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Baltimore Archives - Page 2 of 6 - ChangingMedia

Jan 06
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#SaveBmore: The (mis)use of Power

By | #SaveBmore, The Good Plan | One Comment

I began thinking about the #SaveBmore idea in a really clichéd manner: “We need more love!” I wanted to write, before sensing all of your eyes roll collectively. Snoop Pearson’s Instagram account almost inspired me to compose a diatribe about respect, as 80 percent of her posted photographs raise middle fingers to the camera. That failed too, as did crime, homelessness, and taxes. These were failures because all my preliminary ideas blamed someone else. I found I was projecting blame, rather than taking ownership of it. Blaming guns or the economy or the actions of the police didn’t make me part of the solution, it simply made me point fingers at the perceived wrongdoings of others. In order to #SaveBmore, I would have to take on part of the responsibility.

My lightbulb moment came when I questioned not necessarily what I can do, but whether or not I actually do it — that’s when I realized the answer to saving Baltimore is all about power.

Power is a supremely complex concept. Fueled by our ability to relate to others, build our credibility, speak the right words, and play the right cards at the right time, it is the key to getting what we want, and to guiding others to act the way we feel will create a better future. Where I see the great problem in Baltimore is that power is often abused, misdirected, or left to rot — untouched and unused. As I find my professional self in rooms with influential individuals, I often think about the power they have and the power they’ve used. Some seem to use their power for good, whether that translates into public speaking, creating things that are beneficial to others, or hiring that kid who has never held a job before. Others have power through money, and donate graciously, using dollar bills and signed checks to guide their influence in what they believe are areas of promise.

And yet there are also many who hoard their power, perhaps believing that taking no action makes them more desirable, or makes them seem more powerful to onlookers. Abuse, misuse, and the refusal to use power is the reason we can’t get ahead in this town. At a recent meeting where several individuals pushed for increased public transit shelters around the harbor, the request was met with a resounding no — ‘case closed.’ What struck me was not the no itself so much as the refusal to even justify the denial, an attitude that’s far too common in our fair city. Somewhere, I thought, there’s an individual with the power to make lots of people happier and more comfortable, and they refuse to do so. That routine refusal by those in power — whether to create more bike lanes, question arrest policies, or approve a shelter — is what keeps Baltimore from reaching its greatest potential.

But I said I wasn’t here to blame others. The fact is that we all have power that we refuse to exercise — whether out of fear, ignorance or inertia. We can heal, create, speak up, and — where necessary — act out. A few of us even have the ability to exercise power through a signature or an endorsement. I believe Baltimore will be saved not simply through the recognition of our own power, but the courage to exercise that power. Every moment we don’t is another time we shirk our responsibility — to use the power to create change that we are all fortunate enough to hold.

IMAGE CREDIT. [Wikimedia Commons].
Dec 19
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The Future of Baltimore is Already Here – 7 Ways We Can Harness It

By | #SaveBmore, Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | 8 Comments

 “When friends in DC ask me what we talk about in Baltimore, I say ‘Baltimore.’”

A friend of mine made this offhand remark last week and it has been spinning in my head ever since. Baltimore’s navel gazing has been seen as a hindrance to some but I’m beginning to think it might be our greatest asset. As I have said before Baltimore was weird before it was cool. That weirdness, that creativity, can be our savior. To save Baltimore, we do not need to look at established models that have worked elsewhere. Let’s be shot of the days of “let’s start a Grand Prix,” “let’s get a Trader Joes,” “let’s attract the next Google.” Let’s stop looking at others and focus instead on pouring resources into creating innovation made for, made by, and made in Baltimore.

Why do I think we need to gaze inward?

  1. The solution we want doesn’t exist. I see no industry out there with the potential to employ or train the large population of “unskilled labor” that exists in post-industrial urban cities with living wage jobs.
  2. The solution isn’t out there because Baltimore hasn’t created it yet. If Baltimore devoted resources to fostering the talent and creativity in this city, I hold the radical belief that we might actually come up with a solution that not only saves Baltimore, but could change the economic landscape.

Baltimore led the shipping industry because the Baltimore clipper was faster than any other ship around. Baltimore became a center for the milling industry because Oliver Evan’s invented the automatic flour mill. We made leaps as a city because we did things better than other places and that innovation requires out-of-the-box thinking. It was innovation that gave Baltimore the competitive advantage to become the huge industrial center it once was, and it is innovation that could bring us back.

