20 homicides in 20 days
I apologize for the error in the opening sentence of Sunday's column in the print editions: Baltimore had 15 homicides in the first 10 days of the year, not 10 in the first 15, as I stated. The numbers are sometimes so numbing that a veteran columnist and experienced editors mess them up. I also regret to report that the bloody pace continues, though the rate has fallen in the last week to only one killing per day. There were two yesterday, one just before midnight, bringing the total to 20 through Jan. 20.
Activate Your Inner Citizen: Here is an e-mail from Michael Sarbanes, son of the retired U.S. Senator and executive director of the Citizens Planning and Housing Association, responding to the letter from Grant Corley, which is quoted in today's column:
Grant sounds like someone who is passionate for the city and the region, refuses to accept that things can’t be better, and doesn’t want to sit around until someone else figures it out. CPHA exists for people like that. We ask people like Grant to “activate your inner citizen,” something tangible that everyone can do, without giving up his day job or going to lots of boring meetings. We mean really going deeper on an issue that matters to them – whether it's trash or crime or drugs or transportation or housing or whatever -- to really learn why things are as they are, what are the real obstacles and what is just lack of imagination or concern, and what solutions can actually fix them.
We encourage people to stretch their comfort zone – to go places and meet people that may be new to them but are critical to building a new and better city and region. We ask people to activate their own networks –a nyone who has an email directory or an address book is a potential player in making things better.
Finally, we ask people to join CPHA and get other people to activate their inner citizen.
We work at the grassroots level and at the policy level and our basic principle for 65 years has been that informed citizens organized together can improve the quality of life for everyone in the region. We’re a volunteer and membership organization, so there are lots of ways for Grant or people like him to get involved.
If Grant wants to do someting in his own community or support a neighborhood leader who is working on issues he cares about in their community, we can help connect him. More than 30 community leaders are going through our Leadership and Community Building Fellows program now, the most intensive leadership program for grassroots volunteer neighborhood leaders in the nation.
We’re working with communities across the city to end the bizarre Baltimore practice of dumping the property of evicted tenants into the public right of way – 7000 times a year, in a way that humiliates tenants and depresses neighborhoods.
If Grant wants to do something about the drugs that are fueling so much of the despair and violence that is devastating families and neighborhoods, he can volunteer with CPHA to help advocate for adequate funding for treatment on request, or to help supportive housing providers provide a quality drug-free place to live for people in recovery.
If he wants to improve the transit system so that people can get to jobs or go have fun without wasting hours of time everyday, he can work with CPHA to improve the current system – like our rider survey of on-time performance last spring -- and implement the Regional Rail Plan, which could be the most important infrastructure investment in the city’s future in a generation.
If he wants to help Baltimore reverse a legacy of neighborhood disinvestments and devastating concentration of poverty, he can work with CPHA to implement housing policies in the city and the region that will create stable mixed-income communities that are onramps to mainstream opportunity for people at all income levels.
And if there are other issues he cares about, CPHA has been a gathering place for citizens who want to make a difference for over six decades.
For too long, Grant's kind of passion has been allowed to turn into a resigned voyeurism or soured frustration. That’s got to change. If he wants to be an active part of the solution, I hope you’ll give him lots of places to plug in to make a difference. I hope contacting CPHA is one of his first calls.
