not pay any state taxes that year, and received $8.3 million in state tax credits.

That’s not to mention the historic Tax Increment Financing (TIF) the Under Armour-adjacent Port Covington project receives. A report in July by ProPublica revealed that Maryland Governor Larry Hogan used a mapping error to get “Opportunity Zone” status—usually reserved for poorly funded areas of the city in need of support—for Port Covington. Currently, Under Armour is the subject of a federal accounting probe.

Communities United also explains how Marriott International’s cumulative profits for 2016 through 2018 were $7 billion while financial disclosures show the company paid no state taxes. During that same 2016-2018 period, Marriott received $287 million in Maryland tax credits. 

While Under Armour and and Marriott get millions in tax breaks, the Kirwan Commission found Maryland’s schools are underfunded by $2.9 billions of dollars every year. The commission has said that Baltimore City needs to increase its local contributions by $300 million by 2030 for its schools to be adequately funded.

“We cannot fund Kirwan if we don’t close corporate tax loopholes and improve our upside-down tax system,” said Communities United Executive Director, Jane Henderson. “The top one percent in Maryland pay the lowest tax rate—that ain’t right.”

Communities United’s Tia Downer has a child who attends Sandtown Achievement Academy, a school Under Armour helped renovate for the 2019-2020 school year with a $250,000 grant. Downer stressed that while donations are appreciated by the community they do not make up for not paying taxes.

“I am thankful that Under Armour makes charitable donations to some of Baltimore’s schools. At my child’s school, they recently funded the renovation of the gym,” Downer said. “But charity does not replace them paying their taxes. Under Armour and Marriott need to pay their fair share.”

Under Armour’s net worth is around $2 billion, which means that $250,000 grant is .0125% of the company’s wealth. 

“I’m tired of seeing youth like us being overlooked every freaking day. I’m tired of being treated like I’m a little man,” Community United’s Kuijuan “Woogie” Jackson said. “I’m tired of always having to struggle to make ends meet when people like this get to eat whatever they want. I’m hungry.”

The group marched throughout Harbor East chanting “Tax the rich, fund our schools,” and “Stop stealing from our kids.” At one point, police ordered the group—who were primarily marching on sidewalks—to disperse. They did not. 

On the bull horn, Communities United’s Henderson and Jackson discussed the terms of Kirwan and taxation in front of the crowd.

“The Kirwan Commission has recommended a 4.4 billion dollar annual increase in school funding, to be phased in over the next 10 years, our schools need it. That works out to be about two million dollars a school. Imagine for your school, what that could mean,” Communities United Executive Director, Henderson said to the crowd.

“We need a lot of work,” Community United’s Jackson said, interjecting. “It’s a start but nah, I’m not happy with that.”

“On average. Some schools would get more. Schools that need more are supposed to get more,” Henderson explained.

“Do we ever get what we need?” Jackson said, laughing.

“Well that’s what we’re fighting for,” Henderson said.

Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly called the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront “Marriott Four Seasons” on first mention. The Beat apologizes for the error.

The post Baltimore youth demand Under Armour and Marriott pay taxes like the rest of us appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

For more than a week, residents of Poe Homes public housing have not had adequate running water due to water main issues—and it took Baltimore City’s Department Of Public Works days to even adequately respond.

“The water main break happened Sunday into Monday morning and from what I was told the city did not respond to it until Thursday, Friday,” said Rich Akwo of Generosity Global, who provided residents with portable shower stalls. “So it’s almost five days before the city had any resources down here to help the people.”

“There is no end in sight. I just went to the community meeting and what we’ve discovered is that just recently the city installed in 228 units here at Poe Homes, low-flow toilets and showerheads which is not compatible with the pipes underground,” said Beth Hawks, a Pigtown resident who heard about the Poe Homes on late Wednesday and has been helping out. “So when they started doing the work, the connectors disintegrated.”

According to Mayor Jack Young’s spokesperson, Lester Davis, around 100 toilets have been replaced so far and the city is working on replacing the rest.

In the area surrounding Poe Homes, apparent wealth and palpable poverty are just one block away from each other: It is less than a mile from City Hall and now sits in the shadow of University of Maryland BioPark. In 2016, the Biopark’s developer Wexford Science and Technology was approved for a $17.5 million dollar TIF. 

“We can’t even flush our toilets, can’t take baths,” said Naji, a Poe Homes resident. “It’s a real crisis.”

