Politics

In Wake of Riots and Crime Spike, Baltimore Mayor Under Fire

Published

10 years ago

July 22, 2015

In this photo taken Tuesday, July 21, 2015, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, center, speaks with residents outside of vacant homes before a ceremony to kick off their restoration in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

JULIET LINDERMAN, Associated Press

BALTIMORE (AP) — Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake climbed onto the deck of an abandoned row house in Tuesday’s sweltering summer heat and promised that “better is coming” as she promoted the restoration of a blighted block not far from where riots broke out earlier this year.

In another year or so, the three-story brick shell of a building, one of nine vacant houses on the block in Reservoir Hill, should be ready for new tenants, thanks to a $4.6 million rehabilitation initiative. The neighborhood also is getting a new public school, part of the city’s $1 billion school construction program.

For better or worse, since she sacked Police Commissioner Anthony Batts, the mayor has been alone at the top of a city government that has yet to show how it will repair the strained relationship between police and the people of inner-city Baltimore.

“There’s a lot of tension, but poking through that tension is optimism and determination and so many who know that we’re better than those few days, that we’re better than that unrest, and who won’t be deterred by the tragic events of the riots,” Rawlings-Blake said in an interview with The Associated Press.

But for many in Baltimore, the memory of how Rawlings-Blake responded to the riots is too raw, and the city’s unmet expectations are overwhelming. There are 17,000 vacant homes in Baltimore, concentrated in the same neglected neighborhoods where the death of Freddie Gray in police custody prompted a wave of arson, looting and open confrontations with riot police in April.

Rawlings-Blake now runs a city that is still reeling from the $30.4 million economic cost of looting and arson in April and the citywide curfew that followed, but also, for the first time in decades, openly acknowledging the longstanding and deep-seated problems that seeded it all — dismal housing, nonexistent jobs, poor education and racial inequality.

Chanta Saunders, 25, was friends with Gray, who died a week after breaking his neck while he was bounced around in the back of a police van. She said the mayor’s decision to fire Batts was good, but that Rawlings-Blake was just as much at fault for problems with policing.

“He should have been fired,” Saunders said. “He needed to be fired, but so does the mayor.”

At a July 9 news conference, Rawlings-Blake said Batts had become too divisive and distracting since six officers were arrested on charges ranging up to second-degree murder in Gray’s death. The charges helped end days of tension in the streets, but Batts failed to reverse plummeting arrests and skyrocketing murders since then.

“The people of Baltimore deserve better and we’re going to get better,” she said then.

But Rawlings-Blake has also faced criticism. Some blame the citywide curfew she authorized, which led to hundreds of arrests on charges that were nearly all dropped. The curfew was strictly enforced in poor neighborhoods, but hardly honored in wealthier neighborhoods in the majority black city.

Most of all, the mayor was blamed for failing to show up as the crisis unraveled. For nearly five hours, as windows were smashed and buildings set aflame across swaths of east and west Baltimore, she was nowhere to be seen. The next day, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said Rawlings-Blake did not return his calls for hours as he was seeking guidance on whether to call in the National Guard.

The Baltimore Sun questioned Rawlings-Blake’s leadership.

“The city needed to hear about action, not the hours she spent behind the scenes, dealing with the ‘T’s to be crossed and I’s to be dotted’ to make sure the executive order mandating an evening curfew was just right,” its editorial read. “Baltimore has already suffered incalculable damage in terms of destroyed property, injured police officers and civilians, and the tarnished image of the city in the eyes of those who live here, in the suburbs and around the world. Repairing that damage is going to require real leadership. So far, we’re not seeing it.”

Since then, Rawlings-Blake has tried to focus attention on her efforts to restore vacant housing, build new schools and reopen recreation centers for the city’s youth.

“People want Baltimore to heal, they want to be part of the process and we’re taking that,” the mayor said, describing how she’s trying to channel investment and “community spirit” into real, bricks-and-mortar improvements.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, who lives in West Baltimore, said Rawlings-Blake has not received the credit she deserves for keeping the peace during times of tumult in Baltimore.

