Commentary

Rarely does a day go by when there is not another heartbreaking reminder that Baltimore remains among the nation’s most dangerous cities for gun violence, particularly for young Black men and boys. On Monday, it was the tragic news of a 16-year-old Patterson High School student found fatally shot in the head not far from the East Baltimore campus. He was the fifth city teenager under 17 killed this year.

As a mother of a 3 1/2 year old, I have spent hours upon hours reading product reviews and trying to find the best, safest products for my family. Even before our son was born, I was researching what car seat had the best ratings, and as he grew older that research continued late into the night to determine whether sippy cups really destroy his oral development. From numerous conversations with friends and fellow parents, I know I am not alone in this almost compulsive level of research.

I don’t know what it’s like to grow up in Baltimore. To have lived my entire life in one city and be unwelcome in many of its neighborhoods. To have known the nightmare of gun violence since childhood. To lose family and friends to violence, incarceration, both. To attend schools that everyone openly condemns, only to be told that something is wrong with me if I don’t succeed academically.

I no longer look at the killings of my fellow human beings in Baltimore as a Baltimore problem. On Monday, when police reported the fatal shooting of another teenage boy — this time in a park near Patterson High School — I didn’t look to blame the mayor or the police commissioner or the city schools or the parents or any of the other usual suspects.

Larry Hogan has the right idea. As the former Republican governor of Maryland wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times, “We cannot afford to have [former president Donald Trump] as our nominee and suffer defeat for the fourth consecutive election cycle. To once again be a successful governing party, we must move on from Mr. Trump.”

Last week, community leaders and environmentalists spoke at a state Senate committee hearing in favor of the Reclaim Renewable Energy Act (Senate Bill 590 / House Bill 718), a bill introduced by Sen. Karen Lewis Young (D-Frederick) and Del. Vaughn Stewart (D-Montgomery) that would reform the state’s renewables program to stop spending millions of dollars to subsidize dirty energy sources like trash incineration and factory farm gas. But industry leaders and their allies were also on hand, making the convoluted case that pollution is actually clean energy.

Former Gov. Larry Hogan’s Sunday announcement that he will not seek the Republican Party nomination for president in 2024 likely came as no surprise to anyone who has been following national politics. Sure, there was a time when a governor who achieved extraordinary popularity leading a state that leaned toward the opposite political party would get serious consideration.

In 2020, Human Rights for Kids, a national nonprofit that advocates for juvenile justice reform, labeled Maryland among the worst human rights offenders in the country. Policymakers took the criticism to heart, embarking on a mission to do better. Since then, Maryland has ended mandatory minimums for youth, prohibited children under 13 from being subject to criminal liability for nonviolent offenses and provided juveniles some of the most comprehensive due process protections in the United States. In its 2022 report, Human Rights for Kids called Maryland the “most improved state.”