In Praise of John Lewis, A Case Study in Real Courage

Yesterday’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down Section 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act had the unintended consequence of putting Congressman John Lewis in front of the nation’s news cameras last evening.  Lewis was everywhere, responding to questions about the Court’s 5-4 vote to eliminate the “pre-clearance” requirement for states that want to change their election laws.

This post is not about the Court or its decision yesterday.  Readers can make up their own minds.  But, what does come to mind today in light of recent news accounts about NSA leaker Edward Snowden is that we’ve lost our way in recent weeks over who we consider to be courageous and worthy of national hero status.  When we’re confronted, as we were last night, with the grainy black-and-white memories of a young John Lewis during the 1961 Freedom Rides, the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the “Bloody Sunday” showdown at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge (March 7, 1965), one can’t help pondering how we’ve redefined courage in this soft-news, social-media world of ours.

When Lewis and others made the courageous decision to stand up to segregation in the 1960s, they did so with the full understanding that there would be consequences for their social disobedience.  There were police dogs, and fire hoses, and handcuffs awaiting them at every turn.  Lewis himself was arrested 40 times in the 1960s.

Compare this with Snowden and his current efforts to seek asylum in Cuba or Ecuador. 

Moral courage requires the willingness to pay the piper when your actions are unpopular or even illegal under current law.  Lewis always displayed this kind of courage in fighting for what he believes in.  It’s why hearing some describe the fleeing Snowden as courageous leaves a lot to be desired.

Here’s hoping that yesterday’s news will inspire Americans from all points of view to revisit the sacrifices made by Lewis and others to preserve and protect our most precious civic right: the right to vote.

Open Door Baltimore / The Blog | June 26, 2013 at 5:30 pm | Categories: In the Community | URL: http://wp.me/p24mkE-fO

Oh, My God!

This is a particularly depressing morning in Baltimore, Maryland. And that’s really saying something because there are lots of mornings I’d rather be anywhere but Baltimore. This city will rip your guts out. It will test every ounce of your commitment. It will make you wish you’d never heard of neighborhoods like Milton-Montford, Madison-Eastend, Oliver, and McElderry Park. You’re drawn in by the strength of the people, by the potential of the children, and by your intuitive sense that life in America shouldn’t look like this. There is debilitating poverty everywhere you turn. Drug dealers, drug users, drug addicts, drug programs, and drug courts always looming in the background. And, ah yes, the violence. The free market’s dark, evil cousin.

Drug money rules the kingdom — it’s the dirty little secret that no one in authority wants to address. Forty years into Nixon’s “war on drugs,” our only answer is to lock people up, hold them, release them, and then re-arrest them. We place them in jails run by the same gangs that own the streets. We withhold GED classes, job readiness training, and parenting classes unless they’re serving a five-year-or-more sentence. We make it virtually impossible for them to stay in touch with their children and significant others while they’re behind bars even though we know 97% of Marylanders in jail are eventually coming home. Sheer madness. Utter stupidity.

Parenthetical comment: Sure, let’s fix Syria now that we’ve cleaned up America’s inner city streets. Who better than us to solve urban chaos in countries halfway across the globe?

Since last Friday (June 21), 20 people have been shot in Baltimore, MD. Eight killed. Two women and six men. In the Baltimore Sun this morning (by Carrie Wells), city officials are once again revealing their sense of hopelessness and despair, not to mention their own little slice of cynicism. The police spokesperson is quoted as saying, “This is a little bit of a spike in terms of the weekend, but all in all, we’re pretty satisfied with the way the city is headed.” He goes on, “These incidents are going to happen, so we want to set realistic expectations.”

REALLY? THIS is the response from the police department that we’re entrusting with public safety? What part of 20 shootings and 8 deaths is satisfactory? How many shootings and deaths does it take to constitute a big spike?

But, give the police credit, at least they’re talking. The Sun reports that despite “multiple requests for comment on Sunday on the shootings,” the Mayor could not be reached.

Look, we get it. This is hard stuff. Drugs and murder on America’s poorest streets are par for the course. What do we really expect the Mayor to say, that she has a solution, that we know what to do? That’s asking a lot. But there is a point in all of this trauma, and it’s this: it’s time for Baltimore AND Maryland elected officials to start screaming at the top of their lungs. It’s TIME for our leaders to lead. This ISN’T about prayer walks and social services and neighborhood policing and small grants to run after-schools programs.

