Commentary

The toxic chemical industry has engulfed entire residential areas of Baltimore. But in the long-suffering neighborhood of Curtis Bay, the local community is fighting back. Recently, I heard Dr. Nicole Fabricant, Professor of Anthropology at Towson University, discuss the environmental injustices experienced by residents of the Curtis Bay community in South Baltimore. Historically, Curtis Bay was a working-class white neighborhood. In recent years, Curtis Bay has seen an increasing Black population, from 25.18% Black in the 2000 Census, rising to 38.74% in the 2020 Census. Every one of those locals has one poisonous neighbor: Curtis Bay is home to the largest medical waste incinerator in America.

In the legislative redistricting challenges, Fair Maps Maryland and Republican petitioners seem obsessed, insisting that all districts are drawn to be, primarily, compact. However, compactness is not the main goal of legislative redistricting. Article III, Section 4 of the Maryland Constitution instructs that, “Due regard shall be given to natural boundaries and the boundaries of political subdivisions.”

Quick, and without doing Google: What’s the capital city of Belarus? (Hint: It rhymes with Pinsk.) Second question: Is Poland a landlocked country? Third question: What is an oblast? Bonus question: Which of these countries are not members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? (a.) Norway (b.) Georgia (c.) Ukraine. (d.) Latvia. Answers: Minsk is the capital of Belarus; no, Poland’s northern coast is on the Baltic Sea; an oblast is a political district, similar to a province, a term still used in Russia and other East European countries; and neither Ukraine nor Georgia are members of NATO, though a commission chaired by Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin recently urged the Biden administration to declare both countries “major non-NATO allies,” signifying an upgrade of the U.S. defense relationship with them.

The Baltimore Police Department makes an inviting target for critics these days. Not only does the city’s high homicide tally continue apace, but other crimes from robbery to carjacking have been rising in recent months, too. Police accountability and a court-supervised consent decree to address longtime racial inequities that were spotlighted by the Freddie Gray uprising seven years ago are, at best, works in progress. And did someone mention public corruption?

Hiring men — but not women — is sexist. And in most cases, it violates the law. Recently, for the second year in a row, we joined migrant worker women and their allies in demanding that the U.S. government stop businesses from discriminating against women once and for all. And last week, U.S. Department of Labor Deputy Secretary Julie Su traveled to Mexico to meet with stakeholders, including my Baltimore-based organization, Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, about protecting women’s rights.

NASCAR fire suits resemble patchwork quilts. Golfers wear them on their jerseys and caps. Umpires sport a few, as do minor league baseball uniforms. And now, under a new agreement, so will Major League Baseball uniforms be stitched with patches advertising teams’ sponsors and underwriters, kind of like moving billboards promoting a range of companies and products that appeal to sports fans. It’s all about the revenue stream, and it’s part of a deal that Major League Baseball team owners reached with players’ negotiators after threatening the season’s start. Everybody gets money.

Horrific scenes of mass murder on the outskirts of Kyiv should appall everybody and surprise nobody. The brutalization of civilians has been the Putin regime’s calling card since its inception — from the Moscow apartment bombings of 1999, where the weight of circumstantial evidence points the finger at Vladimir Putin and his security service henchmen, to the murders of Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvinenko, Sergei Magnitsky and Boris Nemtsov to Russia’s atrocities in Grozny, eastern Ukraine, Aleppo and now Bucha.