Baltimore City

In responding to conversations on engaged infrastructure,
racial and reparative justice, and transformational WPA
leadership, I call for more writing teachers and writing
programs to take up grantwriting as a way to create much
needed infrastructure for small, struggling grassroots
nonprofits (NPOs). I detail G.I.V.E. (Grantwriting in
Valued Environments), a community writing project at
Towson University in the Baltimore metro area, where
students are a primary, if not the main, source of
research, grantwriting, and grants tracking for partner
organizations via classwork, paid internships, and part-time employment. I problematize and locate this work
within the nonprofit industrial complex and discuss the
structure and functioning of grassroots organizations and
how their particular milieu lends itself to projects like
G.I.V.E. The project views equity as way to “return stolen
resources” (Marcus and Munoz 2018), acknowledges the
legacies of injustice in our communities, places students
of color in leadership roles, and prioritizes work with
under-resourced organizations that are led by folks from
the community itself.

Slides de aula a convite, a respeito do livro "Condição pós-moderna", de David Harvey, na disciplina ARQ 5622 - História da Arte, Arquitetura e Urbanismo 2, ministrada no curso de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), em 6 de setembro de 2021.

Many of the collections that form the core of the museums in the United States were assembled by women. While much literature looks at female collectors’ individual lives in-depth, few compare collectors through a steady narrative. To do so would enhance the historical understanding of women who built collections during the turn of the twentieth century, as their bonds with one another were vital to their collecting practices. In my paper, I explore women collector’s friendships during this period through two case studies: the relationship between Etta Cone and Gertrude Stein, and the friendship between Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and gallerist Edith Gregor Halpert. It is my aim to give a fuller and more accurate picture of the lives of these women, as well as the social forces that influenced them and the collections they left behind.
I base my studies on a close reading of letters and artwork exchanged between these four women. I compare these with the work of contemporary scholars in analyzing women art collectors, as well as changes in the social roles that women occupied in early 1900s America. These collectors can be looked at as byproducts of the society they lived in and the people they interacted with. Friendship is so integral to these women’s collecting practices that they cannot be thought of as individuals independently shaping American culture, but rather, as a network of women whose friendship and communication created a formidable force in the artistic holdings of the United States.

The Lloyd Street Synagogue in Baltimore was the first structure built specifically as a synagogue in the state of Maryland. Built in 1845, the synagogue included separate buildings for a school and a mikveh. These two buildings were leveled in 1860 during expansion of the synagogue. Mikva'ot (ritual baths) are central to traditional Jewish life and are used both by men and women for ritual purification. A congregation would often build a mikveh before constructing their synagogue. Excavation uncovered the remains of the circa 1845 mikveh complex, the earliest known mikveh in the United States. Additional features, including the foundations for the mikveh house, a brick hearth for heating water, and the reservoir for " living water " were also defined. These are all similar to elements found in contemporary Dutch synagogues. The Baltimore synagogue and mikveh complex was created by a congregation of immigrant Jews from Central Europe at a time when Baltimore was torn by sectionalism and nativism. Between 1845 and 1860, the mikveh played an important role in the Lloyd Street congregation's journey to becoming American, while simultaneously enabling them to forge a community and to maintain important religious and ritual traditions.

A syllabus for teachers and students regarding historical trauma and Baltimore Apartheid. This syllabus was compiled to highlight the impacts of ongoing historical trauma in Baltimore’s Black Butterfly communities.

The syllabus highlights how multiple systems in Baltimore were created and continue to proliferate structural disadvantage in Black Butterfly neighborhoods. Systems include education, real estate/housing, food/water, philanthropy, industry, transportation, public health, urban renewal, economic development, corrections, and police.