THIS IS ABOUT JOBS! Real jobs with 40 hours of work and livable wages. Until Baltimore and Annapolis grab Washington and Wall Street by the throat and make them squeal, we’re going to keep burying young men killed on the hot streets of Baltimore fighting over drug money.

Oh, my God. It’s time for real leaders to really lead.

In Search of the War on Poverty, Part 1

The Missing Front

Since 2006, Open Door Baltimore has been searching for the front lines in America’s war on poverty.

If ever an organization was wired to lead from the trenches, it is this small innovative nonprofit from the tough streets of East Baltimore. Its DNA is perfect. Encoded in its vision and leadership are the chromosomes of faith, family, and free enterprise. All equal partners, none more important than the other.

But where are the front lines? Where is the fight being waged?

Eight years in, there is no front in sight. Like the war in Vietnam, there is no advancing edge, only scattered base camps from which insurgencies start, sputter, and then retreat for another day. There is no central controlling authority. No national or local strategy. At best, there are a handful of disconnected flanks that seldom move in the same direction or aspire to the same goal.

America’s poverty problem is getting worse each year, not because the poor cannot be helped but because the non-poor are erratic, disconnected, and generally non-cooperative in their efforts. There is a lack of will and courage on the part of our leaders. There is a corresponding preoccupation with instant gratification and cultural silliness on the part of the masses that prevents them from being led on issues of profound national importance. There is a lack of basic understanding about the horrific consequences of unabated intergenerational poverty. There is a pervasive ignorance on the part of most Americans about the causes of poverty and the total costs of its related social ills. And, there is a cavalier aloofness among many prosperous Americans about the “other America” that is surreptitiously sowing the seeds of decline for a great nation.

On March 3, 2013, the Baltimore Sun reported on the city government’s decision to close down a homeless encampment near the Jones Falls Expressway, a major commuter artery into the downtown business district. Posted with the story were scores of ill-conceived comments from online readers about the embarrassment of homelessness at the entrance to a great American city and the personal failure of low-order people who had fallen into homelessness. Sadly, the opportunity to engage in reflective thinking and purposeful analysis was undermined by a growing twenty-first-century instinct to engage in nanosecond exchanges without context or reason. More tragically, in a city of 488 church buildings and 24 synagogues, solutions for Baltimore’s 4,000 nightly homeless should have been embraced long ago.

In October 1965, at the high water mark of the American civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated that “what man has torn down, he can rebuild.” King was addressing a buoyant nation that had just ended 68 years of segregation and Jim Crow while also giving the vote to an entire race of previously disenfranchised people. He was anticipating a country that would soon see the greatest five-year decline in poverty in its history. This was an America of “can-do” optimism, of the pending moonshot, and of a blossoming suburbia. An America fueled by lofty goals and expansive dreams nurtured by the shared experience of two world wars, a Great Depression, and a Cold War threat that kept other national differences in check. King and others could not have envisioned a twenty-first-century America in which the nation’s unity and purpose would be so fragmented and diluted by fifty years of missed opportunities. King’s hopes for a renewed nation that would build upon the legislative achievements of 1964 and 1965 haplessly slipped into the mist of history when unforeseen leaders and events redirected the course of the nation.

Past as Prologue

In 1958, in the midst of a booming post-Great Depression, post-World War Two, and post-Korean War economy, nearly one in four Americans (22.4%) lived in poverty. In what is understood to be the most prosperous American decade of the twentieth century, the United States was incapable of lifting a quarter of its citizens out of poverty.

Thanks in large measure to the strong wartime economy of the 1960’s and unprecedented government involvement in poverty programming during the Lyndon Johnson Administration (1963-1969) and Richard Nixon Administration (1969-1974), the U.S. poverty rate reached a record low of 11.1% in 1973.

Due to high inflation, high interest rates, worldwide oil market price spikes, and the changing political landscape of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, the U.S. poverty rate climbed to 15.2% in 1983 where it has remained largely unchanged for the past thirty years.

