Baltimore

Erricka Bridgeford 3-20-2020

Erricka Bridgeford kneels near the site of a murder in Baltimore / Spencer Platt / Getty Images

“MY BROTHER WAS killed in 2007, and I watched my mom avoid that area for years. When there’s a space where someone has been murdered, you can feel the toxic energy in that space. And I realized there are these toxic holes being left around Baltimore, and it shouldn’t be that way. When people are murdered, the space should be sacred ground—where they lost their lives to violence. Just like the Bible talks about the blood crying out from the ground when Cain killed Abel, when blood cries out we should show up to answer with love and with light, honoring that person.

We ask people facilitating rituals to show up with love in their body. Grief is okay, some sadness is okay, but mostly a feeling of joy at how much this person meant to the world, love for the neighborhood, and compassion for their family and loved ones.

the Web Editors 11-22-2019

4. Pete Buttigieg on Faith 'As a Source of Unity' and Its Role in the 2020 Election

We have a form of kind of cheap nationalism that uses the idea of nationality to tell a lot of people that they aren’t your neighbor--even if they literally are your neighbor.

Baltimore, Maryland. Image via REUTERS/Stephanie Keith

While we shouldn’t be sucked into Trump’s sinister game of getting distracted by and responding to every outrageous and egregious tweet or statement, there is also a corrosive and malignant danger of remaining silent. If we are silent, the cancer of racism will become more and more acceptable and normalized, emboldening white nationalists and supremacists and leaving already vulnerable communities even more vulnerable.

IN 1967, I TRAVELED with activist friends from New York to Baltimore to support four people there who poured blood on the 1A files that compelled young men into the military and the massacre in Vietnam. The “Baltimore 4,” as they became known, committed the first of some 100 actions focused on draft boards, the source of cannon fodder in the ever-escalating wars in Indochina. It was during one of these trips that I met Willa Bickham and her husband, Brendan Walsh. Our friendship has been rich, varied, invaluable.

In The Long Loneliness in Baltimore, Walsh and Bickham tell of their nearing 50 years serving the people of Baltimore as the Viva House Catholic Worker. It is a story that needs telling, especially now in this country that is profoundly ruptured by economic and racial conflict.

Try as the politicians and the press might, it is impossible to disengage economics from race. Bickham and Walsh know this intimately, living in the midst of an impoverished black neighborhood. They have experienced drugs, murders, robberies, and destruction right outside their front doors. The alley that runs beside their home, thanks to their creativity, is marked with memorials to men and boys shot and killed there. Repeatedly, after almost every major killing, Walsh has told the press what has become crystal clear to him: that in Baltimore City (as in too many cities), selling drugs is the only job that exists for all-too-many people of color.

In the garden outside Viva House is the Hope Stone. In Bickham’s script, it quotes Martin Luther King Jr.: “We will hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.” That is the invitation to all who come to Viva House for whatever reason, to meet whatever need. Each is sure to receive respectful and caring human interaction, food, fellowship, help with bills, a place to escape the cold or heat or rain, a place of justice and peace.

the Web Editors 1-05-2018

1. I Wanted to Do a Good Deed. I Talked Myself Out of It Because I Thought of All the Ways I Might Get Killed
“I almost pulled up to the house right then, but I decided to drop off my daughter first. Should something go awry, I do not want my daughter there.
Should something go awry.”

2. How to Survive a Bomb Cyclone
A very practical how-to for those of us on the East Coast.

FILE PHOTO: Baltimore Police Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr., Officer Edward M. Nero, Officer Garrett E Miller (top L-R), Officer William G. Porter, Lt. Brian W. Rice, Sgt. Alicia D. White (bottom L-R). Courtesy Baltimore Police Department/Handout via REUTERS
 

The U.S. Department of Justice will not bring charges against Baltimore police officers over the fatal injury of a black man in custody in an incident that stoked tensions between African Americans and law enforcement, the Baltimore Sun reported on Tuesday.

Abby Olcese 8-17-2017

Image via Step Facebook page

It’s a powerful setup, and the girls’ (and their team’s) journeys are inspiring. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that Lipitz is more concerned with crafting a tidy, three-act narrative than with taking an honest look at who these girls are, and the issues they face.

the Web Editors 8-16-2017

Image via Baltimore Heritage/Flickr

This morning's statue removals follow a weekend of violence in Charlottesville, Va., centered on the planned removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. On Monday, the Baltimore city council voted to remove and destroy the statues. That process took nearly immediate effect, in the middle of the night Tuesday and early Wednesday. 