The United Nations recognizes access to water and sanitation as fundamental human rights. On Thursday June 20, Poe Homes residents, frustrated by with city’s slow response, began reaching out to the media about the issue: “We have kids and elderly people around here. No one is taking our situation serious but us…the city workers has went home and the maintenance people have went home as well leaving us still with no water,” a resident posted on Facebook.  Images of residents gathering around fire hydrants with pots and buckets spread across the internet apparently pushing DPW to finally respond.

“City officials, I guess they have their methods of doing it, but I think it’s too slow. There’s not enough urgency, you got people who cannot bathe, cannot cook, cannot clean,” said Dennis Wise of Safe Streets who has been helping out in lieu of city support. “To me, it seems like the city has a nonchalant attitude, we’re trying to motivate them to do what’s right and do it in a speedy time.”

The city had been dropping off bottled water for residents and the water coming out of the fire hydrants was often brown.

On Friday June 21, DPW attempted to install a new water main bypass to fix the problem but it did not work. That same day, portable toilets and showers arrived.  On Saturday, DPW announced water was restored. The next day however, Naji showed The Real News Network that there was almost no water pressure coming from the faucet in his kitchen.

“It’s a trickle that’s coming out,” Naji said, as a weak stream of water dripped out of the faucet.

The water pressure in the development is around 10 PSI (pressure per square inch) and should be around 45 PSI. The failing water lines point to decades of disinvestment in public housing exacerbated by a slow response from city officials that many residents and activists point out, would never happen in tony neighborhoods such as Canton or Federal Hill. 

“What it actually tells us is that there’s second-class citizens,” Naji said. “If you’re not in a certain tax bracket, or have a certain category—because I don’t want to put race in it, but it’s a reality—you’re just second-class and they look at second-class citizens as someone who’s expendable,”

A Saturday morning announcement by Baltimore Police Department that overtime was available to any officers who wanted to go over to Poe Homes shocked many. What exactly police were there to do, is unclear and Baltimore Police have not responded to comment.

Baltimore activists including members of Baltimore Bloc and the Johns Hopkins University Sit-In have continued dropping off water and food and groups such as Safe Streets and Kinetic Capital have been present.

Over the weekend, Davis from the mayor’s office, City Council President Brandon Scott and some of his staffers continued to deliver water and check in with residents about the status of water pressure in their building. The city has also offered residents hotels to stay in though picking up and moving for a few days is not easy for everybody to do—and some of the hotels allotted for the residents are all the way in Baltimore County.

On Sunday, Akwo of Generosity Global, who provided mobile shower facilities gave The Real News Network a look at the showers offered to Poe Homes.

“Each stall has its own shampoo, soap, and conditioner. They get their towels,” Akwo said, opening up one of the stalls. “We make it as homey as possible.”

The stalls are inviting with tiled walls and patterned shower curtains.

“No city in America should have to deal with this type of crisis for so long,” Akwo said. “It’s been a week and so my question is…do they have the proper resources to tackle this problem and bring it to an end?”

“We should have learned our lesson after Katrina. We saw what happened in the marginalized communities and the lack of response. Like, every city should have a program and a protocol built in for a response like this,” said Kinetic Capital’s John Huffington, who works with Wise and like Wise, is formerly incarcerated. “It shouldn’t have to be community organizations, it shouldn’t have to be ex-convicts stepping out. Like, we’re here, where’s the city officials? Where are the people paid to do this work?”

“The thing we were trying to push and preach was we’ve got to operate like this is a state of emergency and just make sure we can mitigate whatever disruption people experience,” said Lester Davis. “There were people who were extremely gracious, more gracious than I would probably be in their shoes. That wasn’t lost on us in trying to understand that we’ve got to work that much harder to get it up and running.”

Additional reporting by Lisa Snowden-McCray.

The post A Real Crisis: One block away from wealth and development and Poe Homes can’t get water appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

In front of City Hall on Friday, Jan. 26, about two dozen people gathered in protest of Mayor Catherine Pugh and the city, which earlier that morning had removed everybody from a homeless encampment under 83 near Guilford Avenue and Bath Street and tossed their belongings.

“No housing, no peace. No housing, no peace,” the mix of those experiencing homeless, advocates, and activists shouted.