In 2013, 49 million people live in poverty, roughly 15.2% of the nation, one in every seven Americans. Included in this human catastrophe are 16.2 million children under the age of 18. Across the board, the poverty numbers look like this:

 27.4% of African-Americans
 26.6% of Hispanic-Americans
 12.1% of Asian-Americans
 9.9% of non-Hispanic whites
 22.% of all children under the age of 18
 38.2% of African-American children
 35.0% of Hispanic-American children
 13.6% of Asian-American children
 12.4% of non-Hispanic white children
 31.6% of households headed by single women
 15.8% of households headed by single men.

The Greater Good

In its search for the front lines of a contemporary war on poverty, Open Door Baltimore has always looked to the past for valuable lessons and to the future for grand possibilities. It is the present where so much is inexplicably broken and dysfunctional. Throughout its first decade, Open Door Baltimore has worked to create an organizational culture where people from all walks of life can come together to make a difference in the fight against poverty. It has always been the company goal to pursue “the greater good” in partnership with private citizens, businesses, government agencies, other nonprofits and the faith community.

From the beginning, the Open Door Baltimore message has never wavered:

The status quo of entrenched intergenerational poverty can no longer be acceptable in the greatest and most prosperous nation on earth. Whatever the causes of the poverty and whomever the impoverished, poverty passed down from grandfather to father and father to son is antithetical to the American dream, morally indefensible, and counter to the best interests of all Americans.

The Empty Shell

Located in historic East Baltimore seven blocks northeast of Johns Hopkins Hospital, Open Door Baltimore has made the calculated decision to dig in and play for the long haul. Such are the gritty decisions of clear-eyed, street-level practitioners who value relationships over metrics, insight over spreadsheets, and hard-won progress over easy platitudes. Open Door Baltimore’s inclination to stare down the ugly truths of Baltimore is not always affirmed by elected officials and grant makers who hold disproportionate sway in the city’s minimalist poverty initiatives but it must be the deoxyribonucleic acid for any organization that is serious about changing the poverty discussion in the city.

One thing seems certain: as long as Baltimore’s leaders are content to stay hold up inside their “silos” where the name of the game is the perpetuation of their particular argument and angle, there can be no comprehensive and sustainable response to the city’s growing poverty problem. What was once applied by President George W. Bush to America’s educational deficiencies is equally applicable to Baltimore’s economic and workforce development industries. That is to say, one of the major causes of persistent unemployment and underemployment among the city’s disadvantaged is “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Too often, Baltimore employment programs train people for jobs that do not actually exist. This occurs for two reasons: (1) such programs are funded and staffed to perform this training and so the show must go on; and, (2) city leaders have no viable plan in motion to recruit good-paying, self-sustaining jobs to the poor sections of the city.

Until the jobs arrive, what are we training for? Asked another way, how many training sessions must there be on the topic of wearing a belt and a clean shirt to an interview? “Soft-skills” training is certainly important to the development of a new job readiness client but what is far more important to the success of the city is job training for living-wage jobs that actually exist, or are on their way, because a light manufacturing company from another state or country has been recruited to bring its 250 jobs to East or West Baltimore.

Is it any wonder that the city’s job readiness programs have so little appeal to the young men on the corners? The very target for most of the solutions needed in the city is hardly on the radar screen. And, yet, through their own entrepreneurial, albeit illicit activities, they have demonstrated to anyone who knows the streets that their time and energy is worth far more than a nine-dollar-an-hour job with no benefits emptying garbage cans or sweeping floors. This is the bull’s eye on the target. The success of the city is tied to jobs: jobs with living wages, career arcs, and personal dignity.

Much to its own peril, Open Door Baltimore has never taken the easy course, never played for the short gain, and never lost sight of the grim realities of the streets. In the poorest neighborhoods of Baltimore where economic necessity breeds violence and social chaos, there are no quick fixes and no simple answers, no matter how badly a funder, bureaucrat or stakeholder wants to make it so. To insist upon “instant rice” outcomes in neighborhoods saturated in intergenerational poverty is to badly misinterpret the unmistakable evidence of individual despair and collective isolation that has settled upon the children and grandchildren of Baltimore’s chronically unemployed and socially quarantined citizens.

To Be Continued . . .

Copyright © Open Door Baltimore 2012

From Sandy Hook to Christmas Peace

After Sandy Hook it just didn’t seem like Christmas could ever be the same this year. In a nation where our most precious little ones are no longer safe in our best school houses, holiday celebrations seem somehow inconsequential and a bit out of place.