“There was a lot of back and forth between her and the governor, and I think whenever you have two entities of government — state and local — and you’ve got people of different parties heading those agencies, you’re probably going to run into disagreements,” Cummings said. “But the fact is, you have to look at the bottom line. No shots fired. Think about that. No shots fired. When I was out on that street I knew: if one shot had been fired, the whole city would have blown up. It was just that tense.”

Saunders, who lives in the same public housing project where Gray was arrested, said she has never voted but plans to register just to choose former Mayor Sheila Dixon next year to replace Rawlings-Blake.

Dixon, who was mayor from 2007 until she resigned in 2010 as part of a plea agreement stemming from charges that she stole gift cards meant for poor children, announced her candidacy this month. She remains popular despite the scandal. At Gray’s funeral, Rawlings-Blake received polite applause, while Dixon was greeted with a standing ovation from the crowd of more than 2,500 people.

Now, more than ever, Dixon said in an interview, Baltimore needs direction.

“The mayor sets the tone. She sets the tone, and the commissioner and the officers who worked on his team implement the plan in place,” Dixon said. “The officers need a sense of direction and clarity, and they need to know that they are going to be respected just as they need to be respectful while they’re doing their job in the community.”

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Activism

Gov. Newsom Approves $170 Million to Fast Track Wildfire Resilience

AB 100 approves major investments in regional conservancies across the state, including over $30 million each for the Sierra Nevada, Santa Monica Mountains, State Coastal, and San Gabriel/Lower LA Rivers and Mountains conservancies. An additional $10 million will support wildfire response and resilience efforts.

Published

18 hours ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

Courtesy of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Facebook page.

By Bo Tefu
California Black Media

With wildfire season approaching, last week Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill (AB) 100, unlocking $170 million to fast-track wildfire prevention and forest management projects — many of which directly protect communities of color, who are often hardest hit by climate-driven disasters.

“With this latest round of funding, we’re continuing to increase the speed and size of forest and vegetation management essential to protecting communities,” said Newsom when he announced the funding on April 14.

“We are leaving no stone unturned — including cutting red tape — in our mission to ensure our neighborhoods are protected from destructive wildfires,” he said.

Newsom also signed an executive order suspending certain regulations to allow urgent work to move forward faster.

This funding builds on California’s broader Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan, a $2.7 billion effort to reduce fuel loads, increase prescribed burning, and harden communities. The state has also launched new dashboards to keep the public informed and hold agencies accountable.

California has also committed to continue investing $200 million annually through 2028 to expand this effort, ensuring long-term resilience, particularly in vulnerable communities.

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California Rideshare Drivers and Supporters Step Up Push to Unionize

Today in California, over 600,000 rideshare drivers want the ability to form or join unions for the sole purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid and protection. It’s a right, and recently at the State Capitol, a large number of people, including some rideshare drivers and others working in the gig economy, reaffirmed that they want to exercise it.

Published

18 hours ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

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By Antonio‌ ‌Ray‌ ‌Harvey‌
California‌ ‌Black‌ ‌Media‌

On July 5, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into federal law the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Also known as the “Wagner Act,” the law paved the way for employees to have “the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations,” and “to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, according to the legislation’s language.

On April 8, the rideshare drivers held a rally with lawmakers to garner support for Assembly Bill (AB) 1340, the “Transportation Network Company Drivers (TNC) Labor Relations Act.”

Authored by Assemblymembers Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) and Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), AB 1340 would allow drivers to create a union and negotiate contracts with industry leaders like Uber and Lyft.

“All work has dignity, and every worker deserves a voice — especially in these uncertain times,” Wicks said at the rally. “AB 1340 empowers drivers with the choice to join a union and negotiate for better wages, benefits, and protections. When workers stand together, they are one of the most powerful forces for justice in California.”

Wicks and Berman were joined by three members of the California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC): Assemblymembers Tina McKinnor (D-Inglewood), Sade Elhawary (D-Los Angeles), and Isaac Bryan (D-Ladera Heights).

Yvonne Wheeler, president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor; April Verrett, President of Service Employees International Union (SEIU); Tia Orr, Executive Director of SEIU; and a host of others participated in the demonstration on the grounds of the state capitol.

