Politics

Many in Baltimore Community React with Skepticism to O’Malley’s Claims of Progressive Bona Fides

Published

10 years ago

June 9, 2015

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley speaks before signing a bill abolishing capital punishment in the state during a ceremony in Annapolis, Md., Thursday, May 2, 2013. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

by Roberto Alejandro
Special to the NNPA from the Afro-American Newspaper

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley officially entered the presidential race May 30 with a speech in Baltimore’s Federal Hill, but many in Baltimore are skeptical of both his chances as well as the idea that he is a legitimate liberal alternative to Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“[O’Malley’s candidacy] is still a long shot,” wrote John Bullock, professor of political science at Towson University, in a statement to the AFRO. “He is trying to present himself as a credible alternative to Clinton, but that may not be successful unless she falters. In his announcement, he attempted to appeal to progressives, but Bernie Sanders has the strongest record in that area.”

Indeed, O’Malley made his case for the Democratic nomination during his announcement speech on the strength of a series of supposedly progressive accomplishments during his time in city and state government.

“Together, we made our city believe again and we invented a better and new way of governing called CitiStat, and we got things done. Together, we made our state’s public schools the best in the nation. We made college more affordable for more families. . . . We led our people forward through a devastating recession and we took greater care to protect the land, the air, and the waters of our Chesapeake Bay. And we passed the DREAM Act and we passed marriage equality. Together, we raised the minimum wage and we maintained the highest median income of any state in the nation,” said O’Malley, according to a video of his announcement speech on his campaign website.

But it is not only Sanders’s progressive record that O’Malley will have to overcome, but the skepticism of those who lived through the era of these alleged progressive accomplishments and remember it differently.

“It’s the job of people like myself and others who know O’Malley, who directly engaged and challenged his policies as it relates to Black people to elevate the stories about the things that he did during his time as governor, his time as mayor, to push back against that idea (of O’Mally as a progressive),” said Dayvon Love, public policy director for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, referring, in part, to O’Malley’s institution of zero tolerance policing during his time as Baltimore City mayor and the O’Malley administration’s support for a $100 million youth jail that was halted by grassroots efforts a number of years ago.

For Leo Burroughs, chairman of the Committee of Concerned Citizens, that history of pursuing policies that were often deleterious to persons of color makes O’Malley more of a “blue dog Democrat” than a tried-and-true liberal.

“[O’Malley is] extraordinarily good at wheeling and dealing in ways that are not in the best interest of the poor, Blacks, or the middle-class. Horrible thought this guy running…but he knows how to reconfigure and reinvent himself,” said Burroughs. “He feigns being some kind of a liberal—this guy was never a liberal; he was always Mr. Zero Tolerance and he’s still Mr. Zero Tolerance.”

To media consultant and political strategist Catalina Byrd, the persons speaking in support of O’Malley at his announcement event were representative of the alleged disconnect between the politician’s rhetoric and policies, of which Burroughs and Love spoke.

“The people that he had speaking for him . . . either weren’t here (in Baltimore City) when he was mayor, or lived outside the city and don’t know what type of mayor he was, or were not impacted—based on their social status, or their fiscal status—by the type of governor that he was, and can’t make the connection and the correlation to how he has failed at every level besides just winning every election. He’s failed in terms of leadership and new direction for both the city and the state,” said Byrd.

In his announcement speech, O’Malley said his accomplishments in Maryland were a function of new leadership and perspective, but it seems he will have to do a better job of convincing the nation this is what he brings to the table than he has some of his previous constituents.

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U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Speaks on Democracy at Commonwealth Club

Based on his first speech as House minority leader, “The ABCs of Democracy” by Grand Central Publishing is an illustrated children’s book for people of all ages. Each letter contrasts what democracy is and isn’t, as in: “American Values over Autocracy”, “Benevolence over Bigotry” and “The Constitution over the Cult.”

Published

7 hours ago

December 22, 2024

Oakland Post

: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at the Commonwealth Club World Affairs Council on Dec. 2. Photo by Johnnie Burrell. Book cover: "The ABCs of Democracy" by Hakeem Jeffries.

By Linda Parker Pennington
Special to The Post

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries addressed an enthusiastic overflow audience on Monday at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, launching his first book, “The ABCs of Democracy.”