And then, last Friday night occurred, and the beauty of Christmas was once again brought back into perfect focus.

On December 21 two Baltimore business owners and highly committed city “stakeholders” made it their business to bring Christmas love and joy to 75 needy children. Magically, the sadness of Sandy Hook faded for a few hours. A perfectly orchestrated Christmas dinner party for kids facing homelessness, poverty, and violence on a daily basis reminded all of us how simple efforts can make a huge difference in the lives of others.

Mark and Sherron Hunter (Mark serves on the Board of Directors of Open Door Baltimore) engaged The Museum Restaurant (924 North Charles Street; formerly the Brass Elephant), their friends, business contacts, nonprofit associates, and church partners to provide each child with a new winter coat, hat, gloves, and gift cards in the true spirit of Christmas. It was a truly amazing celebration of hope and joy.

Open Door Baltimore was proud to play a small role in the event and would like to thank our good friend Tirzah Turner at Greenridge Baptist Church in Montgomery County for coordinating $2,000 in gift cards for our many Christmas outreach efforts.

Yes, there is a lot to temper our world view this Christmas season, but there is so much more to celebrate. At Open Door Baltimore, we celebrate people like Mark and Sherron and Tirzah. Thanks for keeping your eye on the ball. Thanks for reminding us that life goes on and there is always new work to be done. Thanks for living out the true meaning of Christmas in your daily lives.

Merry Christmas from your friends at Open Door Baltimore.

The Gift of a Contributory Life

This has been a fascinating period for Open Door Baltimore.  So many story lines.  So many different types of people.  And, yet, one overarching theme.

For those who may not know, Open Door Baltimore has never followed the customary path toward organizational growth and development.  We’ve never had the advantage of wealthy benefactors that so many organizations depend on during their startup stage.  We’ve never received any government money.  And, we’ve never been awarded a large community grant.  We have, for seven years, sustained our work through the generosity of individuals, businesses, and congregations.

At times, we’ve experienced moments of incredible economic stress.  Daily, we dream of the time when our funding matches the need for our work.  But, here we sit, a strong and vital band of brothers (and sisters) who unflinchingly believe in a shared vision of our essentialness to the poor and disenfranchised of Baltimore, Maryland.

As we take our story into the offices, church basements and community halls of the city and suburbs, we consistently receive a positive response to our funding story.  It’s as if we’ve tapped into a deep, latent desire among many Americans to be part of a solution that is unencumbered by third-party control and artificial limitations.  Perhaps it’s the underdog thing.  Perhaps it’s a collective pushback on all that ails our society — our rancorous partisanship, our inability to resolve important civic disputes, our lack of shared national purpose.  Who really knows?  But, there is clearly something about an inner city anti-poverty initiative defying all the odds to serve the poorest of the poor that is capturing the imagination of an extremely diverse audience.

Funding is only a small part of our story.  What really draws people to Open Door Baltimore is the opportunity to work with people of different points of view on issues that matter to all of us.  Over time, this welcoming DNA has created a laboratory for action and change that is significantly benefiting the lives of poor people who have nowhere else to turn.

For example:

Two weeks ago, Jaclyn Kelly, a Keller Williams realtor from Severna Park stepped up to help Open Door Baltimore strengthen the Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) at one of our school partners, William Paca Elementary in McElderry Park.  During the current school year, Jaclyn and her friends at KW will be offering leadership development and capacity-building training to help grow the PTO, support the Principal and faculty, and ultimately improve the learning experience of 600 inner city children.

That same week, John Hallis from the KW office in Ellicott City confirmed plans for Open Door Baltimore to present its work to the national Keller Williams sales convention in Dallas, Texas in February 2013.

This past week, University of Maryland Law School student Saba Pervaiz provided one of Open Door Baltimore’s long-time clients with exceptional pro bono legal assistance.  This client, for lack of a lawyer and $250 in bail money, spent 26 days behind bars when he could have been out rebuilding his life.  Such are the lives of the truly poor.  (Yes, Open Door Baltimore provided the bail money.)

On Monday of this week, board member Libby Moreton, a retired senior vice president from Citigroup, utilized her extensive project management experience to help deliver a very successful charity golf tournament for Open Door Baltimore.  Because of her steadfast leadership, the tournament yielded a financial return to the organization 5 times greater than a year ago.

