MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR Volume 1 Number 1
August 2017
PUBLISHER Rosalind J. Harris
GENERAL MANAGER Lawrence A. James MANAGING EDITOR Tiffany C. Ginyard
CONTRIBUTING COPY EDITOR Laurence C. Washington FILM CRITIC BlackFlix.Com
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS James Michael Brodie Tiffany Christy Angela Gustus Shauna K. Henson Eric Jackson, Jr. Sean Yoes ART DIRECTOR Bee Harris
GRAPHIC DESIGNER Jody Gilbert Kolor Graphix
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Melovy Melvin
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Tiffany Christy
The Baltimore Urban Spectrum is a monthly online publication dedicated to spreading the news about people of color in and around the city of Baltimore. Contents of the Baltimore Urban Spectrum are copyright 2017 by Bizzy Bee Enterprise. No portion may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher. The Baltimore Urban Spectrum welcomes all letters, but reserves the right to edit for space, libelous material, grammar, and length. All letters must include name, address, and phone number. We will withhold author’s name on request. Unsolicited articles are accepted without guarantee of publication or payment. Write to the Baltimore Urban Spectrum c/o Denver Urban Spectrum at P.O. Box 31001, Aurora, CO 80041. For advertising, subscriptions, or other information, call 303-292-6446 or fax 303-292-6543 or visit the Web site at www.denverurbanspectrum.com.
When Rosalind “Bee”
Harris contacted me to share with me her dream of expanding her already 30year-old, award-winning publication to a market in Baltimore, it was like a dream come true. When she told me the Urban Spectrum franchise would be honoring the mayors in our respective cities this month, I was initially overwhelmed by the challenge before me. In all my years in journalism, I’d never been to City Hall. As the managing editor of The Afro-American Newspapers, the mothership of Black media in Baltimore, I traveled to Denver, Colorado under the tutelage of the late Black press pioneer George Curry to cover the historic election of (former) President Barack Obama, but I’d never met the mayor of my own city. I was nervous, but ready. To keep it 100: I didn’t sit down with Mayor Catherine Pugh this week as the editor of the new Baltimore Urban Spectrum magazine. I sat down with Mayor Pugh as a former Baltimore City Public School student, a former Baltimore City Public School secondary English teacher, a mother, an adoptive parent, youth advocate, grassroots organizer and fellow alum, who knows Baltimore’s story so intimately. I spoke from the place of someone who has vicariously experienced the trauma of gang violence, drug addiction, illiteracy, mass incarceration, and poverty in an overcrowded classroom in a high school up Edmondson Village where I grew up. And honestly, my intentions were to put politics aside for a second, and have a candid conversation with Ms. Catherine E. Pugh about how she plans to move Baltimore forward on a community level. When I sat down with the mayor, I found myself in the presence of a relatable, approachable, down-to-earth, nononsense elder of the community. And in an atmosphere like that, our conversation flowed like living water from one village keeper to another.
“And how are the children?”
So I shared with her the premise of an article I read a few years back at a professional development workshop for teachers, entitled “And How Are the Children?” by Patrick O’Neill. And the premise is By Tiffany C. Ginyard this: When the priorities of Editor the community to protect Baltimore Urban Spectrum the young are in their proper place, peace and safety prevail. Like O’Neill, “I wonder if we heard that question and passed it along to each other a dozen times a day, if it would begin to make a difference in the reality of how children are thought of or cared about in our own country. “I wonder if every adult among us, parent and non-parent alike, felt an equal weight for the daily care and protection of all the children in our community... I wonder if we could truly say without any hesitation, “The children are well, yes, all the children are well.” So I pose to you, the people of Baltimore: Where do our priorities lie? Is it going up to the school to check the teacher, or is it revisiting your style of parenting following your active participation in a parent-teacher conference at your child’s school? Is giving your children everything you didn’t have growing up – without instilling in them the principles of work ethic, respect for authority, and the value of a dollar – a style of parenting that will yield a productive citizen once our children leave the nest? I ask this because sometimes I too am guilty of telling my child who and what to be and how to behave without explicit instruction. When I realized this, I was initially overcome with denial, then guilt, and then confusion. I was raising my kid the best way I knew how. Growing up, I just knew better – probably because I was raised to fear my mother more than anyone – or anything – in the world. While that worked for me, but it won’t for my daughter, Zaire, simply because this generation is fearless – and I love it; I want to cultivate it, not squelch it. This generation was born fearless, and, even in the little time they’ve spent in this life, Continued on page 14
Baltimore Urban Spectrum — www.baltimoreurbanspectrum.com – August 2017
1