Here’s my idea: let’s assume that everything we want and everything we need is already here and let’s do something amazing with it. Let’s look straight into the navel and ask Baltimorians to get to work saving the city. Here’s my plan Baltimore: let’s scrap all established models and start encouraging the novel, weird and wacky to flourish.

How do we do that? I’m not entirely sure, but here’s my list of places we can start:

  1. Create Places Where Crazy Ideas Happen:  We need more places focused on finding funding (via crowdfunding campaigns, microloans, grants) and resources (market research, incubator programs, mentorship opportunities) to help people make their crazy ideas happen. Whether it’s a new way to rent musical instruments or a new model for getting local food to those who are food insecure, I want to see a one-stop shop that works to help people take full advantage of the resources we already have in Baltimore to make it happen. I see a string of neighborhood innovation centers to help people turn their crazy ideas into Baltimore’s latest craze.  
  2. Focus on Social Entrepreneurship: Baltimore already has a rich community of people creating socially focused businesses and initiatives. I’m not the only one who sees the potential of Baltimore to lead the way in this new field. Let’s invest in businesses and development models that radically change the social fabric of our city through economic development. Social change should be the focal point of our revitalization, not an afterthought, not a trickle down.  
  3. Provide Room for Collaborative Design: In order to form great ideas, you need for people to mix and mingle. We already have some spaces that allow for people to collaborate but they are often buried in silos. We need to create intentional bridges between the silos of innovation we know exist in our community. We need to find spaces that allow people to come together and bounce ideas off each other to form those a-ha! moments that will create our shared future. These could be co-working spaces, public spaces, or a traveling series of events that bring us together to create real solutions for the future.
  4. Educate for Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship: We need to involve the next generation in the evolution of our community. That means a radical transformation of our education system to encourage and inspire critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and other 21st century learning skills critical to making our students into tomorrow’s innovators. Whether within or in addition to the school system we need programs that teach students to constantly learn, constantly create, and constantly move our city forward with their entrepreneurial vision.
  5. Create Jobs Accessible to Everyone: Andrew Carnegie once boasted he could train anyone to work in a steel mill in a matter of months, a feat once thought impossible by most of the world. We not only need new industries, we need to create processes that make those industries accessible to anyone. Whether it is training programs to get people up to speed or machines that make it easy for everyone to learn and create something great, we need to constantly thinking about making the jobs we create available to more than a trained few.
  6. Provide Easy Access to Existing Resources: Baltimore actually has a lot of assets. From vacant homes, to universities, to open data we need to create programs that let the public find, access, and use these assets for their grand schemes.
  7. Consider Ourselves the Best, No Questions Asked: Sure Baltimore is always talking about itself, but most of the times we talk about our problems not our solutions. We need to see ourselves as the weird, wacky, center of creativity we are. We need to remember that our city has the potential to reinvent our future and lead the way in transforming the world. We don’t need to be the next Philly, the next D.C., the next New York City because someday people are going to want to be the next Baltimore. We’re just that cool.  

If we all invest in making Baltimore a little weirder, we might create the next ingenious idea that gives us the competitive advantage to once again rise to national (even worldwide) prominence. We could not only be known for the problems exposed in The Wire, but be known for being one of the few cities to take radical measure to address them. We could be known for our creativity, vision, and justice. If we start investing inward we might find that the idea that saves Baltimore was right under our noses all along.

Dec 19
0

#SaveBmore – Undoing Racism

By | #SaveBmore, ChangeEngine | 9 Comments

As a white person, I can only speak of undoing racism from that perspective. Therefore, in my opinion, in order to create real transformative change in Baltimore we have to educate ourselves and organize our institutions to help dismantle the structures in place that perpetuate racism. Racism is the cause of the inequity we see every day in Baltimore. In order to really begin to heal and change the city, we all need to understand the history and how racist practices still embedded in our institutions have created the disparities that exist today.

I’m not from here — I was born and raised in Detroit and also lived in Oakland, California. At least in those two cities, which are predominately black as well, race is talked about more widely, whether productive or not, and it is much more obvious. It feels unacknowledged here and very few people talk about the inequity we see every day described in those terms. We talk about lack of jobs or housing or treatment programs. For both blacks and people of color and for whites, it’s likely because of the deeply ingrained internalized oppression and superiority within ourselves that we choose to ignore. We need to look at how the systems we are all involved in work to uphold power and privilege for white people. Just take a look at the criminal justice system. Despite the fact that whites use and deal drugs more than people of color, there is overrepresentation of people of color for nonviolent drug offenses in the system. In fact Black, Latinos and Native American are overrepresented in every aspect of the criminal justice system – from arrests to the court system to incarceration. (Here’s a great resource to explore: Shinin’ the Light on White Privilege by Sharon Martinas.)