“This is not a gig. This is your life. This is your job,” Bryan said at the rally. “When we organize and fight for our collective needs, it pulls from the people who have so much that they don’t know what to do with it and puts it in the hands of people who are struggling every single day.”

Existing law, the “Protect App-Based Drivers and Services Act,” created by Proposition (Prop) 22, a ballot initiative, categorizes app-based drivers for companies such as Uber and Lyft as independent contractors.

Prop 22 was approved by voters in the November 2020 statewide general election. Since then, Prop 22 has been in court facing challenges from groups trying to overturn it.

However, last July, Prop 22 was upheld by the California Supreme Court last July.

In a 2024, statement after the ruling, Lyft stated that 80% of the rideshare drivers they surveyed acknowledged that Prop 22 “was good for them” and “median hourly earnings of drivers on the Lyft platform in California were 22% higher in 2023 than in 2019.”

Wicks and Berman crafted AB 1340 to circumvent Prop 22.

“With AB 1340, we are putting power in the hands of hundreds of thousands of workers to raise the bar in their industry and create a model for an equitable and innovative partnership in the tech sector,” Berman said.

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Activism

California Holds the Line on DEI as Trump Administration Threatens School Funding

The conflict began on Feb. 14, when Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), issued a “Dear Colleague” letter warning that DEI-related programs in public schools could violate federal civil rights law. The letter, which cited Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the 2023 Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ended race-conscious admissions, ordered schools to eliminate race-based considerations in areas such as admissions, scholarships, hiring, discipline, and student programming.

Published

19 hours ago

April 28, 2025

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By Joe W. Bowers Jr
California Black Media

California education leaders are pushing back against the Trump administration’s directive to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in its K-12 public schools — despite threats to take away billions in federal funding.

The conflict began on Feb. 14, when Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), issued a “Dear Colleague” letter warning that DEI-related programs in public schools could violate federal civil rights law. The letter, which cited Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the 2023 Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ended race-conscious admissions, ordered schools to eliminate race-based considerations in areas such as admissions, scholarships, hiring, discipline, and student programming.

According to Trainor, “DEI programs discriminate against one group of Americans to favor another.”

On April 3, the DOE escalated the pressure, sending a follow-up letter to states demanding that every local educational agency (LEA) certify — within 10 business days — that they were not using federal funds to support “illegal DEI.” The certification requirement, tied to continued federal aid, raised the stakes for California, which receives more than $16 billion annually in federal education funding.

So far, California has refused to comply with the DOE order.

“There is nothing in state or federal law that outlaws the broad concepts of ‘diversity,’ ‘equity,’ or ‘inclusion,’” wrote David Schapira, California’s Chief Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction, in an April 4 letter to superintendents and charter school administrators. Schapira noted that all of California’s more than 1,000 traditional public school districts submit Title VI compliance assurances annually and are subject to regular oversight by the state and the federal government.

In a formal response to the DOE on April 11, the California Department of Education, the State Board of Education, and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond collectively rejected the certification demand, calling it vague, legally unsupported, and procedurally improper.

“California and its nearly 2,000 LEAs (including traditional public schools and charter schools) have already provided the requisite guarantee that its programs and services are, and will be, in compliance with Title VI and its implementing regulation,” the letter says.

Thurmond added in a statement, “Today, California affirmed existing and continued compliance with federal laws while we stay the course to move the needle for all students. As our responses to the United States Department of Education state and as the plain text of state and federal laws affirm, there is nothing unlawful about broad core values such as diversity, equity and inclusion. I am proud of our students, educators and school communities who continue to focus on teaching and learning, despite federal actions intended to distract and disrupt.”

California officials say that the federal government cannot change existing civil rights enforcement standards without going through formal rule-making procedures, which require public notice and comment.

Other states are taking a similar approach. In a letter to the DOE, Daniel Morton-Bentley, deputy commissioner and counsel for the New York State Education Department, wrote, “We understand that the current administration seeks to censor anything it deems ‘diversity, equity & inclusion.’ But there are no federal or State laws prohibiting the principles of DEI.”