On Wednesday, Pastor Marshall Prentice of Zion Baptist Church and Pastor Harlie Wilson of Israel Baptist Church, hosted Open Door Baltimore at a community luncheon in East Baltimore in support of our construction training program for young adults.  These outstanding pastors have committed to help us raise scholarship money for this vital program.

Later in the week, a leadership team consisting of  Del Morgan from Lamplight Artists, Bill Archer and Bob Simpson from the Baptist Convention of Maryland and Delaware, and Pastor Joel Kurz from the Garden Church in West Baltimore, began comprehensive planning and fundraising for two performing arts camps for 70 inner city children in July 2013.

Finally, last evening, community activist Mark Hunter hosted Open Door Baltimore at a major community event in which many significant contacts were made with civic and business leaders who are well-positioned to help the organization as it moves forward.

As mentioned at the top, this has been a period of many story lines at Open Door Baltimore.  It’s what we’ve always wanted to happen.  But it doesn’t just happen.

You have to build an organization from the ground up that values people, seeks diverse points of view, is willing to play well with others, and is willing to learn from its past mistakes.  Most importantly, you need a stubborn group of people who understand that American poverty is never going to be cured without all of America chipping in.  The problem is simply too massive for a slender sector of American life to fix on its own.  It requires input from all of us.

In the new HBO documentary, Ethel, one of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s sons describes his parents’ strong commitment to public service and their consistent instruction to all eleven of their children to serve their country by helping their fellow man.  In summarizing his thoughts, the son shared that his parents believed in the “gift of a contributory life.”  Well, we see contributory lives every day in our work as countless Marylanders from all walks of life make the decision to make a difference in the world around them.  It’s what America needs.  It’s what America does.

Thanks to all the “life contributors.”  wbs.

A Small Dose of Hope

I spent two hours on Saturday afternoon with two young law students at the University of Maryland School of Law in downtown Baltimore.  What was supposed to be a day for cutting grass and college football quickly turned into an emergency meeting about one of our clients who is once again in trouble with the law.

As part of their legal training, these two impressive young attorneys, women in their mid 20’s, have been assigned the case of a 4o-year-old man we have been working with since 2009.  It was a remarkable discussion for many reasons but mostly because these two women are light years ahead of so many people I interact with on issues of poverty and criminal justice.

When you’re poor in America and you cross swords with the law, you usually don’t have the benefit of private counsel.   Your best option is almost always a public defender who is drowning in cases or a free legal clinic.  Depending on the day, this process can be hit or miss.  Sometimes the court-appointed attorney has adequate time to prepare a case and sometimes he doesn’t.  It’s just the way things are in our overloaded criminal justice system.

What was refreshing today was how connected these two young attorneys are to the realities of the streets.  They understand that our societal “systems” are not very well connected, that Baltimore is a city full of stand-alone “silos” in which lawyers and judges and therapists and social workers are seldom able to see the full picture of a defendant’s life.  They understand that clients often get lost in the gap and that justice can easily become a moving target.

While it was sad to meet about a client in jeopardy, it was refreshing and inspiring to run into two such insightful young law students.  Someone at UM Law is doing something right.

For me, it was a small dose of hope about tomorrow’s criminal justice system.  wbs.

Baltimore needs to think holistic change when it comes to affordable housing

Today’s Baltimore Sun has a fascinating front page story about the coming crisis in community development funding in Baltimore and across the country.  Jamie Smith Hopkins reports that Baltimore received “30 percent less this year” in government funding for affordable housing and that “funding is down by nearly half” over the past decade.

Concerned citizens, including Baltimore Housing Commissioner Paul Graziano, Columbia-based Enterprise Foundation executive Peter Lawrence, Charles Duff of Jubilee Baltimore, and Sean Closkey of Philadelphia-based TRF Development Partners, are all cited lamenting the economic circumstances that have “pummeled the value of tax credits that many affordable-housing projects rely on.”

The expertise and leadership of these individuals are not in question.  They are truly some of America’s best and brightest.  They have devoted years of their lives to changing the housing landscape in impoverished Baltimore.

