Click here to read How to Handle a Difficult Wife: Part One.
“Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. 14 Let all that you do be done in love.” 1 Corinthians 16:13-14
You have all heard the song, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T, that’s what your love means to me!” This song, Respect, is well known around the world as Aretha Franklin’s greatest hit. But what a lot of people do not know is that before this song was taken and retooled as a feminist anthem, it was written by a man and sung by a man, the great Otis Redding.
Redding is as famous as Franklin in his own right, and if you are not familiar with his music, but have seen Top Gun, you will probably remember his beautiful song Sitting on the Dock of the Bay. That song is pure goodness. Go listen to it now; you won’t regret it.
But before he wrote that hit, another one of his songs was Respect.
There is some debate over who originally wrote the song, but we know the lyrics were reworked by Redding when he released the song. Before he sang about the beauty of sitting and watching the ships roll in, he sang about one of the inherent longings of the man for respect from his wife,
“[Verse 1]
What you want, honey, you got it
And what you need, baby, you got it
All I’m askin’ is give me a little respect when I come home
Ooh, yeah
Hey, hey, hey
Yeah, now
Ooh, yeah…”
The song is about a man who wants to give his wife anything she wants, everything she needs. He even says, “And I wanna give you all of my money”, so he does mean everything, and all he wants in return is some “respect”. There is some debate online about whether or not Otis meant to use “respect” as a euphemism for sex, as apparently this was one way this word was used as slang in the street culture of his day.
However, even those who make this point highlight how the end of the song really drives home also just how important plain old respect was to the man,
“[Outro]
Respect when I want it
Respect when I need it
Respect when I want it
Respect when I need it
Got to, got to have it
We got to have it
Got to, got to have it…”
As one commentator has noted,
“In the coda that follows the final verse, Otis goes to work, wresting the word free of this narrow meaning, asserting his prerogative with an insistent determination that turns the song in its final moments into a plea for simple human dignity – “Respect is what I want! / Respect is what I need! / I got-ta got-ta have it! / Just give me some respect!” – that doesn’t stop at mere discretion.”
Take just a moment to meditate on the irony of a song about a man wishing for respect from his wife being turned into a feminist anthem, which is how many people remember this song to this day. It is incredible what feminism can subvert, isn’t it; to the impure nothing is sacred. Maybe sit on the dock at the bay and ponder this for a bit.
But then just sit back and consider how this song highlights two things very well: First, just how much a man wants his wife to respect him for who he is, what he does, and how he provides. But also, that simply expecting her to do so is often wishful thinking and also counterproductive. The song encapsulates how many men think, “Well, I provide, therefore my wife should respect me.” And she should. It is common decency. It is not something that should be taken for granted.
But how many people respect those who provide them with stuff without accountability? The government provides, doesn’t it? How many people respect their welfare providers, man or woman? In fact, the less the government demands of them to receive their welfare cheques, the more contemptible their opinion of their provider will be.
You might think that my example paints many wives in a bad light, but that is not the case. How many men have started their complaint to a friend about an impending divorce that they did not see coming, with this statement, “But I was a good provider!” I am sure you were. I am sure you can relate to Redding’s song deeply, “All I’m askin’ is give me a little respect when I come home.” But the truth is the man who puts himself in the position of begging for respect is only going to be increasingly viewed with contempt. You can’t demand respect; you have to command it by how you carry yourself, and what you expect from your loved ones.
We all know the difference between “demand” and “command.” But perhaps I should illustrate it to make it clearer. There were those bosses, or teachers in school, we all had that tried to be our friends, and when that failed, they over-corrected and demanded respect. But it did not work. The more they demanded it, the less we gave it. Then there were those bosses, or teachers in school, whose boundaries were known from the start. Their boundaries were clear and reasonable, and we therefore had respect for them from early on. And that respect grew over time.
This contrast between the one who “demands” respect and who “commands” respect is such a common trope in our culture that it is all through the fiction we consume. You can hardly see a military movie without them presenting some young Lieutenant who keeps demanding respect and not getting it, while some Sargent, Warrant Officer, or higher-ranked officer is inherently given respect by his men. Countless movies use this stereotype, precisely because it is all too commonly experienced in life. We have all experienced people who fit into both these categories.
The one who begs for respect, or seeks to demand it, will have contempt returned, in increasing measure. In the context of the military unit, an officer can correct this by simply showing himself capable in his role. But part of how he does this is by proving himself competent AND having clear boundaries of what he expects and will not tolerate. Boundaries for how you will be treated AND how you will treat others consistently with that standard really matter.
A man who wants respect needs to recognise this. You command respect not by shouting that you deserve it, but by showing you should be respected. If early in your marriage your wife starts speaking down to you, or contemptuously towards you, and you simply allow it, or worse, you just beg for her to stop it, you will likely develop into the man with the unruly wife over time. This is not good for you, her, your kids, or even society.
Most women have within them the capacity to be a good wife, or a bad wife. Even a good woman has the sinful nature, as do you, and if this sinful nature is fed, your beautiful, loving, and submissive wife can become your tyrant, and then you can find yourself, like so many other men, wondering why you provide so well, but are treated poorly.