This is not a dynamic that can be shifted overnight but takes real effort and understanding of how the system works. Whites especially need to be engaged with other whites in this process. Racism is dehumanizing to all of us. We need a common definition of what racism is, an historical knowledge about what has happened since the founding of this country, and we need to look deeply within ourselves and our institutions on where we can organize and create impact.

For those of us who want to start but don’t know how, we can begin with conversations with others, and seek out knowledge from those with expertise. There are many resources that we can make use of right here in Baltimore – Baltimore Racial Justice Action, Equity Matters and the Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond. But if we don’t even have the conversation, we will never be able to dismantle something that is truly destroying us all.

IMAGE CREDIT. [Wikimedia Commons].
Dec 18
0

Nothing New Under The Sun … Except A Ray of Hope

By | #SaveBmore, External Monologue | 5 Comments

This past week or so, the ChangeEngine crew has been debating how to “save” Baltimore. This city, like many others, faces severe challenges, from crippling poverty to crumbling public schools to gun violence and blight. Many of these issues go far beyond the city itself, echoing much larger social and economic trends. The debate rages on as to what can free us from our plight — more bike lanes, get rid of the Baltimore Development Corporation, overhaul the tax structure with a hand grenade. But the truth is that the larger trends are difficult for one individual and maybe even once city to overcome, and that none of them are new.

America’s cities have been afflicted with poverty since the start of the industrialized age. This country has gone through at least four cycles of extreme inequality in that time. Rockefeller and the robber barons, their wealth adjusted for inflation, are still to this day the richest individuals that ever lived. They had more money than the Pharaohs of Egypt, Britain’s Royal Family, and many other historical figures most would consider extraordinarily wealthy and powerful. To give an idea of the wealth these men had: in 1893 the economy crashed, and J.P. Morgan bailed out the government. That’s right — a private individual bailed out the U.S. government. For all the spectacular wealth amassed by private individuals before the most recent financial crisis, it was the government that came to the rescue of J.P. Morgan Chase — the banking leviathan founded by J.P. Morgan himself. The roaring twenties caused inequality to balloon up once again, and the stock market crash of 1929 created another great glut of despair. We are at a similar point now. Not to get all Battle­star Galactica up in here, but “All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.”

Or perhaps not. It’s true that we are approaching Gilded Age levels of inequality. Our social and economic system has created an enormous disparity in wealth not only between individuals, but also between local municipalities and cities. While “world cities” like San Francisco, Chicago, D.C., New York, and Boston have transformed themselves, rising out of seemingly irreversible chaos and decline in the 1970s and 1980s, others like Detroit, Cleveland, New Orleans, and of course Baltimore are struggling to attract new residents and find employment for those that remain, further perpetuating the crisis. But just because a cycle exists, doesn’t mean we can’t break it. In fact, that same dire history might show the very path to salvation. All hope is not lost. Our wretched circumstances may be just what we need to wake us from our slumber.

The economic crash of 1893 helped galvanize the first progressive movement. The 16th, 17th and 18th amendments were passed, allowing for the income tax, direct election of senators, and women’s right to vote. Democracy and equality rose from the excesses and collapse of the Gilded Age. Since we are now in an age quite similar — hell I will go as far to call it the Second Gilded Age — maybe we should take some cues from the past. We need to demand more accountability and transparency from our local governments, change our electoral laws so a person with only 25 percent of the vote cannot become the defacto winner of a council seat, and, most of all, pressure the federal government to live up to their end of the bargain and allow programs like Social Security to be extended or radically changed. We need to leverage the power of our online and offline social networks to rally around causes and create the transformative change that has so long eluded us.

True, some of these issues are bigger than Baltimore and need bigger solutions. But many of those larger solutions can start right here at home. More democracy, accountability and participation can save Baltimore, and might just save us all.

IMAGE CREDIT. [Wikimedia Commons].
Dec 13
0

If Not You, Who?