Two weeks earlier, Baltimore officials announced they were going to raze the encampment citing unsafe and unsanitary conditions. The city pledged to do outreach to the residents. Instead of placement at city shelters, they offered them “dormitory-style housing” at the Volunteers of America Bridge Housing facility on the 5000 block of E. Monument Street. Evictions such as this one have happened a few times over the past several years and are seen as cruel and temporary solutions to the homelessness problem.

“This is number six [eviction] for the real care providers to experience how the city continues to deal with our homeless individuals, especially those on the street,” said advocate Christina Flowers, referencing other homeless sweeps over the past few years including August 2017’s Tent City eviction and a June 2015 removal of an encampment on Martin Luther King Boulevard and W. Franklin Street, which resulted in the area under the overpass being blocked and fenced in.

The city paid Volunteers of America $705,828.92 to house and provide services to those who were evicted for six months, The Baltimore Brew reported, and many have demanded transparency in how that money was spent.

“We need to see evidence of what the city claimed that they are doing pertaining to our homeless population,” advocate Richard T. White declared at City Hall. “We need to see evidence of monies that’s being utilized pertaining to citizens that are homeless here in Baltimore City.”

A couple hours earlier, city workers arrived at Guilford Avenue under 83 to throw away all of their belongings and were met by protest. Many threw their belongings onto the street to slow down the eviction process and some stood in the street, blocking traffic.

“A lot of the people that live out here decided to take a stand,” said Tony Simmons. “They’re just gonna bring attention to the city, that they don’t wanna keep being moved and shuffled around like cattle.”

“I’m homeless. I ain’t got no house. I been out here seven years. They ain’t helping me. They just wanna move everybody off the streets,” said Shaq, who had been removed from the encampment.

Tarra Martin, who said she has been experiencing homelessness for eight years, showed the Real News her blanket and tarp, which was going to be thrown out.

“[People from the mayor’s office] haven’t met with everybody. There’s a lot of people they definitely haven’t met with,” Martin said, countering the mayor’s office claims.

In an email, Terry F. Hickey, director of the Mayor’s Office of Human Services, said the city and nonprofit organizations conducted extensive outreach.

“We are confident everyone had notice of the pending action,” Hickey wrote. “Some may disagree on face value with any action involving encampments, but this fails to take into consideration that complexities of the issues surrounding homelessness.”

Many of those experiencing homelessness pointed out that the new shelter in east Baltimore is far from their work and homeless services, concentrated downtown. This too reflects criticisms during the Tent City eviction where many were offered shelter at the former William Pinderhughes Elementary in Upton, far from City Hall, where they had been camped out.

3rd District Councilman Ryan Dorsey, who has visited the Volunteers of America Bridge Housing facility, also criticized the location.

“It should be obvious this isn’t a place that would set people up for success by having nearby access to jobs or other aspects we consider fundamental to a high quality of life,” Dorsey said. “Setting a deadline for displacement is not an adequate substitute for doing the work of actually reaching people, to work in their service, without taking from them the dignity of self-determination. Leaving people with no choice but to go somewhere else is inhumane, and its not different from any other form of displacement associated with gentrification.”

“People who are now moved into the VOA facility are being well taken care of and are on a road to permanent housing and getting the support they very much deserve,” Hickey wrote countering criticisms.

Following the eviction and the brief blockade at Guilford Avenue, the group marched to City Hall and began discussing plans to possibly camp out in front of City Hall and demand a city representative meet with them.

“So, today is another example of evicting homeless individuals,” Flowers said. “No housing, no resources, no emergency supportive services, but they wanna push our homeless individuals into a institutional setting program, building somewhere where they used to house ex-prisoner and cons, whatever. This is not the setting for some of these traumatized, special circumstances homeless individuals.”

Flowers also announced press conference to address “the displacement of Guilford Ave. homeless” for 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 30 at 2526 N. Charles St.

Additional reporting by Dharna Noor.

Visit therealnews.com for independent local, national, and international journalism that examines the underlying causes of chronic problems and searches for effective solutions.

The post City removes homeless encampment, advocates and people experiencing homelessness protest, critique Mayor Pugh appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

At a Dunbar High School town hall on Monday night, Baltimore City School Board members including school CEO Sonja Santelises responded to concerns about freezing classrooms and widespread mismanagement at schools. The town hall was announced on Jan. 10 at a School Board Meeting taken over by angry parents and organizers who packed the North Avenue Baltimore City Public Schools headquarters demanding accountability for the lack of heat in city schools at the beginning of the month.

