Archive

OSI-Baltimore director Diana Morris. Photo courtesy of the Pretrial Justice Institute. Last night, despite soaring temperatures, a crowed packed The Living Well for the opening reception of #unconvicted, a photo exhibit documenting the plight of pretrial detainees. Many detainees spend weeks or month behind bars without being convicted of any crime because of the cash […]

OSI congratulates Dr. Carla D. Hayden on her historic confirmation as librarian of Congress. Hayden, who is the CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library and a former OSI-Baltimore advisory board member, is the first African American as well as the first woman to head the Library of Congress. After Dr. Hayden’s tenure on the […]

A few days ago, the Baltimore Sun profiled visual artist and 2008 OSI Community Fellow Ashley Minner and her newest project, Elders of Baltimore. The project, co-created with fellow artist Sean Scheidt, is an Instagram account similar to the popular Humans of New York and Close Up Baltimore accounts (the latter started by current OSI Community Fellow […]

“What would Baltimore be like if…” begins an op-ed published today in the Baltimore Sun from President and CEO of the Center for Urban Families and OSI board member, Joseph T. Jones, Jr. In a series of thought-provoking questions, Jones wonders what Baltimore would be like if it “had what it really needs most?” From […]

Morgan State professor Lawrence Brown (pictured, left), a 2012 OSI Community Fellow and a 2015 Justice Fund grantee for his project, You’re the Quarterback, published an op-ed in the New York Times last week: In “More Injustice in Baltimore,” Brown voiced concerns about the recent acquittal of Officer Caesar Goodson in the death of Freddie Gray, the third […]

As usual, OSI Baltimore Community Fellows have been making waves lately. Today, The Baltimore Sun posted current Fellow Meryam Bouadjemi‘s powerful essay about the families left behind when people go to jail, like her dad did: As a society, we have trained our institutions to remember the crime and punishment, yet we forget the collateral devastation […]

As the third trial in the death of Freddie Gray ends without a conviction, it’s clearer than ever that the injustices Mr. Gray’s case represents will not be resolved in a court room, but with long-term, sustained work to uproot the structural racism in our criminal justice system and beyond. It’s important that the legal […]

Deepa Iyer, senior fellow at the Center for Social Inclusion, and Amardeep Singh, program officer in Open Society Foundation’s National Security and Human Rights Campaign called in to the Marc Steiner Show Tuesday to preview tomorrow’s Talking About Race event, Confronting the New Islamophobia. Listen to the entire podcast here, and join us for the event, where […]

We at OSI-Baltimore join communities across the world who are devastated at the mass killing in Orlando this weekend. Below, we share a statement from our friends at Free State Legal and Equality Maryland, whose work we are proud to support, along with their list of opportunities to gather, mourn, and talk about the way […]