By | #SaveBmore, Health, The Global Is Local | No Comments

This week has been an uplifting one for social and political activists and media hounds. The death of Nelson Mandela has brought together world leaders, pundits, politicians, and us common folk to celebrate the passage of a transformational leader.

I imagine that no one ever expected to see a Castro and a Bush standing together, yet the respect that people hold around the world for the life and works of Nelson Mandela brought them into the same room (or in this case, arena).

The power that is demonstrated in the aftermath of Mandela’s life — the celebration, the near universal belief in his goodness — is testament to the effect that a leader can have in engaging and motivating his or her people to do their own great things.

This week has also been a rewarding one for those in the ChangeEngine community. There has been great response to the weeklong campaign to discover what will “save” Baltimore, whether it needs to be saved, what that saving will look like to us, our neighbors, and the world, and how we as Baltimoreans might go about doing some saving ourselves.

My column here deals with issues related to public health on a macro scale with a micro focus, and so I meander from vaccination to food, from food to transport, to poverty, to pollution, to economics, and now to leadership.

One of my most psychologically taxing classes in public health school was centered around leadership. The professor brought in health care leaders and drilled us on the proper layout of a corporate leadership structure, including the role of board members and executives. I can speak from the authority of at least the upper left hand quadrant of the room that ‘bored’ members were what he had in front of him, and that the lesson was not sinking in. However, he was there to teach it, and so I was convinced that there was a reason.

Each of us has experienced a piece, a whiff of transformational leadership, perhaps on the job, in the classroom, on the playing field: A leader who transcends the role they are inhabiting and creates in each member of the team a desire to excel, as if some grand musical score is accompanying your every movement. This may happen for only a moment, or it may infuse your entire work experience (lucky you!), but the feelings and actions brought to the surface by this type of leadership allow us to be better than we are alone.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

 

 

It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.

 

 

 

 

 

How does this tie into public health, and more importantly this week, into saving Baltimore?

My sense is that Baltimore is a city that is reaching for success. The city government, neighborhood associations, the ChangeEngine bloggers, the urban gardeners, the foundations, the artists — everyone has a vision for a better Baltimore, and they each view it through their lens. Chris Merriam of Bikemore commented on the ChangeEngine Facebook page yesterday that what will save Baltimore is “Bike lanes. Lots and lots of bikelanes.” OK, so I agree with him, of course. See here, here, here, and here, oh, and here for evidence. But he (and I) are speaking from a cyclocentric point of view (although we would likely both agree that this has broad implications for health, wealth and society far beyond bikers). The Weinbergs, Stephanie Rollings Blake, Hasdai Westbrook (of ChangeEngine fame), and you all have different visions of a successful Baltimore.

Now despite the wealth inequalities, segregation, and disease burden here that I often write about, Baltimore is not South Africa. However, leadership that is empowering, vision-driven, and inclusive has the power to be transformative anywhere in the world, in any setting. I am not advocating for the ouster of the mayor; I think she’s probably doing fine. But is she a transformative leader? She has taken on a number of challenging projects that have great promise — more families in the city, a clean harbor, lower vacancy rates — but these efforts have not inspired a groundswell of concerted support and action. Perhaps that is not the role in this city for a transformational leader. “Bureaucrat” may sound like a dirty word, but bureaucracy is effective, reliable, and honest (when done correctly at least, Ms. Sheila Dixon, we’re looking at you…).

Perhaps instead the role needs to be taken up by others in that list I mentioned above, as Chris Merriam is doing in the biking community. His sheer force of will and passion drive others to work toward his cause, and to feel good about it.

Nominate a transformational leader, Baltimore (or wherever you are):

Who do you see bringing people together, challenging them to do their best and more by example? Who is using vision-driven empowerment to allow their colleagues to do more, do better, or with more grace? Who among your social or professional circles takes on that role? How can you emulate those techniques to generate even MORE positive growth in your particular arena?

Are you a champion of transformational change by leadership and example? If not you, who?

Dec 05
0

Baltimore’s Fly is Undone — The Power of Whimsy, Zippers and Hopscotch

By | Art & Social Change, Art That Counts | 22 Comments

Look closely…

 

Graham-Coreil-Allen-crosswalk-hopscotch

Photo by Graham Coreil-Allen via Flickr

… and you’ll note a variety of footprints playing the classic game of hopscotch–a worker’s boot, a businessman’s shoe, a bare footprint and, most inspired of all, a bird’s track headed in the direction of Camden Yards and M&T Bank Stadium.