Maryland's Baltimore County native son, Colonel Beale Randall's life and participation in the defense of Maryland against the British in the War of 1812 is particularly poignant on this day, September 12, 2014 the Bicentennial of the Battle of North Point. 
      This short biography tells of an unheralded, but prominent 19th century Marylander who by his untiring diligence affected his community on the local, state and national levels.  Born a privileged son of an old American family, he served numerous terms in the Maryland legislature, was a recognized officer in the War of 1812, long held a seat on the Baltimore city council and was chosen by his peers to invite Lafayette to Baltimore in 1824.  Colonel Randall was an influential "Jackson man," who helped sway the state to vote for Andrew Jackson as President, was a successful businessman and entrepreneur and one of the largest stockholders in the inception of the B&O railroad.  He was a respected judge and founded a town in the new state of Iowa.  Clearly a man of vision and high energy,  he led a dynamic life as a military officer, business man and politician active in the affairs of his times on the local, state and National scenes.
      When he died in his old age at his country seat in Baltimore county, his obituary listed him as one of the "Old Defenders"...a distinct honor in Maryland.  He was a man of his times and his significant story begs to be told.

"in Scapegoat: Landscape, Architecture, Political Economy, issue 2 (Dec 2011).

"This summer we went for a walk around Baltimore to explore the city and catch a glimpse of the fugitive power of “things” at work. Baltimore, a.k.a. ‘Charm City,’ is located on the Amtrak line between New York City and Washington D.C., and yet it feels very off the grid. The deepest inland port on the U.S. east coast, Baltimore was once an industrial giant and an important transit hub for the rest of the conti- nent by way of the Baltimore-Ohio railroad. With its population peaking at nearly
a million residents in the 1950s, Baltimore has since grappled with the flight of population and capital that accompanied the implosion of the American industrial economy. Its population today is around 600,000.1 What this means is that Balti- more is a city where a great deal of material things—homes, factories, storefronts, and highways—remain largely undisturbed by human agents. We had plans to conduct something like an interview about what it’s like living here. What happened, however, was that things kept interrupting our best attempts at narration. They insisted upon being part of the conversation.""

During the Jacksonian era the relationship between blacks Baltimoreans and the dominant society was a relationship primarily of abuse and mistreatment. Although Baltimore was becoming a place that European immigrants could establish roots and assimilate black citizens were continuously marginalized by the press, the police department and the general white population. The efforts to malign African Americans may have hindered their progress but did not deter them from trying. During this time blacks built and maintained their own churches and schools. Despite sentiments of racial intolerance they still varied themselves with pride and dignity.