The problem is this:  even on their best days when their efforts were well-funded and fully supported by the city, they were only dealing with a piece of the current urban crisis.  No one here is arguing against affordable housing initiatives because changing the housing stock of poor neighborhoods is fundamental to the overall process of urban renewal.

But today’s Sun story does call into the open other critical issues that have not been adequately addressed by the city over the past decade.  To those of us who live and work in these redevelopment zones, it has always been clear that rehabbing and building sparkling new houses in the middle of severely impoverished neighborhoods has not been all its cracked up to be.   Those in the know are fully aware of the endless controversies that have been sparked in the community by the lack of employment opportunities connected to this development.  Drive through these rehabbing sectors in the middle of the day and you will be overwhelmed by the number of men and women who are unemployed and left to wonder how they could ever afford to move into a beautiful new home.  The frustration, even rage, that this discordant picture creates is palpable on the streets of East Baltimore.

No one person or group is to blame.  We’re all to blame.

While the splendid new houses have gone up on the lucky few blocks across the city, we have let the garden of human capital go unwatered and unfertilized in these neighborhoods for a generation.  What passes for “job readiness” training and “workforce development” in these communities is in large measure wholly inadequate and nationally shameful.  For those in the know, the truth is that the business of matching unemployed people with life-sustaining jobs is generally a charade in Baltimore.

There is an underlying reason for this losing gamesmanship:  for too long now, Baltimore’s experts and social entrepreneurs have overwhelmingly bought into the mythology of large-scale, conveyor-belt “metrics.”  The more the merrier is the ruling wisdom of this kingdom.  “Tell us you’ve helped 500 people land minimum wage jobs this year and we’ll make it possible for you to do it again next year.”

The problem is that most of the unemployed in these neighborhoods are not the short-term victims of a recent national economic downturn.  They’re not waiting for a callback from the factory.  They were never part of that economy!

These are people in need of “transformational metrics,” a new way of thinking that says we believe in you . . . we see your vast human potential . . . and we’re willing to do the necessary hard work for as long as it takes to help you turn your lives around and eventually jump into the mainstream of the American dream.  It’s all of us saying collectively, we think it’s important to the nation to invest in the people who live near the pretty new houses so that some day they can afford the houses without a tax credit underwriting their economic shortcomings.

If and when community development rebounds in Baltimore, it needs to carry with it a quid pro quo commitment that in exchange for our tax dollars and tax deductible dollars, community housing developers will also develop factories and micro-businesses and trade learning centers in the middle of these neighborhoods at the same time the houses are being rehabbed.  A holistic response that goes beyond the current lip service of employment strategies and social programming.

One thing is certain:  conveyor-belt, minimum-wage metrics will never cure what ails East Baltimore.  Neither will empty new rehabs that no one in the community can afford to buy without a subsidy.  09/20/12 wbs.

One of Those Days

We like to think we’re good at keeping our eye on the ball no matter where it bounces.  On days like today when so many aspects of our work came into play in one single workshift, we think it’s important to remind ourselves that the lives we touch in East Baltimore are connected to economic forces that are far beyond our ability to control.  (At least for the time being.)

In today’s USA Today, professor Richard Florida of the University of Toronto and New York University writes in his op-ed, “A Class-Ridden America,” that the post-industrial America of 2012 is divided into three distinct classes of workers:

• A blue collar “working class” of 26 million people, about 20.5% of the workforce.  Professor Florida contends that this class of people was roughly 50% of the workforce in the 1950s.
• A “service class” of 60 million people.  At 47%, Florida says this is the largest and worst-paid class of American workers (think food preparers, janitors, child care providers, nursing home aides, construction site “demolition/deconstruction” workers, etc.).
• A “creative class” of 40 million people.  Though only one-third of the 2012 workforce, the creative class accounts for 50% of the nation’s salaries and wages and controls nearly 70% of the discretionary income.

