This year, we were invited by the Open Society Foundations to organize a local news experiment called NewsTrust Baltimore. The goal of this six-month pilot was to help Baltimore residents find and share good journalism about their community—and to teach college and high school students how to separate fact from fiction online. From February to […]
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What if all city employees lived in the city?
Monday, December 06, 2010The trajectory that led me to Baltimore is a fairly common one; I came here to go to school. Baltimore and I got off to a bit of a rocky start. But over the course of my graduate school program, I fell hard for the honesty, quirkiness, and history of Charm City and decided to […]
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A jobs strategy for everyone
Monday, November 15, 2010If our goal is to redevelop Baltimore and the State of Maryland into a world class city and state, we will need to insure that everybody is working with that same goal in mind. We need a jobs strategy that involves all levels of our society. Currently, there is a jobs strategy for biotechnical, technology, […]
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Corporate law for the people
Monday, October 25, 2010My audacious idea is for citizens to make corporate law work for them. Corporations have long wielded power to the detriment of the people. What if individuals used corporate law to organize, make their communities better places to live, and hold for-profit corporations responsible for their detrimental effects on their neighborhoods? Instead of a McDonald’s […]
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Surrounding our children
Monday, October 18, 2010“Your children need your presence more than your presents.” -Jesse Jackson Since 2006, I have been actively involved in the lives of young girls in the West Baltimore community of Sandtown. As I hear stories from hundreds of girls across Baltimore, a common strand appears: the absence of parents. This problem of parental absenteeism is […]
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A garden in every school
Monday, September 27, 2010Elementary School children gather around a table in their Food Education class. The teacher brings out a pomegranate, which she cuts in half and opens to the waiting eyes of the children, one of whom lets out a delighted “ooooooh. It looks like jewels!!” Kwan, age 10, picks up a shovel as community members gather […]
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A Dream in Cherry Hill
Monday, September 20, 2010“Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.” -James Baldwin Imagine a Baltimore city where we care for our children as powerfully as we care about the winner of the big game or the latest gossip about neighbors or television personalities. Imagine a Baltimore city where we collectively work […]
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Baltimore: where everyone has a home
Monday, July 12, 2010On June 16, 2010, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released its 2009 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress confirming what many of us already knew—family homelessness is on the rise. The same report documented an overall increase in homelessness in Maryland of 26.89% between 2008 and 2009. Baltimore County already uncovered a […]
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Building a resilient Baltimore
Monday, May 24, 2010Since 2005, I have been an active member of the Baltimore Homeownership Preservation Coalition, which helps Baltimore residents address the potential loss of their home to foreclosure. We recognized the problem early, and mobilized to get the message out to people in mortgage trouble that they should seek help from a nonprofit housing counselor. The […]
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What are we waiting for?
Monday, May 10, 2010Black community, it’s time for some tough decision-making. It’s time to decide the best way to conceptualize, create and configure our communities for optimal socio-economic outcomes. Moreover, it’s time for us to promote and demonstrate by example that “more is not always better,” and that there comes a time when it is necessary to downsize […]
