Today, April 27, marks the one-year anniversary of the Baltimore Uprising. The day after, while images of police in riot gear, smoke- and teargas-filled streets, and a CVS on fire were flashing across television screens around the world, a group of students were busy capturing a Baltimore largely ignored by the media outside the city. […]
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Truancy Court Project does more than address absenteeism
Wednesday, April 27, 2016Photo: Judge Mitchell applauds senior Asia McBride for staying in school and helps her plan to dual enroll in college courses as she finishes her high school credits next year. Recently, the director of OSI’s Education and Youth Development Program, Karen E. Webber attended a meeting of the Truancy Court Project (TCP), an OSI grantee operated by […]
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OSI Justice Fund Grantee “On the Watch” Gets National Attention on All Things Considered
Wednesday, April 27, 2016OSI Justice Fund grantee “On the Watch,” is a year-long newsroom series focusing on police accountability and community police relations that airs on Baltimore National Public Radio affiliate WYPR. This weekend, NPR aired a compilation of the work WYPR’s Mary Rose Madden has been doing about police and community relations for “On the Watch” on […]
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Talking About Progress, One Year Later
Monday, April 25, 2016On Thursday night, OSI-Baltimore, Good News Baltimore, and the Walters Art Museum co-sponsored an event at the Walters to mark the one-year anniversary of the uprising and to talk about how we define progress going forward. The event, part of OSI’s Talking About Race series, featured a great panel including Joseph Jones, director of the Center for Urban […]
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Pratt Library CEO and Former OSI Board Member Carla Hayden Clears First Hurdle to Becoming Librarian of Congress
Monday, April 25, 2016Yesterday, Dr. Carla D. Hayden, CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library and former OSI-Baltimore advisory board member, cleared her first Senate confirmation hearing as President Obama’s nominee to librarian of Congress. If confirmed, Hayden will be the first African American as well as the first woman to head the Library of Congress. Sens. Barbara […]
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General Assembly Takes Big Steps to Reform Maryland’s Criminal Justice System
Wednesday, April 20, 2016Last week, the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation that, if fully implemented, will begin to bring an end to years of mass incarceration in Maryland by prioritizing drug treatment over prison, improving parole practices to better support release and reintegration, and doing away with racially unjust mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. The Justice […]
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New video latest proof that Baltimore police need de-escalation training
Tuesday, April 19, 2016“This is my house.” It was the statement 18-year-old Tionne Jones made while standing in the doorway of his home in the 1800 block of Barclay St. in the Greenmount West neighborhood. He made it last Saturday to a Baltimore City police lieutenant who asked to talk to the property owner. When Tionne told the […]
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Baltimore’s Mayoral Race Gets National Coverage
Tuesday, April 19, 2016The Baltimore mayoral race is heating up, and gaining attention outside of Maryland. Much of it is focusing on the candidates through the lens of Freddie Gray’s death and the uprising, the one-year anniversary of which coincides with the primary election in Maryland. The New York Times and Huffington Post recently published pieces on the […]
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Baltimore City students stage walkout protesting standardized testing
Monday, April 18, 2016Holding signs with messages like “Jobs Not Jail,” “Park the PARCC,” and “We are students, not test scores,” about 100 students across Baltimore City walked out of their classrooms Friday afternoon to protest the PARCC standardized test, which they call a “mechanism of institutional racism.” The walkout culminated at a rally in front of the […]
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Record Turnout for Maryland Primary Election Early Voting
Friday, April 15, 2016Long lines greeted Marylanders casting ballots as polling places opened for early voting Thursday with record turnout. According to the Baltimore Sun, when the polls closed at 8:30pm on the first day, about 5,000 people had cast ballots in Baltimore — more than four times the number of the first day of early voting in […]
