Commentary

What struck me the most was the noise coming from all the wrong places. Thursday afternoon, I sat in the chamber of the Georgia State Senate and watched as my colleagues, one after another, went up to the well to speak out against Senate Bill 202, a true Frankenstein’s monster of voter-suppression measures. It was clearly designed to ensure that a record Democratic turnout like the one in November — and in the state’s U.S. Senate runoffs in January — never happens again.

For nearly a decade, CASA, ACLU of Maryland, advocates and hundreds of immigrant families across the state have fought to end Maryland’s partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. After years of little movement in the General Assembly, Maryland lawmakers are in a greater position than ever to pass the Trust Act this session. Black and Latinx immigrants across Maryland live in fear of being unlawfully arrested, detained, separated from their families, and deported because of the cruel policies of state and local law enforcement.

I never thought I would cheer for a lawsuit against a media company with the word “news” in its title. But then, despite use of the word by Fox, there is very little that could be called news on Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing channel. From the moment of its birth in 1996 it was more a political tool of the right than a journalistic enterprise. That was the way founder Roger Ailes built it, and that is mainly how it has remained.

The League of Women Voters believes that voting is a fundamental citizen right that must be guaranteed. This is why we have been working with other organizations and our legislative champions to pass HB 222 – The Value My Vote Act. In 2016, voting rights were restored to Maryland citizens who had been convicted of a felony but are no longer incarcerated. However, no process was put in place to ensure that these citizens could exercise those rights, and many are unaware that they are now allowed to participate in democracy. In addition, Marylanders who are incarcerated while awaiting trial, or who were convicted of a misdemeanor, have the right to vote but don’t have access to voter registration forms or mail-in ballot applications.

With the financial devastation and uncertainty wrought by the pandemic, we must act to prevent additional harm to Baltimore City residents — and that means delaying or canceling this year’s tax sale. At the annual auction, held in May, city government sells delinquent property tax liens to the highest bidders, generally private investors. This often leads to a devastating foreclosure for the homeowners whose liens are sold and to the loss of equity they have in the home. Haven’t city residents dealt with enough this year? The time is overdue for Mayor Brandon Scott and Finance Director Henry Raymond to postpone or cancel this year’s tax sale — or, at the least, remove homeowners from the sale, to protect residents from the potential loss of their homes.

After a March 1 car crash in downtown Gettysburg killed the driver and sparked a three-alarm fire that destroyed a gift shop and damaged other buildings, I received emails informing me that the victim was possibly a man I had written about three years ago, Kurtis Darius Williams. Indeed, a 35-year-old man by that name had come to The Baltimore Sun for help in 2018. Williams had been having a tough time finding a job after serving 17 years in prison for second-degree murder, a crime related to his former life as a drug dealer. In 2001, when he was 17, Williams had pleaded guilty to fatally shooting another teen in a street argument. Released from prison, he had come back to his mother’s home in Baltimore determined to beat the odds by finding work and staying out of trouble.

The recent vote in the Maryland General Assembly to abolish, but not replace, the offensive state song, “Maryland, My Maryland” has, for the time being, finally put that long-debated issue to rest (unless Gov. Larry Hogan vetoes the legislation, which is an unlikely prospect). The song — written as a pro-secessionist tract by the poet and Maryland native James Ryder Randall — was originally adopted in 1935 by a Democratically controlled legislature (certainly a different brand than today). But it was vetoed by Republican governor Harry W. Nice because lawmakers refused to delete “objectionable verses” about Abraham Lincoln, the Union Army and Northern citizens. After Nice left office, the next governor, Herbert R. O’Conor, signed the song into law in 1939.

Americans are welcoming government help from a pandemic that has closed thousands of small businesses and pushed many American families into poverty. In the1960s, according to Pew Research, “more than three in four Americans said they trusted the government.” This enabled the government to do big things like enforce clean water and air regulations, get lead-based paint out of our homes, and pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to name a few. However, trust in the government was diminished by the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, Civil Rights Protests, and the assassinations of President John Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The only good news in that decade was when America landed a man on the moon in 1969.

Baltimore County is in the process of updating its master plan, something that it does every 10 years. It is the last opportunity this decade for the county to enhance the quality of life for residents by protecting land from development that is needed to create adequate amounts of networked, publicly available open space in neighborhoods. The county has failed to preserve enough green space in the past. Sixty-five percent of residents lack access to open space within a quarter mile, or walking distance, of their homes. The livability of many communities suffers as a result, with less affluent ones suffering the most.

I am a proud associate professor at Prince George’s Community College, and I support SB746/HB894, the bill that would give adjunct professors the right to collectively bargain. I have spent 15 years preparing Maryland’s workforce, and I’ve mentored countless students in their personal and professional goal attainment. As adjuncts work to win a union, I stand in solidarity with all community colleges and the right to negotiate a contract and have better working conditions.