This town hall, moderated by WEAA radio host Farajii Muhammad, continued the pattern of that Jan. 10 meeting: a defensive Santelises continually placing blame on Governor Hogan and the state but also on residents, who seemed willing to agree that the state is at fault here but refused to let city school officials entirely off the hook.

“For quite a long time, you have already failed. You failed. Everything that we’re sitting here listening to now is the same old re-gift-wrapped explanation to what is wrong,” community member Donald Rhuebottom said, voicing what many who showed up felt.

“We now have protocols in place that we didn’t have before so that when buildings are too hot, we met with the Baltimore Teachers Union, we worked with them. We worked with other teachers who had actually emailed directly. We had some parents who did that,” Santelises said. “And so, one of our big lessons was having kind of a consistent policy that said this is the target for every young person in Baltimore City.”

Rhuebottom also repeated a faulty piece of data that continues to spread—that Baltimore is the fourth highest funded school system in the country.

“We get more money per student than almost anybody in the country. But then we don’t even have a single school that’s proficient. Not one,” Rhuebottom said.

As Real News reported back in December, this fudged fact—that Baltimore has the fourth highest per-pupil funding in the nation—which Project Baltimore often cites in stories that go viral, is misrepresentative: The Census Bureau says Baltimore ranks 2,600 out of the nation’s 13,000 school districts. Baltimore is fourth only among the country’s 100 largest school districts.

“That’s not accurate information,” Santelises told Rhuebottom. “When you look more deeply, what you see is that there are outside organizations that have said for a long time that Baltimore City is not funded at the level that it should be.”

Most of the crowd didn’t quarrel with Santelises and the school board’s blame on funding issues—it’s just that they wouldn’t let that be the end of the conversation.

“We better recognize who is really to blame for this funding crisis. We better recognize when Governor Hogan says he has given our schools $2.5 million but with so-called accountability standards. When he tries to paint us with a false narrative, that we are incompetent. We are unable to manage our own affairs. There is widespread corruption. This too is coded language and it too is racist,” another resident said, confronting city officials and then invoking Project Baltimore, whose slogan is “Save Our Schools.”

“Our elected officials, along with the media under the pretext of Save Our Schools, among others are complicit in the undermining of our schools,” the resident continued. “Particularly the mayor and the City Council that are more interested in failed policies like mandatory minimum sentences, giving themselves a raise, and disproportionately funding the police department instead of demanding that the state comply with its agreement to fully fund our schools.”

Also referenced was a widely circulated Baltimore Sun article that found Baltimore City has returned $66 million slated for school construction including heating repairs because it was unable to complete projects on time or at cost. The article was picked up by Republican Governor Larry Hogan, who cited it as evidence of mismanagement by the city.

“We are sending money back to the state. So, my question is, what is our plan that we can stop sending money back to the state?” another speaker asked. “Now look at the budget. I feel like there is nothing that that budget is saying that they have money for that we don’t have a building that has a need to meet that money.”

“What we are advocating for is for that process to be changed,” Santelises said. “Because as has been noted . . . it amounts to a poor tax.”

The speaker agreed with Santelises but also indicated the answer wasn’t enough.

Santelises continued.

“So, if you do not have the money to forward fund your project, you get dinged and your money gets sent back. So, if you’ve got a rich uncle who can give you the money to pay for the roof upfront. Well then you’re straight. If you don’t have a rich uncle, then you’re set trying to guess and project. So, I think it’s important for everybody here. Look, there are lots of legitimate anger and everything else, but let me tell you something. Please understand that $66 million is $66 million that we found that was not given to us.”

Then Santelises moved back to a point mentioned on Jan. 10: The city schools are essentially set up to fail and portrayed as inept.

“All this stuff about administrative mismanagement and ineffectiveness and the narrative, right? The narrative that gets put here,” she said. “It’s interesting how it becomes ineptitude when it was actually us who found and did the analysis.”

Perhaps more telling than any of the back-and-forths last night, however, was a handout given to attendees listing and detailing every Baltimore City Public School that had heating issues.

It was 10 pages long.

Visit therealnews.com for companion videos to this story and more independent local, national, and international journalism that examines the underlying causes of chronic problems and searches for effective solutions.

The post Community members sound off on troubled Baltimore school system at Monday night Town Hall appeared first on Baltimore Beat.