Archive

Yesterday, Open Society Institute Director Diana Morris and Criminal and Juvenile Justice Director Tara Huffman joined fellow advocates and young people from Wide Angle Youth Media for the debut of a new video created by Wide Angle with support from the Abell Foundation (below), on the experiences of aging prisoners released as part of the […]

Deborah Ramsey, a 12-year veteran of the Baltimore Police Department and a 2016 OSI Community Fellow, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post, “I applaud the Baltimore state’s attorney’s decision to stop prosecuting marijuana cases.” In it, Ramsey says she supports Marilyn Mosby’s decision to stop prosecuting marijuana possession cases because “law enforcement officers have […]

The Capital Gazette reports that state officials will distribute thousands of fentanyl testing strips around the state this month, hoping to reduce overdose deaths. This comes after OSI’s grant last year to the Baltimore City Health Department to begin distributing the testing strips in the city. Early last year, OSI grantee, Dr. Susan Sherman of […]

Earlier this month, 1999 OSI Community Fellow David Miller traveled to Toronto to speak as part of a panel called “What are Black Fathers Teaching Their Sons About Love?” at the Journey to Black Liberation Symposium. “When you think about the continued assault as it relates to white supremacy and racism, this notion of celebrating and […]

Last night at the Impact Hub, 2015 OSI Community Fellow JC Faulk held an event to screen a 15-minute preview of “400,” a film he is working on with his 24-year-old daughter that combines their personal stories with the history of the transatlantic slave trade and the first Africans kidnapped and bought to the Jamestown […]

Kevin Davis, who led the Baltimore Police Department from 2015 to 2018 and worked with OSI-Baltimore to inform the city’s Consent Decree with the Department of Justice, has been named an Open Society Foundations Leadership in Government Fellow. Davis will use the Fellowship to “write a book critically examining the history of federally mandated consent […]

Caretakers of Curtis Bay’s Filbert Street Garden, founded by 2011 OSI Community Fellow Jason Reed, are pushing back against a plan by the Department of Public Works to replace the 10-year-old urban farm with a water filtration system. The Garden, which is part of the Farm Alliance, has launched a petition, and this morning shared […]

This morning, two OSI-Baltimore grantees who we work with to expand LGBTQ inclusion in schools and beyond spoke to OSI’s Leadership Council. Jabari Lyles, the LGBTQ Affairs Liaison in Mayor Pugh’s office and chair of the board and former executive director of GLSEN Maryland, talked about the many challenges that LQBTQ students face in schools, including […]