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“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over
and expecting a different result.”
– Albert Einstein
By Doni Glover, Publisher
(BALTIMORE – January 24, 2023) – For the past 25 years, this news outlet – BMORENews.com – has covered the Black political economy of the State of Maryland; that is, the interrelationship of politics and economics as it relates to places like Baltimore City, Randallstown, and Prince George’s County. Politics is the process of determining who gets what, when, and where. Economics, of course, is the allocation of scarce resources.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but that ought to mean that the purpose of having so many Black elected officials in key positions is to primarily improve the quality of life of the constituents they represent. This should mean that these elected officials are charged with bringing back the bacon.
If I’ve written it once, I’ve written it a thousand times: Elections don’t make leaders.
Even though a person is elected, governing requires specific skills beyond a political campaign. A lot of what’s needed is not taught in schools. There is very little preparation for the actual task. And so, what you initially get out of a first-term elected official – whether it’s City Council or Governor or US Congressperson depends on the team around them. One has to learn the game before one can become a real player.
Baltimore is a 63% Black city that is 9-to-1 Democrat. Do you know what that tells me? That most of the challenges facing Baltimore and especially its Black community have occurred on the watch of our own beloved Maryland Democratic Party.
Any questions? I’ll wait …
While I am all for our beautiful brothers and sisters getting involved in the political process, I am also aware that at the end of the day, their actual power – like the ability to make million-dollar deals for their district or their ability to get 35 young Black men jobs or their ability to open up a building like the one Choo Smith just opened on Greenspring Avenue to create a “communiversity” – their actual power is extremely limited, especially if the elected officials are not in tune with their constituents.
We have watched as relief money from the White House has repeatedly gone downtown or to Canton, instead of into East and West Baltimore. We have watched, too, as dozens of nonprofits descend on communities like Sandtown only to paint a paternalistic view of our community like they are saving us … much like the malnourished African kids on late-night TV.
Nonprofits suck the life out of Baltimore’s Black community. Politicians cannot deliver. And so, we are left in a quagmire with no one to trust and nowhere to turn because the people charged with serving us do not/cannot. They’d much rather serve their more upwardly mobile constituents.
And then, a Freddie Gray happens and all of these “usual characters” show up at Penn-North like they go there on a regular basis. We saw it in 2015. We witnessed everybody and their momma up at Penn-North, but you know what? We haven’t seen them since.
They marched through Sandtown with TV cameras and 8 years later, not a damn thing has changed for the better. All we got was a renovated police station and a new funeral home. From the bottom of our hearts, we just want to thank you all so much for being as disconnected as a dead cell phone with an unpaid balance from 6 months ago.