A still image captured from police body camera video. July 19, 2017. Courtesy Baltimore Police Department/Handout via REUTERS

"I do know it's not healthy to jump to a conclusion that officers did something criminal just because their camera was off," Davis said, adding that he would wait until an internal investigation was complete before making a judgment.

Image via RNS/Reuters/Max Rossi

During our nearly 40 years of friendship, I led several interreligious missions with Keeler, including meetings with then-Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. We co-led trips to Israel, including a visit to a civilian bomb shelter, and a poignant painful pilgrimage to the infamous death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Sometimes public figures can seem distant and impersonal, but that was never the case with the always gracious and welcoming Keeler.

the Web Editors 3-23-2017

The suspect, James Harris Jackson, told police he traveled to New York with the intent to attack black men, according to the New York Times. The Times quoted Assistant Chief William Aubry describing Jackson as having "harbored a hatred of black men for more than a decade." Officials have expressed desire to classify the charge to a hate crime.

Image via RNS/Rev. Tuhina Verma Rasche and the Rev. Jason Chestnut

For many Christians who observe the liturgical season of Advent, leading up to Christmas, an Advent devotional is a beloved companion.

Such devotionals typically include a short Scripture reading and reflection on the birth of Jesus.

But most are “crap,” according to the Rev. Jason Chesnut of Baltimore.

Image via RNS/Reuters/Patrick T. Fallon

A week after Donald Trump’s stunning election as president sent the country’s governance lurching to the right, the nation’s Catholic bishops sent a message of their own — at least on immigration — by putting Mexican-born Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles in line to become the first Latino to lead the American hierarchy.

But the vote at their annual fall meeting in Baltimore on Nov. 15 also suggested that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is still hesitant to fully endorse the more progressive and pastoral approach to ministry that Pope Francis has been championing since his election in 2013.

the Web Editors 11-14-2016

Image via Lightspring/Shutterstock.com

On Nov. 14 the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops asked President-elect Donald Trump to implement policies geared toward honoring the humanity of immigrants and refugees, reports the Associated Press. The Roman Catholic bishops made their call to President-elect Trump at the beginning of their annual meeting in Baltimore.

Da’Shawn Mosley 11-02-2016

Image via Debbie Allen's "Freeze Frame - Stop the Madness" Facebook

The project which Allen spoke of, titled Freeze Frame…Stop the Madness, is a work of theatre written, choreographed, and directed by Allen that combines cinema, dance, and music into a stage performance inspired by the issues of race and gun violence in America. Freeze Frame opened at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 27 and, on Oct. 24, Allen visited the Center for American Progress, in the nation’s capital, to discuss Freeze Frame’s creation and the impact she hopes the show will have on the U.S.

the Web Editors 9-26-2016

Image via wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock.com

The number of student suspensions for the 2016-2017 school year at Robert W. Coleman Elementary School in Baltimore, Md., as well as the number of student suspensions at the school for the 2015-2016 school year, is zero. This downward trend began when the elementary school incorporated a focus on meditation into its day-to-day routine. Instead of being punished for disruptions or misbehavior, students are sent to the “Mindful Moment Room” where they meditate and do breathing exercises.

the Web Editors 7-18-2016
betto rodrigues / Shutterstock

Police watch protestors in Los Angeles march against the death of Freddie Gray. Photo via betto rodrigues / Shutterstock

Judge Barry G. Williams, the same judge presided over the acquittals of Officers Edward Nero and Caesar Goodson, cleared Rice of involuntary manslaugher, reckless endangerment, and misconduct in office.

Eric Clayton 7-13-2016

Image via Maryland National Guard / flickr.com

I remember talking to my mom on my walk into work not long after the death of Freddie Gray. She had been watching the news and was wondering what my sense of things was on the ground.

“Are there protests?” she asked. “Are people upset?”

the Web Editors 6-23-2016
Baltimore Police Department

Officer Caesar Goodson. Baltimore Police Department

Many criminal justice experts believed that if anyone was to be charged in the death of Freddie Gray, this was the one.

Jim Wallis 5-24-2016

Photo by Ryan Stewart / Sojourners

While I am no legal expert on the details of the court decision yesterday or whether the charges against him and each of the other officers were carefully made or effectively prosecuted, nor a spiritual expert on Nero’s motives, nor an administrative expert on Baltimore police training, one fact continues to remain clear: No one has yet to be held accountable for Freddie Gray’s death who was alive and well before being detained and put into that police wagon.