So, ask yourself, if your wife talks down to you in front of her friends or your friends, will you just ignore it, or will you look her calmly in the eyes and say, “Don’t!”? Will she know that to speak of you in that way is not to be tolerated? Not that she cannot share her mind, or her opinion, or anything like that; of course she can and will. But if she disagrees with you, she knows to bring it to you at the proper time?
A good woman will want to speak up for her husband in front of her friends and his friends. But what if she has friends who influence her to do otherwise? How will you address that? A woman’s friends can mean the difference between a good marriage and a terrible marriage. Some men do many of the right things, but because they take no care to their wife’s social activities, they get blindsided. Are you making sure that you both spend time with people who will model respect between husbands and wives?
Remember Paul said this to Titus in the passage we looked at in our previous piece, “6 Likewise, exhort the young men to be sober-minded,…” (Titus 2:6). Why do you think, in the context of husbands and wives, that Paul tells young men to be “sober-minded”? It is because young men can be a bit silly, a bit daft, and a bit reckless. And if you approach what you tolerate in your marriage with a silly mindset, you could start patterns between you and your wife that may never be turned back.
Are you willing to walk out of a room, or a social gathering, rather than be disrespected by your wife?
Are you willing to live in such a way that you are easier to respect?
Does your wife reciprocate the respect you make sure that she experiences?
Yes, providing, giving money, and being that kind of man in some ways should be enough to get respect from a thankful wife. But if your wife works, why would she need to respect your ability to provide? Also, there are plenty of men who can provide, and probably a lot more than you can, as a lot of men learn from painful experience. Why should you be respected for doing something that you would have to do if you were single anyway? Sure, over time many women will generally come to appreciate their man’s provision. But not always, and sometimes it is how he commands respect in other ways that actually builds that appreciation.
Do you see the conundrum, young men? There is often a disconnect between what you think should get you respect, and what actually will. There is a reason that the bad boy, who might not even hold a steady job, has plenty of interest from women, when the solid middle manager on a decent income might not have had a second date in several years.
Do you have the temperament that commands respect? Does your wife look to you and feel secure in your arms? Do you have the ambition that will build a life where your wife is able to thrive and be freed from many of the burdens that modern women face? Does she see other men look at you with respect?
This is where I bring in church again. Many men get their professional respect at work, and maybe in some social environments with their friends. But Church, alongside also giving you the chance to fellowship with believers and be challenged about how to be a better man of God, gives you the chance to have your wife see how other men evaluate you in the context of a group dynamic.
Especially if their husband does the right thing at home, and then leads in the context of the gathering in some way. If your wife is a true and genuine believer, this will make a difference to how she views you. Every woman, whether or not they believe in Jesus, wants to see her husband respected by other men; the difference is simply that Christian women, who take the Bible seriously, reframe that within a Christian framework and context. But the same principles apply across the board in other social contexts.
Note, though, men, that living in a way that commands respect needs to be consistent. If you are one thing in one environment, and another in the other environment, those closest to you will lose respect for you. That is one of the reasons we often see men who appeared to be notable guys in the church lose their marriages. Along with what we spoke about in part one of this series, the disconnect in his behaviour bred contempt in the home.
Now, someone at this point might want to exclaim, “Matt, that song was talking about sex, not respect. Men are sex obsessed; that is what he wanted!”
But stop, pause and reflect on this: how much does a woman want to go to bed passionately with a man that she does not respect? It is a turn-off, isn’t it? We all know this. Whereas a man she respects, looks up to, and admires is a man she is also more attracted to. There is a reason some women leave their husbands for their boss, or other men in authority over them. Because this dynamic of respect matters.
It should not surprise us, then, that the street culture in Redding’s day brought “sex” and “respect” together, because they are very closely linked in a marriage relationship. Show me a marriage where, for whatever reason, a woman does not respect her husband, and I will show you either a sexless or very low sex marriage. This is not rocket science.
Men, you need to understand that if you present a compelling banner under which your wife can reframe her own life, your chances of ever having the difficult wife decrease massively.
If you already have a difficult wife, this is going to be a lot harder for you to achieve, because she is probably holding a lifetime of your failures to lead, or inability to set adequate boundaries, against you, as these mistakes cause women to feel unsafe. But the sooner you start to be wise and seek to be a man of respect in the home and outside, the more chance you have of turning things around.
Once again, anti-semitism is being cynically—and falsely—redefined in the press and broader Discourse as “pointing out uncomfortable facts about the nation state of Israel.”
This past weekend, the Israel Crybully Lobby, using a familiar script I’ve detailed before, led a smear campaign against actor Mark Ruffalo because he had the temerity and integrity to note that the family vying to control not only 60 Minutes and CBS News, but CNN and HBO, is a committed and open supporter of Israel and its genocidal military.
