2012 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow Lawrence Brown, left.
In an interview on Washington D.C. NPR affiliate WAMU last week, just weeks after the most recent shootings in Minnesota and Baton Rouge. 1999 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow David Miller reflected on the relationship between police and young African American men. Miller’s project, Dare to Be King, supports organizations that provide services to boys of color,
“All Americans,” he said, “should be deeply concerned,” about the instances of young black men being killed by law enforcement. Miller, the father of a 16-year-old son, has written several books, including “Ten Rules of Survival if Stopped by the Police,” and believes the events of the past month have underscored the urgency of discussing the “rules of engagement,” when being stopped by law enforcement.
Alnd this week, Morgan State professor Lawrence Brown, a 2012 OSI Community Fellow and a 2015 Justice Fund grantee for his project, You’re the Quarterback, weighs in on the Port Covington development in South Baltimore during WYPR’s Midday broadcast. Brown has written about the project, which will include restaurants, retail space, public parks, boat slips, hotels, and an artificial lake, in the past, suggesting it will “intensify segregation” in Baltimore.
OSI-Baltimore 2000 Community Fellow Richard Rowe, whose project, Habits for Success, aimed to use community resources in Baltimore to enhance the relationship between single mothers and their sons, penned an op-ed for the Baltimore Sun, decrying the “White, liberal establishment’s” efforts to improve communities devastated by decades of structural racism and poverty. While Rowe understands that Baltimore is need of a turning point, he’s wary of the “trickle down” design from those in charge of community and philanthropic organizations.
