Baltimore school suspensions fell last year — Baltimore Sun
This is What Activism Looks Like — Baltimore magazine
Police investigate attacks on bicyclists in Baltimore — WBAL-TV
Joe Flacco Acknowledges Ravens Have Been Conservative On Offense — PressBox
Works Begins on New Master Plan for Solo Gibbs Park in Sharp-Leadenhall — SouthBmore
Baltimore City Public Schools’ highest-profile employee is leaving his North Avenue office behind.
To celebrate a holiday dedicated to preserving the memories of presidents past, local activists have put together a full day of programming centered around protesting our country’s top elected official.
A hair hopper, as any good Baltimorean knows, is someone who favors a tall hairstyle kept in place with hairspray. The early 1960s was the heyday of the hair hopper.
As the author of Hairspray and a native of Baltimore, which he calls the Hairdo Capital of the World, writer and filmmaker John Waters knows a hair hopper when he sees one. And he sees one in the White House.
One of the original members of the internationally known Russian punk collective Pussy Riot is making a timely appearance in Baltimore this week.
By the time you read this, the participants in the 300 Men March will be almost all the way to the White House–and their feet will likely be aching. That’s because they’ve been walking since last evening, making their way to the nation’s capital by foot. Why? To protest against violence, and the apathy that often results from such violence. “People expect the murder rate to go away by sitting on the couch,” the group’s founder Munir Bahar told the Baltimore Sun. “If it’s business as usual, it’s murders as usual.”
Actor and social activist Harry Belafonte will visit the University of Baltimore as a guest lecturer and speaker for the University’s pilot course, Citizenship and Freedom: The Civil Rights Era on Tuesday, May 6. Belafonte, an outspoken and highly engaged participant in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, is one of several guest lecturers speaking on their experiences surrounding a decade of historical landmarks, including the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
For all of Maryland’s virtues, the state has some major corruption issues. For one, Maryland received low marks for corruption prevention in a Corruption Risk Report Card last year (which include grades of “F’ in executive accountability, legislative accountability, and public access to information). Oh, and then there was expanded gambling and a notorious Congressional gerrymander, both of which were steamrolled into existence and disingenuously argued for. There’s also the illegal arrangement that state and local governments have with their speed camera operators. Oh yeah, there’s also the issue of accountability in the comic-book-worthy prison scandal.
There’s a non-profit that would like to help us with those issues. OpenGov Foundation, a self-described “scrappy little non-profit, non-partisan outfit working to open government,” has launched an open-data website on Maryland law. Marylandcode.org makes state codes and laws easily accessible. It’s also an Application Programming Interface, which means it’s set up to allow programmers to create free apps that use the information in various ways.
Remember FORCE, the Baltimore group that pranked Victoria’s Secret a few months ago? Well, they’re up to more status-quo-disrupting shenanigans — this time in Washington, D.C. According to organizer Rebecca Nagle, the group is “carrying 44 giant, red styrofoam letters to the national mall in DC to write the poem ‘I CAN’T FORGET WHAT HAPPENED BUT NO ONE ELSE REMEMBERS.’ The action is a call to create a national memorial to survivors of rape and abuse.” The action is set to happen at 2 p.m.; follow along on Twitter or Facebook, and stay tuned for photos of the event here on Baltimore Fishbowl tomorrow.
Just hours after the Ravens won the AFC Championship game, Brendon Ayanbadejo was already thinking strategically — not so much about football (though we hope that’s on his mind, too), but about how he could use this trip to the Super Bowl to further his favorite adopted cause, gay rights.