Two Baltimore intersections have had their standard striped crosswalks replaced, quite literally, by street art—in this case, a game of hopscotch and a super-sized zipper. These new whimsical crosswalks, by Graham Coreil-Allen and Paul Bertholet respectively, were commissioned by the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts for the Bromo Tower A&E District.

Zipper-fly-crosswalk-BOPA-Baltimore
The hopscotch design can be found at Eutaw and Lombard streets and the zipper at Eutaw and Fayette. A third design will be added in the spring to an intersection adjacent to the Hippodrome and Everyman Theatre.

Seeing images of both crosswalks shared across social media and the surprising degree of media coverage—yes, locally, but also from NPR, Fast Company and The Atlantic—made me think back to interviewing Will Backstrom about PNC’s Transformative Art Project grants. Backstrom acknowledged that PNC’s use of metrics to evaluate those projects was limited mainly to anecdotal data and “buzz.” It’s unclear what role data and analysis had in BOPA’s choice of this project or the winning designs, but if positive buzz for the city was one hoped-for outcome, this project is an early success. It has been amazingly gratifying to read about my city as “Something Cool” and “Fun” in the national press, with nary a mention of “The Wire” (until now, whoops!).

I would love to see some on-the-ground monitoring by BOPA of pedestrian reactions to these installations. Nothing as formal as interviews or surveys, just a method of capturing the reaction folks have when they encounter the unexpected. Regardless, congrats to the artists and BOPA for a project that has already delighted residents and given the city some valuable positive press.

Nov 25
0

The Caped City

By | The Good Plan | 3 Comments

If you were anywhere on the media sphere last week, you most likely heard about Batkid, a 5 year old San Francisco boy named Miles in remission from Leukemia. Miles was granted a wish through the Make-A-Wish Foundation. His wish, as you may have gathered, was to be a superhero for the day.

But this wasn’t a ‘meet a celebrity in the isolation of a hospital room at the children’s ward’ wish; this was a full-fledged, 20,000-attendee spectacle of humanity throughout the City of San Francisco. In addition to the publicity of Wish execution, the support for his wish was what went viral. The Foundation reported that the total reach from all social media users who used the hashtag #Batkid or #SFBatkid was 1.7 billion people. That’s more than the population of the United States, India, and Mexico combined.  Essentially, nearly one quarter of the entire population in the world learned about Batkid and saw the City of San Francisco in an unbelievably positive light. The city made Miles a pint-sized hero in a pleather cape, but Miles made a hero of his city.

The humanity as demonstrated by San Francisco was a reminder that our cities can be hubs of good, if and when we choose to work together or are united by something bigger. I don’t know the details of those who flooded public plazas and sidewalks that day. I don’t know if they skipped work. I don’t know if they answered the Make-A-Wish call for volunteers My hunch is that they weren’t there for fame or recognition, or that many of them had ever given money to the Make-A-Wish foundation before. Instead, they showed their support through presence – exercising their social capital to belong and participate, rather than sit back and write a check, maintaining anonymity and removal from the cause.

Miles’ day was assisted by entities around the city: social media, newspapers, actors, mascots, costumers, government officials, the U.S. Attorney’s office, event planners, the police department, and lest we forget, the President, who made a Vine for the little guy. All of this was undeniably moving and admirable, and it made me wonder if this same outpouring of support would have been shown in Baltimore. Or Miami. Or Detroit. Or Nashville.

What is it about San Francisco that facilitated the outpouring of support exhibited by Batkid’s 20,000 onlookers. According to a variety of rankings, San Francisco was ranked the #1 city by businessweek.com in 2012. Together with Bloomberg Rankings, the center evaluated 100 of the USA’s largest cities on attributes around leisure, education, economics, crime, and the environment. San Francisco is walkable, the citizens are highly educated, and its apparently one of the happiest cities in the world, so perhaps the fact that the majority of its citizens are far removed from the worries of crime, isolation and poor health allowed them to unite in the outpouring of Batkid-based support.

Communal resources may make a difference, but personal wealth or poverty seems not to. Comparing the volunteer capacity in San Francisco with the capacity in Baltimore, and on a greater scale, the capacity of those in rich states to those in poor states, I wasn’t able to find a correlation.The three richest states based on average household income: Maryland, New Jersey, and Alaska, have 27.6%, 22.6%, and 22.6% residents volunteering respectively. The three poorest states, Mississippi, Arkansas, and West Virginia, have 25.8%, 23.2%, and 22.7% of resident volunteers respectively. Looking specifically at cities, San Francisco has 31.8%.

