Commentary

In the early 1990s, Father William “Bill” Watters, a Jesuit priest, was sent to Baltimore with a discomfiting question: whether the venerable but struggling St. Ignatius Church, founded in the 1850s, should be closed. His superior made clear he favored an exit. Watters pondered the boarded-up rowhouses across from the church and noticed a plaque marking the founding of a Jesuit university and prep school on the site more than a century before.

When you think about all the challenges that kids can face growing up in Baltimore, asthma might not come to mind, but it should. In 2020, one in five children in Baltimore had an asthma diagnosis, a rate more than double the national average. As a pulmonologist, I’ve seen firsthand how asthma can disrupt the day-to-day lives of our friends and neighbors, resulting in missed days from school and work, emergency trips to the hospital and expensive medical bills.

On Wednesday, as the U.S. Supreme Court pondered whether to uphold a ban on “bump stock” devices, which can speed up the firing of semi-automatic firearms to near machine-gun rate, lawmakers in Annapolis were presented with concerns about the rising use of “Glock switches” which can likewise convert Glock semi-automatic handguns into fully automatic ones. In other words, in the war to keep the most destructive firearms out of the hands of evil-doers, yet another battlefront has opened up.

Steve Inskeep’s recent interview of Rep. Andy Harris on NPR’s “Morning Edition” revealed the utter shallowness of the Republican position on Ukraine and the Maryland congressman’s inability to credibly defend it outside of the right-wing echo chamber. Harris, a do-little rep for most of his seven terms, got time on NPR because he’s co-chair of the House Ukraine Caucus and because he’s changed his mind about funding the fight against Russia’s hideous invasion.

Despite some positive news about public transit in and around Baltimore in recent weeks — from a $213 million federal grant to replace the region’s aging fleet of light rail cars to the delivery of the Maryland Transit Administration’s first zero-emission electric buses — these are still challenging times for those who rely on the MTA to get from one place to another. Staffing and equipment shortfalls have been numerous.

Vehicles illegally parked at bus stops prevent Marylanders with disabilities from safely accessing transit buses, keeping us from reaching jobs, schools, healthcare appointments and more on time – if at all. This is a major problem that has gone unrecognized for a long time – but help is finally on the way thanks to Del. Robbyn Lewis and Sen. Arianna Kelly. To combat this problem, last year WMATA launched its Clear Lanes program to enforce illegal parking at bus stops with bus-mounted cameras.

As we near the end of Black History Month, it’s imperative to recognize that Black history is not merely a chapter in the annals of Maryland’s story; it is the very fabric of the state’s rich tapestry. From the bustling shipyards of Baltimore to the farmlands and waterways of Southern Maryland, the contributions and struggles of Black Americans are woven into every corner of Maryland’s history.

Supporting our Maryland multilingual learners’ work to graduate with a college degree is a pressing social and racial justice issue. The Credit for All Language Learning (CALL) Act seeks to level the playing field for multilingual learners who currently do not receive credit for their English Language Learning coursework (which is not considered credit bearing, but is eligible for Pell grants). This is definitely an equity issue, as we provide credit to most college students toward their degree for taking basic foreign language courses while multilingual learners who speak one, two, or more languages are not given credit for English courses that are equally, and many times more, rigorous.