This past weekend the City of Baltimore and Safe and Sound, a 
non-profit community organizing group, hosted the Baltimore Opportunity Summit at the city's convention center.
Let me first say that I applaud the intent - the intent to educate, to inform to even infuriate residents that they are not being treated in a way that any human being should be treated. BUT....
The summit was really the City of Baltimore using its citizens as drum beaters to get State funding approved and maintained. Now is that all bad? No - citizenry should be informed and outraged when Annapolis lets their city rot. But should Mayor Sheila Dixon use the summit and her residents as tools, sticks to beat Annapolis and Governor O'Malley to demand what she, as the elected leader and spokeperson of the people, ought already be saying to them? No. This is politicking plain an simple.
Banners and information were posted and made glossy and beautiful in a car crash kind of way. Empty buildings, poor folk. Statistics were rampant and pointed. Tragic numbers. Contrasted with smiling children, happy elders and green trees they told the story of what "could be". They and told people how much rehab costs less than incarceration, how education was the tool to empowerment... ad nauseum. And at the end of this "tunnel of oppression" was the gloried solution - a straw vote that asked residents to complete a ballot that asked Annapolis to continue funding somethings and to add additional funding to seed future change.
This is one huge "DUH". And it is made without forethought - indeed even irresponsibly so - without addressing where Annapolis will get those funds from, and it only comes now when we all know full well we're, like the rest of the state, on the financial chopping block. In Mayor Dixon's recent anti-gun brouhaha, "tables of guns" were paraded about to show just how many guns there are in Baltimore (another DUH - Mark Steiner mentioned the other day that guns are ambient in Baltimore like air - we already know they're here what are you doing to do about them) and in this case the same thing was done with Citizens. The caring citizens were used, and paraded about as pawns for the City's case for maintained and increased funding. Why because, in an election year Dixon doesn't want to come across too pushy. And let's face it Baltimore's management of everything from public works to schools to rehabilitation services has been less then stellar. So since they won't believe City Hall maybe they'll listen to desperate citizens?
The reality is that Dixon, and she's taken on O'Malley's mantle of problems, have deputized and pimped out their own citizens to do the work a city ought already be doing. Baltimore no doubt has some of the most engaged citizenry in the nation - from community action groups, child welfare, poverty, housing and health interventions, arts enhancements you name it. But these are wrongly identified only as strengths while ignoring they are also responses to a failed public services administration - one which fails to serve its citizens in the most basic ways at times. So much so that citizens have had to take on those responsibilities or flounder in their own despair.
I put the call out then to Baltimore City Hall, particularly Mayor Dixon, to Stop asking citizens to do more. Instead city officials should stand up and do that which they are paid and elected to do: to lead. Stop deputizing citizens and cease the incessant drum beat asking for "more community involvement" to solve problem your offices are already supposed to be working on but, frankly, don't. And It's time City Hall took the heat when they take the stand on an issue Stop using citizens as your front line response team, your political buffer. Whether against mini-bikes, assassinations (calling them murders is a misnomer if there ever was one), drugs, filth and trash, greening (as tree "stewards" again citizens are pimped out) and so much more you need to take a stand. Support the police, the courts (with and under due diligence, not some carte blanche fascism either).
Stop putting it back on "us" to do your job... Last time I checked I put in many hours for the City, my neighborhood, the trees, the kids, I picked up trash, called in stolen autos - all after I got home from my "other" job. But no paycheck appeared in my mail box for this work. Perhaps if we're going to be doing even more Sheila won't have a problem sharing her check with us. In the meantime summits are only political peaks scaled by the citizens doing all the work but the mountains being named after the politicians.
non-profit community organizing group, hosted the Baltimore Opportunity Summit at the city's convention center.- "The goal of the Baltimore Opportunity Summit is to empower Baltimoreans with the knowledge that they can revolutionize the way we spend our public money and increase investments in opportunities so all Baltimoreans have a real chance to grow up safe and healthy."
Let me first say that I applaud the intent - the intent to educate, to inform to even infuriate residents that they are not being treated in a way that any human being should be treated. BUT....
