Archive

An Associated Press story about the sharp reduction in Baltimore juveniles being held in adult detention facilities quotes OSI-Baltimore Criminal and Juvenile Justice Director Tara Huffman and Christina Williams, director of public policy for OSI grantee Community Law In Action (CLIA), which was founded by 1999 OSI Community Fellow Terry Hickey, who is now director of […]

Yesterday, OSI-Baltimore hosted a train-the-trainer session on restorative practices for English Learner (EL) students, organized with the City Schools’ Office of Differentiation. On October 19th, the trainers will offer a half-day training on restorative practices for all 150 EL teachers in the district. Restorative practices, in particular restorative circles, help lift up student voices and build […]

Recently, as part of the Nikki Perlow Foundation’s Forest of Hope project, artist and 2004 OSI Community Fellow Jay Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen led a group of more than 1,000 people who created an outdoor art installation honoring those in recovery from addiction. Teams of people led by people in recovery painted the trunks of 52 trees at […]

Unified Efforts, the program started by 2016 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow, Deborah Ramsey, will hold several violence reduction and bullying prevention activities with K-12 students as part of the organizations “24/7 Bullying Prevention Awareness Campaign.” As part of her fellowship, Ramsey, who is a retired police officer, established the Penn North Violence Prevention Youth Center in […]

On Thursday at Associated Black Charities’ (ABC) 2017 Women on the Move event, 2013 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow Lanaea Featherstone‘s organization, The William & Lanaea C. Featherstone Foundation, was honored as an “Organization Making a Difference for Women.” OSI-Baltimore Advisory Board member Alicia Wilson, who also serves on the ABC Board, co-chaired the event and fellow […]

Last night, the Campaign for Black Male Achievement opened the first Rumble Young Man Rumble event in Baltimore at City Hall. Mayor Catherine Pugh welcomed the event, which connects young African-American men, “flyweights,” to older counterparts, “heavyweights,” to foster mentoring relationships and try to improve outcomes and build power for young men of color in […]

Paul Butler, author of Chokehold: Policing Black Men, gave a powerful and provocative talk about race and policing in America last night as part of OSI-Baltimore’s Talking About Race series. Butler suggested that policing in the United States is structurally discriminatory and that efforts at reform short, though he acknowledges that such efforts are necessary, […]

OSI-Baltimore is a proud sponsor of the Campaign for Black Male Achievement‘s invitation-only Rumble Young Man Rumble Baltimore event, which begins tomorrow at City Hall and continues through Friday. Started by Open Society Foundations in 2008, the Campaign for Black Male Achievement (CBMA) is a national membership network that seeks to ensure the growth, sustainability, and […]

During a four-day sweep last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials targeted so-called sanctuary cities, arresting nearly 500 people nationwide, including 28 in Maryland and at least five in Baltimore. While ICE claims that it targeting people with criminal histories, a Sun staff editorial points out that all of the 28 Maryland detainees were […]

In a Baltimore Sun op-ed on Tuesday, Andrew Vetter, director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, said the city intends to expand the OSI-sponsored Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program, which diverts drug users into treatment instead of the criminal justice system. “We are seeking to expand existing programs like Safe Streets and Law […]