Commentary

The night before a half-dozen men found 15-year-old Howard Cooper hiding in a barn under a pile of corn husks, pleading for protection, an angry white mob had surrounded the Towsontown jail miles away, demanding to know if the Black teenager were inside. Cooper had been accused of brutally beating a young woman named Mary Catherine Gray a few days earlier. Gray was the daughter of a prominent farmer who was living on land belonging to The Baltimore Sun’s founder, A.S. Abell, according to an April 1885 account in the newspaper.

While it was hardly shocking to learn that Memorial Day weekend provided no respite from gun violence in Baltimore, there was something especially brazen about the Saturday night shooting of two 17-year-olds, one of whom later died, at the Inner Harbor at 7:35 p.m. near the amphitheater — a peak time and place for visitors and police. As Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison later observed, there were at least 20 officers in the general vicinity. The perpetrator clearly wasn’t concerned about getting caught. If that wasn’t depressing enough, two other men were killed in a triple shooting later that night, and a woman was shot and killed early Sunday.

I came to Baltimore in 1970 to work at the Regional Planning Council, a predecessor of today’s Baltimore Metropolitan Council. My work was as part of a team analyzing the demographic and economic trends shaping the region consisting of Baltimore City and the five surrounding counties. As part of our studies, we tracked the major employers that played a key role in the regional economy. Standing out above them all was Bethlehem Steel, with its steel mill and associated shipbuilding activities at Sparrows Point in southeast Baltimore County.

Climate change has become a mainstay in public discussion due to its pernicious long-lasting implications that increasingly affect communities around the U.S., particularly Edgewood, Maryland. Our dependency on fossil fuels has led to irreversible changes that exacerbate the intensity and frequency of natural disasters. A growing cause for concern is the prevalence of natural disasters resulting from climate change. The latter are unfortunate industrial accidents due to natural hazards like wildfires, tornadoes or floods. Lacking proper preventive measures, facilities impacted by such events can spread dangerous chemicals into the surrounding environment.

For the past dozen years, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D) has been introducing legislation in Congress to create a national green bank — a mechanism to provide some level of government support for the private sector to develop clean energy projects as the climate crisis worsens.

Transportation in Central Maryland has been top of mind, and at the forefront of the news recently. But it’s an issue that we at United Way of Central Maryland have seen systemically, and historically, affecting underserved communities.

On Saturday — the day before he departed for  Uvalde, Tx- President Biden told University of Delaware graduates: “In the face of such destructive forces, we have to stand stronger. We cannot outlaw tragedy, I know, but we can make America safer.” He also warned of the “oldest and darkest forces in America” preaching hate and “preying on hopelessness and despair.”