The summit was really the City of Baltimore using its citizens as drum beaters to get State funding approved and maintained. Now is that all bad? No - citizenry should be informed and outraged when Annapolis lets their city rot. But should Mayor Sheila Dixon use the summit and her residents as tools, sticks to beat Annapolis and Governor O'Malley to demand what she, as the elected leader and spokeperson of the people, ought already be saying to them? No. This is politicking plain an simple.
Banners and information were posted and made glossy and beautiful in a car crash kind of way. Empty buildings, poor folk. Statistics were rampant and pointed. Tragic numbers. Contrasted with smiling children, happy elders and green trees they told the story of what "could be". They and told people how much rehab costs less than incarceration, how education was the tool to empowerment... ad nauseum. And at the end of this "tunnel of oppression" was the gloried solution - a straw vote that asked residents to complete a ballot that asked Annapolis to continue funding somethings and to add additional funding to seed future change.
This is one huge "DUH". And it is made without forethought - indeed even irresponsibly so - without addressing where Annapolis will get those funds from, and it only comes now when we all know full well we're, like the rest of the state, on the financial chopping block. In Mayor Dixon's recent anti-gun brouhaha, "tables of guns" were paraded about to show just how many guns there are in Baltimore (another DUH - Mark Steiner mentioned the other day that guns are ambient in Baltimore like air - we already know they're here what are you doing to do about them) and in this case the same thing was done with Citizens. The caring citizens were used, and paraded about as pawns for the City's case for maintained and increased funding. Why because, in an election year Dixon doesn't want to come across too pushy. And let's face it Baltimore's management of everything from public works to schools to rehabilitation services has been less then stellar. So since they won't believe City Hall maybe they'll listen to desperate citizens?
The reality is that Dixon, and she's taken on O'Malley's mantle of problems, have deputized and pimped out their own citizens to do the work a city ought already be doing. Baltimore no doubt has some of the most engaged citizenry in the nation - from community action groups, child welfare, poverty, housing and health interventions, arts enhancements you name it. But these are wrongly identified only as strengths while ignoring they are also responses to a failed public services administration - one which fails to serve its citizens in the most basic ways at times. So much so that citizens have had to take on those responsibilities or flounder in their own despair.I put the call out then to Baltimore City Hall, particularly Mayor Dixon, to Stop asking citizens to do more. Instead city officials should stand up and do that which they are paid and elected to do: to lead. Stop deputizing citizens and cease the incessant drum beat asking for "more community involvement" to solve problem your offices are already supposed to be working on but, frankly, don't. And It's time City Hall took the heat when they take the stand on an issue Stop using citizens as your front line response team, your political buffer. Whether against mini-bikes, assassinations (calling them murders is a misnomer if there ever was one), drugs, filth and trash, greening (as tree "stewards" again citizens are pimped out) and so much more you need to take a stand. Support the police, the courts (with and under due diligence, not some carte blanche fascism either).
Stop putting it back on "us" to do your job... Last time I checked I put in many hours for the City, my neighborhood, the trees, the kids, I picked up trash, called in stolen autos - all after I got home from my "other" job. But no paycheck appeared in my mail box for this work. Perhaps if we're going to be doing even more Sheila won't have a problem sharing her check with us. In the meantime summits are only political peaks scaled by the citizens doing all the work but the mountains being named after the politicians.
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2 comments:
I have seen The Wire
"The Wire" is an interesting case. Not being a Baltimore native I see it differently than those who live here it seems. Many see it as a great opportunity to showcase the ills and strengths of a city often under siege. I disagree (see my earlier post on it with links to the director etc.). Just last week they moved back into the area immediately south of where I live to film. How am I supposed to feel about that? Great - my hood is so close to a shit-hole in reality it can sub for one on TV? And the production crew is using the same abandoned lot they used before at this location. Did they do anything with it when they were done last time? No. So for all their high dollar works elsewhere it should be more about the non-exploitation and betterment of the locals they rape (visually if no other way) in order to make their show). Gritty, sure. Something to be "proud of", hardly.
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