The landmark case Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 held that de jure racial segregation in public schools in the United States (US) was unconstitutional as „separate educational facilities are inherently unequal“ (The Learning Network, 2012). This ruling was perceived as one of the first legal stepping stones for racially discriminated communities across the US to raise their voice and rally for a more just and equal society. Hence, grass roots organisations sprung up and gained membership in this new era of progress and opportunity, where protests and boycotts made the headlines in the years to come under the ‚Civil Rights Movement‘ (Strauss, 2014). Yet, the educational system in the US remains highly unequal and public schools in the US are in fact more segregated than at the time of the ruling in 1954 (Mullins, 2013; Rothstein, 2013; Strauss, 2014; USDO, 2014).
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling, Baltimore City officials initiated a voluntary approach to desegregate its schooling system that had become known as the ‚free choice plan‘ (David, 1994). Firstly, it was meant to eliminate racial considerations in school admissions as to give families the ‚free choice‘ to send their children to schools where they best saw fit. Secondly, it was aimed at countering the backlash of forced integration policies (Baum, 2010) that had been experienced in many Southern States in retrospect of the ruling (Motycka, 2017). However, the policy initiative had the exact opposite effect, resulting in ‚white flight‘— as white students left for better private schools in the suburbs (Baum, 2010) — and in black students opting for staying in inferior (black) schools — even though they would have had the opportunity to join higher-quality-educational institutions (Baum, 2018).
Subsequently, intended desegregation provisions lead to resegregation in Baltimore City and eventually exacerbated racial inequalities even more (Hanushek et al., 2002). This outcome had the negative effect of further sustaining and reproducing the cycle of systematic inequality and structural violence, as the black population was kept being bereaved of achieving their full potential (Galtung, 1969). This paper shall specifically analyse the position of Baltimore’s black community and more concretely — their seemingly irrational decision of not opting for better education. It is argued that one can best understand this controversy in the context of identity formation and the subsequent choices people make. Although the issue of segregation in Baltimore has received an abundance of scholarly attention, specifically in the political and socio-economic fields (Knorr, Lilian, 2016; McDill et al., 1968), little research has been done on the impact identity formation might have on the reproducing patterns of structural violence.
Against this background, this paper assumes that the conscious denial of uniting together with white students, is rather related to their sense of belonging in society and how they make sense of their environment. More precisely, they feel underrepresented by the schooling system in Baltimore and find it increasingly difficult to identify themselves with educational institutions. Thus, the paper investigates whether the intellectual identity of the black community draws negative linkages to the educational system and its ‚opening-up‘ in respect of the free choice plan (David, 1994), with the
Seite  2
aim of answering the following research question: To what extent can processes of identity formation explain persistent inequality and structural violence in Baltimore and how does the black’s intellectual identification perpetuate this vicious cycle in particular?
For this cause, the investigation will make specific use of the ‚theory of domain identification‘ with regard to the domain of schooling (Steele, 1997). The reason for focusing on education in this paper is twofold. Firstly, all spheres of social and political life are inherently linked to the opportunities people get in terms of their educational development (Livingston & Nahimana, 2006).1 Secondly, public education remains the ‚one system‘ that in theory has the resources at hand to address the effects of poverty and marginalisation of certain social groups (Noguera, 2008).
In what follows, this paper starts with externalising the theoretical framework by using collective identity theories by Eriksen and Claude M. Steele. Here, Steele’s account is further specified, describing predicaments and threats to identity formation. The following analysis is then divided in two parts, where an empirical study of Baltimore shows, how these potential threats can lead to an entire rejection of a domain or ultimately end up in self-rejection and hopelessness (Steele, 1997). A conclusion provides an overview of all findings and elaborates on possible initiatives and approaches for a long-term solution.

The purpose of this essay is to analyse how the racial and class issue have conditioned Baltimore city and its citizens to follow a tendency to return to the past, to enlarge the social inequalities and to reduce life chances, according to the depiction made by the American television series “The Wire”.

When I move to Baltimore and become acquainted with the Black women in my Mormon congregation, I learn how they reconcile their conversion in a historically White church that at one time had withdrawn access to spiritually emancipitory temple ordinances, and I begin to understand the quality of faith that rises from their racialized life experiences that are so different from my own.

https://gregkofford.com/products/on-fire-in-baltimore

Walking is an everyday practice that shapes urban space and is shaped by the space in which it occurs. It can create new subjects, new forms of public space and provide alternate readings of the city. This essay examines the significance of walking in the Olmsted Brothers’ 1904 ‘Valley Parks and Parkways’ plan for Baltimore. The transformation of the urban stream valleys into public parks assumed and promoted the concept of recreational walking in a scenic setting, rooted in the tradition of picturesque travel that William Gilpin had popularized in his famous printed tours. The Olmsted Brothers’ 1904 plan gave value to previously overlooked natural corridors and new legibility to the city’s natural systems. Rural scenic values were embraced as part of a larger urban vision. The Baltimore plan illustrates the key role of the landscape in the emergence of comprehensive planning principles, and how it shaped--and was shaped by--everyday social practices.

This research is a case study of the Inclusionary Housing program in Baltimore, Maryland, United States which was established to secure a certain percentage of affordable housing units in market-rate residential developments. This research seeks to explain why less than 40 affordable units have been delivered in Baltimore despite the thousands of new residential units constructed in the city since 2007 when the law instituting the program was passed. This research attempts to understand the design and implementation of the program through a game theory framework and positions the stakeholders in the public-private partnership to provide affordable housing as two players in a sequential, asymmetric game with almost perfect information.