Based on this quick glance at the numbers, it doesn’t seem that household income plays a defining role in volunteerism. Whatever the variable might be, Miles and Make-A-Wish were able to draw themselves together through something bigger. People came out to support not because they had more money than anyone else, but perhaps because they live in a city that facilitates joy, activity, culture, and education. We have Miles to thank for saving Gotham, but it was also the City itself that saved the day.

IMAGE CREDIT. [Instagram user @phippsadelphia].
Nov 11
0

A Shot of the Past

By | The Good Plan | No Comments

As a visual learner, I’ve always struggled with remembering dates and time periods. I associate more with story or memory. Much like the buildings in our city, things mean more to me when I know where they came from or what they used to be. A rowhouse is a rowhouse, but when I learn it used to be an old funeral home, for example, it becomes unique and memorable.

In this light, I’ve thought much about the education of ‘things’ and the enhanced respect I glean for a place or an object when I know where it comes from. When you learn about the past, when something has a story, it demands understanding. A few months ago, I was asked to research the distilling process for a potential work project. In learning about the history of the drink, I uncovered a side of Baltimore to which I hadn’t given much thought. Beer and Boh are everywhere in this city, but there’s more to our city’s drinking past than the urban spring water we’ve long since outsourced to North Carolina.

In the 1700’s, Rye production was prominent in Pennsylvania and Maryland, where Scottish and Irish immigrants settled. Farmers found barley — the key grain ingredient for whiskeys — didn’t grow well in this soil, though rye and corn did. Bourbon — made up of at least 51 percent corn — and rye — made up of at least 51 percent rye grain — seemed the obvious choice for distillation, and since it was easier and more profitable to distill rather than ship surplus grain, rye found a new home.

In the 1900’s, industrialization accelerated and whiskey making was transported to the Susquehanna River Valley. Many of the Maryland whiskey makers vanished, but the concept of Baltimore Rye caught on. Small distilleries were established throughout Maryland, though a high whiskey tax during the Civil War made production unprofitable. By 1933 Maryland led the nation in rye production, producing 14 million gallons in one year.

pikesville1937-550

Sadly, the drink lost its luster. Alcohol was diverted for military use during World War II, and afterwards the public’s taste began to favor scotch, bourbon, Canadian blends, and gin. Many farmers moved to Kentucky where they helped sow the lands of bluegrass and bourbon. By 1972, Rye whiskeys were all but gone from bars. The president of Pikesville Rye laid down his last batch of Maryland rye at the Majestic Brewery in 1973 and told a Sun reporter he had enough rye to “last seven or 8 years.” By 1982 he had sold the building, the formula, and the remaining inventory, shifting production to Kentucky.

Perhaps the greatest transition, though, was not the geographical relocation of grains and distilleries, but the respect we show the spirits we ingest. In 1962, Sports Illustrated quoted “The exemplary behavior of Preakness patrons has been attributed to the fact that Maryland rye whisky, given a base of crab meat and fried chicken, is known to have the effect of steadying the gait, sharpening the vision and clearing the mind of all but the most kindly thoughts.” Read that. Read it again. This was before vomit and beer cans littered the infield and a fence was put up SO WE DIDN’T GET HIT BY A HORSE.

Once upon a time, there was class to the drink. So much of what was once a classic tradition has been replaced by excess — a capitalization on filling the gap of necessity with something that will get the job done quickly, giving no regard to the past, and fulfilling the need without a glimpse to the future. One could say the same about development. When it comes to cities, we know I’m a romantic — a romantic for identity and belonging, for finding a place that will hug you in all four seasons and welcome you home at the end of the day; a place that belongs, and where we belong. With better education — much like learning where we’re from, where our food was produced, and what our ancestry may be — we can live more present lives.

(With thanks to www.ellenjaye.com for a wealth of local knowledge.)

IMAGE CREDIT. Wikimedia Commons, Baltimoreorless.com
Oct 31
0

Vaccination Nation

By | ChangeEngine, Health, The Global Is Local | No Comments

My arm is killing me. I got my flu shot yesterday, fine, great. I am adding to the collective resistance to the flu for 2013 and 2014, go me! However at the moment, my arm hurts and I’m a little bit annoyed with my past self for allowing me to be stuck with a needle.

