Commentary

As I have every election night since 2016, I mixed myself a very stiff cocktail, turned off my phone and went to bed. At that point, there wasn’t anything I could do about the outcome of any races, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to stay up doomscrolling. When I turned my device back on just before midnight, the phone lit up with a torrent of messages that can best be described as wildly disparate.

As we write this editorial, the presidential race remains too close to call. Officials are still counting ballots. Anxiety is running high. The undeniably good news is that, by all credible indications, this was a free and fair election. For the most part, the inevitable Election Day glitches did not affect counting or voter access; turnout was high.

This month marks the seven-year anniversary of the mysterious death of Baltimore homicide detective Sean Suiter, who, on Nov. 15, 2017, was shot in the head one day before he was scheduled to testify in a grand jury in a case involving the notorious Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), a squad of criminal Baltimore police officers. Suiter’s case was featured in two HBO productions, a documentary called “The Slow Hustle” and David Simon’s scripted series, “We Own This City.”

What would you do if, despite working full-time, you didn’t earn enough to cover the basics? What would you do if, after buying groceries and covering the rent, you had to decide which expenses to delay? Your choices: an essential car repair, a vital doctor appointment, or safe, nurturing child care. Do you fix the car so you can get to work on time? Do you finally see the doctor, preventing your health issue from spiraling into a medical crisis?

“Earned wage access” is marketed as a means of making it easier for workers to get their paychecks before payday. In reality, these so-called EWA advances are exorbitant loans that harm workers by putting them in a worse financial position than before they borrowed money in the first place. With “fees” and “tips” that the lenders require or solicit, EWA advances are loans with interest rates that regularly exceed 100%, and often exceed 300%, far above interest rates allowed by Maryland law.

In election season, we are inundated with campaign messaging and rhetoric that is light on policy solutions to the most pressing issues facing small business owners like me. As the CEO of Strum Contracting, a family- and African American-owned business that my father founded in 1987, I have seen firsthand how the small-business landscape has shifted and evolved.

Recently, the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit that advocates for reduced imprisonment and criminalization of youth and adults, issued a report that suggested that youth offenses are declining based on data showing that arrests in Baltimore City of juveniles have been on the decline since 2022. In an attempt to discredit the concerns I have expressed about youth offenders in our city, the report identifies me directly: Recently, the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit that advocates for reduced imprisonment and criminalization of youth and adults, issued a report that suggested that youth offenses are declining based on data showing that arrests in Baltimore City of juveniles have been on the decline since 2022.