Social justice

Carlton R. Smith, a fixture in the city who advocated for Black and brown members of the LGBTQ community and was currently fighting to decriminalize HIV in the state, died in his sleep May 29 in his Mount Vernon condominium. He was 61.

A parade with dozens of groups — including a boisterous drumline, dancers, politicians searching for votes and many, many people waving rainbow flags — crawled up Main Street and West Street.

“Very close races can be won or lost based on LGBTQ voters,” says one expert.

Maryland’s Attorney General has signed on to a push for a federal civil rights investigation into a Texas police officer pardoned by that state’s governor after being convicted of killing a social justice protester.

The “tough-on-crime” approaches to juvenile justice signed into law by Gov. Wes Moore have proved ineffective in the past because they fail to adequately consider the root causes of youth crime, the CEO of the Juvenile Law Center says.

Black residents and women are underrepresented on the Baltimore County Council, and a petition to put council expansion on the November ballot aims to address that, the deputy executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland says.

Meeting the the needs of migrant children in Maryland and their families will make our communities stronger, a Pikesville physician says.

Delays with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid means students can’t make decisions about which college they will attend.

Communities must stand against the language that criminalizes and dehumanizes immigrants, says the managing attorney of an organization supporting immigrant survivors of gender-based violence in Baltimore.

Maryland must do more to address the educational, health and other urgent needs of migrant children, say a Johns Hopkins primary care pediatrician and a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Preparing to speak at the funeral of Roger Fortson, who was shot and killed by police at his Florida home, the Rev. Jamal-Harrison Bryant, a former Baltimore pastor, revisits his Freddie Gray eulogy and his outrage fueled by the deaths of young Black men during interactions with police.

A measure to change the selection process for Baltimore County's Planning Board might have less to do with concerns about planning generally and more to do with opposition to mixed-use development that would include affordable housing, says a county resident who writes about law and local government issues.

As the Project Play Summit convenes in Baltimore, participants will be exploring how communities can provide needed resources to expand youth sports participation, says the community impact director of the Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program and its Project Play initiative.

The rally came out of Prince George’s County just after midnight when police were alerted it was on the move. Anne Arundel County Police say the drivers were headed for the Giant Food parking lot in Gambrills, where they planned to set up an exhibition of wildness behind the wheel.

Despite polarization and unrest on college and university campuses, the institutions can find ways to make constructive use of that conflict, say the University of Baltimore's president and a professor of public and international affairs.

Duke Ellington added to his legacy as an artist and a cultural figure when he appeared in Baltimore.

The 125th anniversary of Duke Ellington’s birth presents an opportunity for the Peabody Conservatory to ensure that another generation of musicians appreciates the meaning and significance of his work, says trumpeter and composer Sean Jones, who chairs Peabody’s jazz program.

With scant police resources to locate missing people, the Missing in Baltimore City Facebook group has increasingly become a resource for families to crowdsource and find support as they search for their loved ones.

A plan discussed by Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates to prosecute parents whose children are arrested would only make matters worse for marginalized families in the city, a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health says.

I listened with interest last week to a panel discussion of the University of Maryland’s groundbreaking study on the state of journalism in Maryland. No surprise, what it found ain’t great. But there is reason to hope.