As if he was writing just for us, Mr. Florida’s essay provides valuable texture and clarity to the discussions that dominated our morning and afternoon.  In the early morning, we spoke to a young man in need of a job, but more importantly, a larger vision for his life than selling crack cocaine in West Baltimore.  He wandered over to the eastside because his attorney told him we could be of help.  While his story is all too familiar to us, it was nonetheless disturbing because this is a young man who met his father for the first time at the age of 20 when he joined him in the federal prison in Cumberland, MD.  How do you make sense of this kind of father and son story?  Where do you draw the line between personal responsibility and larger societal failures?  There’s just no escaping the sheer madness of two generations of males ending up in the same prison instead of the same manufacturing plant.  There was a time not too long ago when the rite of passage for sons in Baltimore was to follow in their father’s footsteps to the jobs that gave their dads a decent living, a sense of self-worth, and a small piece of the American dream.  We can’t help but see the linkage between the loss of solid working class jobs and a family system in West Baltimore that sees no other choice but to troll the “corner” for income.  It’s all so complicated but there are plenty of issues here that deserve a wider discussion by all of us.

During lunchtime, thanks to the gracious hosting of Pastor Marshall Prentice of Zion Baptist Church on North Caroline Street, we had the opportunity to present Open Door Baltimore to a roomful of Baltimore pastors who see the connection between their Sunday morning sermons and the people on the streets who struggle with unemployment, under-employment and poverty.  These are the kind of clergy that America desperately needs.  They need to be heard.  They need to be at the tables of influence.  Our discussion centered on our Rebuild Program and its potential to help young adults find family-sustaining work.  We talked about breaking the cycle of inter-generational poverty.  We talked about providing a way for dads to show their sons how to do an honest day’s work in a job that doesn’t lead to arrest, incarceration and more poverty.  More importantly, we talked about partnership and moving forward together on a wide range of issues that can strengthen churches and the communities they serve.

Professor Florida’s essay really isn’t new information.  We already knew the employment numbers were bad because we see the unemployed in droves on the streets of Baltimore every day.  We know how scarce good-paying jobs are for the 86 million workers who aren’t blessed to be members of the “creative” class.  It’s why the “drug game” in places like East Baltimore is so compelling for the thousands of young men whose fathers never held legitimate jobs.  It’s the economy they can see and connect with.  It’s what’s in front of them every stinking hour of the day.  It becomes a cycle.  It becomes a pattern.  Call it what you want, it’s devouring impoverished Baltimore man by man, block by block, year by year.  For the pastors in the room today, they didn’t need an op-ed to tell them that the city is in full-blown crisis.  They’re already manning their posts.  Still, it is was peculiarly comforting to read at the end of the day that our challenges in Baltimore are part of a much larger national problem.   Go figure.

It was just one of those days.

Labor Day is a Day for Reflection and Action

Today is America’s 118th Labor Day.

118th Labor Day

Depending on what you do for a living, Labor Day may or may not have a strong emotional meaning for you.  For those Americans who still earn their bread and butter by the “sweat of their brow,” a federal holiday celebrating backbreaking work is a nice reminder that they matter to the nation.

For many laboring workers who do America’s dirty work for low wages, it isn’t always clear that everyone appreciates their service.  Ever been to dinner with a well-heeled cheapskate who nickels and dimes a waitress over a tip?  Ever observed how many middle- and upper-income people don’t know how to speak to workers who pick up trash, wash cars, load groceries, sweep streets, stock shelves, or change hotel sheets for a living?

While it is now the rage of the chattering class to describe America as a nation of two-percenters and 98-percenters, it seems more likely that what we’ve really become in recent decades is a nation divided by the work we do.  This is because the work we do is so unevenly compensated by our modern economy — based more on the “profitability” of a worker than the degree of difficulty and effort in performing his or her work tasks.  Given a choice between the typical working day of a trash collector or a hedge fund manager, few would choose the physicality and paycheck of the man who jumps off the truck in the rain and snow.  And, yet, for most of us, the public health benefit produced by the efforts of the sanitation worker has infinitely more redeeming social value than the outcomes of the financier who moves digital money around the globe in pursuit of the next minute’s highest earning.

At the apex of the “union movement” in the 1940s, 34% of American workers considered Labor Day a big deal.  These were the men and women who worked the late shift at Bethlehem Steel at Sparrow’s Point and the early morning assembly line at General Motors on Broening Highway.  Those jobs are gone now.  In 2012 America, with only 7% of private sector workers represented by a union, it’s safe to say that for most of us, the true significance of Labor Day has been greatly diminished.

