Political Commentary Corner

Black Youth in Public: The Truth Behind the Fearmongering

Every spring/summer, anxieties about Black youth in public spawn news stories around fights and fears about commerce and public safety. This episode will reveal how racialized tropes around Black youth are used to justify charging youth as adults and obscure white youth/adult public disorder.

Park Heights aka Little West Bank- Zionism, Race and Power in Northwest Baltimore, pt. 2

We continue our examination of northwest Baltimore, discussing the internal dynamics of the state central committee and examining how an understanding of the racialized social control logic within Zionist ideology reveals “moderate” democrats as replicating racialized overpolicing and denying sovereignty to oppressed communities both here and abroad. We conclude by comparing the colorblind politics of current state senator Dalya Attar with the antiracism of her opponent for the 41st district senate seat, delegate Malcolm Ruff.

Park Heights aka Little West Bank- Zionism, Race and Power in Northwest Baltimore, pt. 1

A minority population faces oppression from a dominant group that exercises political and economic power over the region disproportionate to their numbers. Racialized tropes about the indigenous population being innately dangerous justified policing and application of force that violate existing rules, which, though limiting the power on paper, fail to change the material reality of oppression. The framework describes both the West Bank in occupied Palestine and Black neighborhoods in Baltimore. In this first of a 2 part episode, we examine the politics of Northwest Baltimore, seeing parallels between Zionist control of Palestine and political oppression here in Baltimore, incidents of police brutality, and political corruption as an extension of racialized power imbalance. We examine ties between existing Democratic political networks in Baltimore and well-known Republican Zionists and examine examine the racialized politics of safety in Northwest Baltimore.

City Council Israel Resolution Debates—Zionism, Anti-Blackness, and Local Politics

Despite the focus on national political battles, local politics has been a critical battleground for conversations around Zionism. We look back at 2023 debates in the Baltimore City Council around two contrasting resolutions, one reflecting a Zionist frame, the other   a call for ceasefire and attempting to balance concerns over anti-Semitism with Islamophobia. Through attempts to equate antisemitism with anti-Blackness and the Hamas attack on October 7th, the Zionist resolution is revealed as an attempt to frame questions about Israel with hate speech and obscure the systemic violence against Palestine. The political forces supporting the Zionist frame, including Sinclair Media and its board member, former head of AIPAC Howard Freeman, pushing Zionist propaganda, are shown to be the same forces pushing anti-Black and pro-mass incarceration propaganda in Baltimore. The negative responses to Black lawmakers who abstained from the vote on this resolution and supported a more balanced resolution demonstrate a weaponization of accusations of anti-Semitism against Black politics. . Finally, the political forces seeking to chill speech by punishing organizations that engaged in pro-Palestinian speech, reflected in the anti-Council on American Islamic Relations bill pushed by delegate Dalya Attar, created an environment of punishment for activists at a local level and produced the conditions that led to the bipartisan support of genocide that has defined the past two years.

Reviving the War on Drugs: Fake Woke Policing or Revolutionary Addiction Response?

In the face of persistent mass overdoses, some in Baltimore have begun to argue that policing is the only compassionate response to addiction. We argue this is false empathy and reinstates the war on drugs under the guise of care. We respond to the arguments that policing is a tool to connect folks to treatment. We conclude with a critique of public health driven harm reduction centered responses to addiction toward a revolutionary comprehensive approach centered in Black health sovereignty.