Based on his first speech as House minority leader, “The ABCs of Democracy” by Grand Central Publishing is an illustrated children’s book for people of all ages.

Each letter contrasts what democracy is and isn’t, as in: “American Values over Autocracy”, “Benevolence over Bigotry” and “The Constitution over the Cult.”

Less than a month after the election that will return Donald Trump to the White House, Rep. Jeffries also gave a sobering assessment of what the Democrats learned.

“Our message just wasn’t connecting with the real struggles of the American people,” Jeffries said. “The party in power is the one that will always pay the price.”

On dealing with Trump, Jeffries warned, “We can’t fall into the trap of being outraged every day at what Trump does. That’s just part of his strategy. Remaining calm in the face of turmoil is a choice.”

He pointed out that the razor-thin margin that Republicans now hold in the House is the lowest since the Civil War.

Asked what the public can do, Jeffries spoke about the importance of being “appropriately engaged. Democracy is not on autopilot. It takes a citizenry to hold politicians accountable and a new generation of young people to come forward and serve in public office.”

With a Republican-led White House, Senate, House and Supreme Court, Democrats must “work to find bi-partisan common ground and push back against far-right extremism.”

He also described how he is shaping his own leadership style while his mentor, Speaker-Emeritus Nancy Pelosi, continues to represent San Francisco in Congress. “She says she is not hanging around to be like the mother-in-law in the kitchen, saying ‘my son likes his spaghetti sauce this way, not that way.’”

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MacArthur Fellow Dorothy Roberts’ Advocates Restructure of Child Welfare System

Roberts’s early work focused on Black women’s reproductive rights and their fight for reproductive justice. In “Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty 1997)”, she analyzes historical and contemporary policies and practices that denied agency to Black women and sought to control their childbearing—from forced procreation during slavery, to coercive sterilization and welfare reform—and advocates for an expanded understanding of reproductive freedom.

Published

7 hours ago

December 22, 2024

Oakland Post

Dorothy Roberts. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Special to The Post

When grants were announced Oct. 1, it was noted that eight of the 22 MacArthur Fellows were African American. Among the recipients of the so-called ‘genius grants’ are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit.

Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the eighth and last in the series highlighting the Black awardees. The report below on Dorothy Roberts is excerpted from the MacArthur Fellows web site.

A graduate of Yale University with a law degree from Harvard, Dorothy Roberts is a legal scholar and public policy researcher exposing racial inequities embedded within health and social service systems.

Sine 2012, she has been a professor of Law and Sociology, and on the faculty in the department of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Roberts’s work encompasses reproductive health, bioethics, and child welfare. She sheds light on systemic inequities, amplifies the voices of those directly affected, and boldly calls for wholesale transformation of existing systems.

This work prompted Roberts to examine the treatment of children of color in the U.S. child welfare system.

After nearly two decades of research and advocacy work alongside parents, social workers, family defense lawyers, and organizations, Roberts has concluded that the current child welfare system is in fact a system of family policing with alarmingly unequal practices and outcomes. Her 2001 book, “Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare,” details the outsized role that race and class play in determining who is subject to state intervention and the results of those interventions.

Through interviews with Chicago mothers who had interacted with Child Protective Services (CPS), Roberts shows that institutions regularly punish the effects of poverty as neglect.

CPS disproportionately investigates Black and Indigenous families, especially if they are low-income, and children from these families are much more likely than white children to be removed from their families after CPS referral.

In “Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World (2022),” Roberts traces the historical, cultural, and political forces driving the racial and class imbalance in child welfare interventions.

These include stereotypes about Black parents as negligent, devaluation of Black family bonds, and stigmatization of parenting practices that fall outside a narrow set of norms.

She also shows that blaming marginalized individuals for structural problems, while ignoring the historical roots of economic and social inequality, fails families and communities.

Roberts argues that the engrained oppressive features of the current system render it beyond repair. She calls for creating an entirely new approach focused on supporting families rather than punishing them.

Her support for dismantling the current child welfare system is unsettling to some. Still, her provocation inspires many to think more critically about its poor track record and harmful design.

By uncovering the complex forces underlying social systems and institutions, and uplifting the experiences of people caught up in them, Roberts creates opportunities to imagine and build more equitable and responsive ways to ensure child and family safety.