Social justice

Providing affordable and flexible consumer loans to people who don’t have access to traditional banking services can transform lives and help boost the economies of places like Baltimore, says Kasra Movahedi, executive director of the International Rescue Committee’s Center for Economic Opportunity.

Nonprofit hospitals can put into place a stopgap measure to help cover care for people ineligible for health insurance, such as those without documentation, say people familiar with a Johns Hopkins program that serves uninsured East Baltimore residents.

Pennsylvania-based Erie Insurance discriminated against a Black-owned insurance brokerage firm and ultimately against Black Baltimoreans, according to a recent opinion by the Maryland Insurance Administration.

So, a washed-up rock star makes a video shooting up Bud Light because a trans person lifted a can of the beer on TikTok. Here’s a drink to take that bad taste out of your mouth, America. Forward Brewing, the nanobrewery in Annapolis, will release the second edition of its Pride beer on Tuesday. It's a kick-off to the city’s Pride week, a refreshing lager and a pint-sized political statement all in one.

The promise the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling held for many in Baltimore and elsewhere stands in sharp contrast to enduring school segregation almost 70 years later, Banner columnist E.R. Shipp says.

This year's Preakness marks 125 years since Willie Simms, one of the most successful riders of his time and one of the first to adopt the modern rider position and technique, won the race and became the only Black jockey to win all three Triple Crown events.

Decriminalizing drug paraphernalia is one step Maryland can take toward ending policies that have failed to curb an epidemic of drug-related deaths, says Jessie Dunleavy, an advocate for drug policy reform.

John Merzbacher, a former teacher at Catholic Community School of Baltimore who was convicted of sexual abuse and the repeated rape of a student in the ’70s, has died.

A ceremony Friday capped 40 years of struggle to open a waterfront park in Anne Arundel County, involving historic forces that continue to limit public access to the Chesapeake Bay, difficult negotiations with neighbors and disagreement over the right way to balance 340 acres of impossible beauty as both an environmental treasure and recreational jewel.

The scope of the problem in Baltimore is enormous, city documents show.

Anne Arundel County opened Beverly Triton Nature Park Friday, a rare Chesapeake Bay beach open to the public through a daily pass system. Located about 30 minutes south of Annapolis on the Mayo Peninsula, the park opened four decades after the county bought the one-time segregated resort.

Black residents of the Deal Island peninsula endure hardships to cling to the land where their enslaved ancestors once lived, says Rona Kobell, a Banner contributor and co-founder of the Environmental Justice Journalism Initiative, which produced the film “Eroding History.”

Book-banning and other censorship efforts were a threat to journalistic freedom 100 years ago, and they still are today, DeWayne Wickham, The Banner’s public editor, says.

Organizers asked me to moderate a panel on racial and social justice because I’ve been reporting on these ideas for much of my career as a journalist. But listening to people who focus on this issue daily provided some revelations worth sharing.

Baltimore needs to establish a Land Bank Authority to bring more investment to underserved neighborhoods, says Krystle Okafor, director of policy and planning at SHARE Baltimore.

Deep within the litany of outrages by the Catholic Church documented by the Maryland Office of the Attorney General report, there is a revelation as shocking as the predatory priests or the religious bureaucracy eager to hide its sins.

Baltimore and Maryland school officials need to reverse course and keep Steuart Hill Academic Academy open, a leader of a community activist group says. Cecilia Gonzalez says children and families of the West Baltimore neighborhood surrounding Steuart Hill have been well-served by the elementary school.

Black people in Maryland would still be more likely to face prosecution under the state's current marijuana reform legislation, defense attorneys J. Wyndal Gordon and Warren A. Brown say.

Segregation remains a reality in Baltimore County schools, a parent of a county school student says; lack of an effective inclusionary housing policy reinforces a system that subsidizes segregation in Baltimore, a policy analyst says; families can take steps to ease the transition of people with developmental disabilities into adulthood, a services coordinator says.

A boisterous crowd gathered at the State House to celebrate significant progress this year — a new law will expand coverage for gender-affirming care for people with Medicaid insurance — but they noted that much more work is ahead in making the state safe and inclusive for trans Marylanders.