By contrast, one of my colleagues mentioned that her son doesn’t believe in vaccination and is going to India without getting any of the so-called “required” shots. Although I find it a little bit challenging to get behind that perspective, his perception is a useful one to consider.

The perception of interventions differs widely among different groups. For example, many younger people believe that insurance is unnecessary. Women and men have differing attitudes about what constitutes sufficient health care services. Different economic, social, and ethnic groups also demonstrate a diverse range of values and preferences — not just about health services, of course, but about trends, fashion, technology, social practices, religious beliefs, and so on.

These differences have substantial public health impact. Especially in a place like Baltimore, home of Henrietta Lacks, there is still a strong memory of the crimes of the Tuskegee syphilis study that only adds to a long history of discrimination, segregation, and well-earned mistrust of institutions. Currently, this plays out in disparities in rates of HPV vaccination among young women, influenza vaccination, and of course overall disease burden.

In my opinion, the duty to educate and promote healthy interventions falls on the institutions that have generated so much mistrust in the past — government, large hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and the like. The successful experiences of the private sector — particularly in marketing and advertising — in spreading innovation among groups that are new to the United States might be one source of inspiration. Spreading immunization adoption among a population could follow the same model as spreading smartphone adoption — both benefit the maker of the technology (money in their pocket), the recipient (resistance to disease, greater productivity), and the group as a whole (herd immunity, better educational and economic prospects).

Regardless of the rationale behind a mother’s resistance to a vaccination program, the motivation remains consistent — protecting her child from harm. This is true here and around the world. The World Health Organization has found that vaccine adoption has less to do with medical understanding of the vaccine itself than with social norms and trust of the vaccine provider. This lesson must be taken to heart when attempting to address the 2.5 million vaccine-preventable deaths in Asia and Africa every year, and also when attempting to improve influenza and HPV vaccination numbers in Baltimore. A recent uptick in polio cases in Somalia is cause for concern, but so is the fact that the first few cases of influenza have been reported in Maryland. We can all do something about the second of these, at least, by taking steps to protect ourselves as well as encouraging our friends and families to do the same.

Oct 24
0

Outlawing Spare Change

By | Homelessness, The Race to End Homelessness | One Comment

Some people are surprised to learn that I don’t usually give money to panhandlers. It isn’t because I don’t care about those experiencing homelessness. It is because 1. Working in homeless services (shockingly) doesn’t pay me enough to pull out my wallet every day, 2. I don’t carry cash nearly as often as I should, and 3. I can’t give away money to the clients at my job, even if I could afford to.

So today, when I gave a dollar bill to a guy with a sign and a battered Red Sox cap, it wasn’t because I thought it would end homelessness. It was because I am so disturbed by the legislation before Baltimore City Council this month that attempts to make panhandling illegal that I wanted to give a dollar away before it becomes too late. Also, I am really rooting for the Red Sox.

Several Baltimore laws already prohibit aggressive panhandling, but a new proposal would encourage police to put increased pressure on individuals asking for money. The bill would outlaw panhandling within ten feet of any restaurant or storefront. Anyone who has spent time in Baltimore will realize that this essentially outlaws asking for money in all of downtown. Councilwoman Rochelle “Rikki” Spector, who supports the bill, thinks these rules will put an end to what she deems the “atrocious behavior” of asking people on the street for spare change.

You’ve likely seen the cardboard signs, “Looking for Work,” or “Homeless, Anything Helps.” To me, these signs are people silently screaming for help, people who have run out of options. Asking for help is what we teach children to do at a young age, and yet Baltimore is considering taking away that right. If visitors to the downtown area don’t want to give money, they can — and should — calmly say no. Panhandling will not put an end to homelessness. It has no place in the The Journey Home, nor is it anyone’s ideal source of income. But on a day when someone is hungry, or needs bus fare, or shampoo, is it wrong to ask your neighbors for some help?

I often hear that people are afraid the person they donate to will use the money for drugs or alcohol. More than once I have accompanied an individual into a sandwich shop or a grocery store and picked up the tab (as has Change-Engine contributor Robyn Stegman), but when I give cash, I don’t ask questions about where it is going. Giving money away is my choice, but how someone spends it is not.

If “atrocious behavior” means buying something to eat, talking to strangers, or asking for help, then I’d suggest that we are all guilty — and I’d hope for more, not less, of this behavior in Baltimore.