Commentary

It is my second Pride in Baltimore. Since the pandemic shut down festivities for two years, I decide to live-sketch the event, on-site. Ten minutes into my first sketch, I realize how nothing could prepare anyone to sketch in such a loud, chaotic, beautiful atmosphere. I drop pens while trying to switch colors as colorful people strut by. I stub my pencil’s nib and then my toe. I blink sweat out of my eyes and watch it drop onto the page.

Within hours of the news that more than 50 migrants had died in the back of a tractor-trailer near San Antonio on Monday, the men, women and children having been baked alive in the blistering Texas heat, anti-immigrant Republicans quickly descended into blaming President Joe Biden. Not because he had anything directly to do with this disaster, this act of mass torture, this surreal tragedy; this was clearly the work of human traffickers taking advantage of desperate people willing to risk everything for a new life in the United States.

In mid-April, a nonpartisan coalition of Maryland transit advocates representing more than 30 groups statewide sent out a questionnaire to candidates for governor asking them what their plans might be for public transportation. The questions ranged from the enforcement of Baltimore bus lanes to greater use of electric vehicles and expanding MARC commuter rail service. The results fell almost precisely along party lines. Seven of the nine Democrats running for the office pledged to support transit including Baltimore’s east-west Red Line, the $2.9 light rail system that Gov. Larry Hogan derailed in his first term. The Republicans? Silence.

If it was a white kid who had so angrily banged my driver-side window that I thought it was going to shatter, I would have unhesitatingly laid into that son of a gun with a few choice words. But it was a Black kid, and I said nothing. I did not want to offend. I just bit my tongue and prayed for the light to change. Can an old white dude complain about squeegee kids without sounding racist? Probably not. I mean, the African American grandmother of my friend’s multiracial son finds these street-corner hucksters irritating too. So, there’s that.

Last Wednesday, voters in Maryland were treated to a double-feature presentation in political pandering. First there was President Joe Biden’s proposal to suspend the federal tax on gasoline and diesel fuel for three months along with a suggestion that governors to do the same. And then there was Gov. Larry Hogan’s nearly simultaneous call on both the state legislature and the state comptroller to suspend Maryland’s motor fuel tax by July 4, the former requiring the General Assembly to meet in special session, the latter for Comptroller Peter Franchot to discover a legal authority that he does not seem to possess.

The long-expected US Supreme Court decision ending constitutional protections for abortions in America was handed down. A rally was called, and people showed up at the People’s Park in Annapolis to lend their voices to this opprobrious decision. Sharon Blugis asked me to speak at the rally. As I watched the various speakers eloquently protest this decision, I thought about my 18-year-old granddaughter, who had no idea that her right to decide for herself may be coming to an end.

No elected Israeli prime minister ever had a shorter tenure than Naftali Bennett. Last week, after a string of parliamentary defections, he announced that he would dissolve parliament and call new elections, Israel’s fifth since 2019, after serving barely a year in office. A day later, he WhatsApp-ed me from Tel Aviv for a phone call about his record. Length, he suggested, should not be mistaken for quality.