Supplemental content related to the Indyreader
Shit My Friends Say was created by Mickey Dehn during a manic upswing of Spring 2011. The subject matter covers topics such as: teapots, football, politics, and queer culture. Mickey has had no formal artistic training. (If you missed the sarcasm of the last statement, you probably won't get the cartoons either). Enjoy :]
On Fri Jan 20th, Occupy Baltimore participants finished their week-long Schools Not Jails Occupation at the slated $104 million 120 unit youth jail site in East Baltimore by converging at War Memorial Plaza in front of City Hall for Public Recreation Day. Demonstrators made the plaza a temporary outdoor recreation center to critique the planned privatization of over 18 city recreation centers in 2012.
On Monday, January 16th, in honor of Martin Luther King Day, Schools Not Jails, in collaboration with Occupy Baltimore and the Baltimore Algebra Project, began a 5 day occupation at the site of a proposed youth detection center.
Wednesday, Jan.18th, 2012, marked the third day of the five-day "pop-up" occupation: Schools Not Jails. This demonstration strives to bring awareness and to protest the city's proposed youth jail. While the organizers' original gameplan had been to occupy the site of the proposed youth jail 'round the clock, from Monday-Saturday, by Wednesday the strategy had dramatically shifted.
On Monday, Jan.19th, 2012, a.k.a - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, The Indypendent Reader caught up with Lester Spence, at the kick-off action for the Schools Not Jails five-day "pop-up" occupation.
On January 16th, Occupy Baltimore and the Baltimore Algebra Project, along with a enthusiastic crowd of supporters and allies, marched on the site of the proposed youth detention center in East Baltimore, and erected a wooden schoolhouse on the site to call attention to spending priorities that favor incarceration instead of education. Indyreader was on the scene to report:
Scroll through photos for more. Casey McKeel and Spencer Compton contributed to this article.
The movement to physically stop evictions and foreclosures made its debut in Baltimore on Tuesday, January 10th outside of the West Baltimore home of Lila Kara. Nearly 100 people associated with Occupy Baltimore assembled early in the morning to stop a Deutsch Bank foreclosure order against her house.
Social movements are emotionally charged. All politics are. Whether one is campaigning door to door for a candidate or rioting in the streets, there are emotional undercurrents beneath every political action. The way those feelings inform what activists do, how they organize, how they sustain themselves, how they come into or leave movements, has not been explored enough in popular discussion of social movements.
Long-time Baltimore activist, Max Obuszewski, sent a letter to NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday in reponse to Scott Simon's piece on the passing of Christopher Hitchens called "Christopher Hitchens' Legacy of Deying Labels." NPR did not publish Obuszewski's letter.