Still, Labor Day is a day for reflection and action.  It’s a time to consider basic fairness (even morality) in our payscales and work practices.  It’s a day to ask the Lincolnian question “whether a nation can long endure” when thousands of good-paying jobs continue to leave its shores each year, and in turn, suppress wages and job creation at home.  According to economist Nina Easton of Fortune Magazine (9/3/12), 46 corporate headquarters left the U.S. in the past decade, taking with them trillions of dollars and thousands of jobs.  The U.S. Federal Reserve estimates that the federal government is currently losing $100 billion annually in tax revenue because of offshored American corporations.  The Government Accounting Office reports that 83 of America’s largest 100 publically-traded companies now have subsidiaries in “tax havens” such as the Caymen Islands, otherwise known as “financial privacy jurisdictions.”

This is not some theoretical macro-global discussion for Open Door Baltimore.

Every day we work with the poor and the working poor who are desperately trying to secure their little piece of the American dream.  Just last week, we learned of an acute economic crisis faced by a young father we admire who has been in our Rebuild Program for over three years.  Employed at the same construction job since Spring 2011, his current pay rate of well under $11 an hour has put him in a position where his current rent in an impoverished East Baltimore neighborhood is now costing him 52% of his gross monthly earnings.  Despite working 40+ hours a week while also pursuing advanced technical training to improve his job skills, this young man has not received a one-cent pay increase since starting this job.  Because he has a criminal record to overcome, he is uneasy about insisting on a pay raise that by all standards of fairness, he has earned. 

A recent Pew Research Center study featured in USA Today (8/23/12) grabbed a lot of people’s attention with this conclusion:  “The 2000’s was the first decade since World War II when the middle class saw income and wealth drop.”  

Well, here’s another news flash:  for the poor and working poor in America’s inner cities, the situation is even worse.  Until the U.S. Congress and the President of the United States decide to tackle the tough challenges of real tax reform, until America’s mayors and city councils begin to recruit “living wage” employers back to the cities, until American voters begin to see the direct connection between high corporate tax rates (35%) and joblessness at home, and until America’s clergy and civic leaders begin to take up the moral cause of full employment, nothing is going to change.  Nothing. 

Labor Day only has meaning when Americans from all walks of life, from both political parties, from all economic corners, respect the intrinsic value of American labor and laborers.

Happy Labor Day.

A Big Day for Seven Young Men

Graduation day for 7 young men

On Saturday August 18, with nearly 70 friends and family members in attendance, seven young men from East Baltimore graduated from the Open Door Baltimore “Core Curriculum” construction training program that was held at Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School (MERVO) on ten Saturdays this summer.  The training, part of the nationally-recognized Contren Learning Series of the National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER), provided each young man with 80 classroom hours in the following entry-level construction skills:  Basic Safety, Introduction to Construction Math, Introduction to Hand Tools, Introduction to Power Tools, Introduction to Construction Drawings, Basic Rigging, Basic Communication Skills, Basic Employability Skills and Introduction to Materials Handling.

Our grads with City Council liaison Thomas Phillips

As a result of this training, these seven young men are now eligible to receive advanced NCCER training in carpentry, electrical, HVAC and plumbing.  As part of our Individual Life Plan (ILP) initiative, Open Door Baltimore is also providing these young men with year-round training in critical life skills and business entrepreneurship.  Our goal is to create hundreds of highly-motivated young adults who can change the business landscape and economic climate of impoverished Baltimore.

Special guests:  We were thrilled to have in attendance 12th District Councilman Carl Stokes, Assistant Principal (MERVO) Muriel Cole-Webber, NCCER instructor Stephen Holloway, community activists Meldon Dickens and Mark Hunter, and Thomas Phillips (see picture above), the Community Liaison for Council President Jack Young.  A special thanks to Baltimore City Public School System executive, Michael Thomas, who was hugely instrumental in helping put this partnership together.

Cool footnote to this story:  When a Baltimore developer reneged on a 5-month commitment to underwrite the cost of this training in the 11th hour, Open Door Baltimore donors heroicly stepped up in one week’s time and raised the nearly $12,000 it cost to make this dream a reality.  Thank you donors and supporters for being people of vision, urgency and character!  And, a big congratulations to our successful young men:  Kevin Branch, Rob Cowling, Damien Lee, James Owens, Jamal Rogers, Brandon Ross, Eddie Tyler and Jamaal Williams (OSHA-10 module only).