Ruffalo is leading a broad coalition of antitrust activists, creatives, and filmgoers to oppose the pending Skydance Paramount-Warner Brothers Discovery merger and, in doing so, violated an unwritten rule against noting that the father-son duo behind the merger, David and Larry Ellison, are well-documented and open zionist advocates that not only lobby for and support Israel, but “privately” donate to their military. A military that—it’s worth noting—Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, OxFam, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and dozens of other humanitarian and human rights organizations have determined is committing genocide in Gaza. Ruffalo also pointed out that the Ellisons’ $400 billion fortune was largely built on military and surveillance technology from Oracle that is used, in part, to surveil, imprison, and kill Palestinians, as well combat opposition to Israel stateside.
Ruffalo simply noted the open and well-documented ideological commitments that the Ellisons themselves have long championed.
Predictably, the Israel Crybully Lobby and its one-note propaganda organs in the nonprofit and media world responded to these comments by accusing Ruffalo of “antisemitism” and engaging in “tropes”—many of which are not, of course, tropes in any traditional sense, but simply Things That Are Awkward To Mention. Paramount Skydance released a whiney and self-indulgent statement saying “We are, as always, troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked.… Words like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ applied to a corporate transaction, aren’t just wrong—they’re a bridge too far.” This statement, and related scandalizing of Ruffalo’s otherwise true and banal comments, were echoed by Hollywood press outlets such as Variety magazine, the Hollywood Reporter, and the Wrap, the latter of which is owned by Sharon Waxman, an open supporter of Israel and its genocide in her own right. Needless to say, the Wrap has been covering this like Watergate, with nonstop breathless headlines, even laughably citing NATO-funded think tanker Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib as a “Leading Palestinian Activist.”
This campaign failed at shutting up Ruffalo, who defended himself on Twitter/X, where he received an outpouring of support. But more zionist advocacy organizations—always posing as “antisemitism” monitors, such as the Anti-Defamation League, Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Creative Community for Peace, and L.A. Jewish Federation—joined the pile-on. All four groups are openly supportive of Israel and its genocidal military and largely exist to smear Israel critics as antisemites regardless of the tone or nature of the criticism.
Despite the “antisemitism scandal” playbook being less and less effective, it’s not stopping the Israel Crybully Lobby from using it to discipline Ruffalo and other actors who dare support basic human rights, or in this case, actors who connect Oracle’s obscene wealth with their intimate involvement in the US and Israeli security state. The whole “antisemitism” and “trope” charge is even more absurd since, in context, in addition to Ruffalo simply citing Oracle’s Executive Vice-Chair Safra Catz’s own dystopian words about their “really profoundly scary technologies,” Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison is open in his support for not just Israel as some romantic abstraction, but the IDF itself. In 2024, upon announcing his purchase of Paramount, Ellison’s Skydance issued a dressed-up press release in the Jerusalem Post detailing how his buying of Paramount would be good for Israel:
“These two young men [Ellison being one of the men] love Israel, are connected to their Judaism, have Zionist values, and it’s very encouraging to see that in such successful families, the values are passed on to the younger generations. Both quietly donate quite a bit to the State of Israel and the IDF. It is positive news for the Jewish world that Korff and Ellison are the next generation of global Jewish leadership, connected to Israel and holding Zionist values.”
The piece would go on to note that the “article was written in cooperation with SkyDance” which is another way of saying it’s a touched-up press release issued by Skydance. So here is Ellison using his own company to boast how great his purchase of Paramount would be for Israel (setting aside how funny it is to point out how you “quietly” support a cause in your own company’s press release), thus openly acknowledging that his media properties would reflect Israel’s line. A promise immediately confirmed by Ellison’s first major hire post-Paramount purchase: self-identified “zionist fanatic” Bari Weiss, who he immediately put in charge of all of CBS News. The family patriarch, Larry Ellison, has even deeper ties to Israel: In addition to being the single largest private donor to the IDF, leaked emails revealed last year that in 2015 the elder Ellison vetted then-candidate for President Marco Rubio on behalf of the Israel ambassador to the UN.
Israel is a nation state, a political entity; zionism is an ideology, a worldview that violently privileges Jewish sovereignty in Palestine. Neither are protected religions, cultures, or identities. Adults have to be able to separate these two things—one being an ethno-religious identity and the other being an ideological choice—when discussing the dispossession, occupation, and mass killing of Palestinians, and how this right-wing worldview dovetails with media ownership, US imperialism, the military state, and free speech suppression in the United States. It is certainly possible to criticize Israel and its supporters while engaging in antisemitic tropes, but Ruffalo did not come remotely close to doing this, and it’s deeply cynical to claim he did without presenting any credible evidence. Instead we just get mindless working of the refs, increasingly hollow pro forma language about “tropes” and “antisemitism,” whining and chauvinist solipsism from deluded rich ideologues high on their own zionist media supply. Ruffalo simply noted the open and well-documented ideological commitments that the Ellisons themselves have long championed. Adults should be able to talk about very rich people’s connections to militaries without everyone reaching for the antisemitism smelling salts. This script—where powerful, wealthy and deeply ideological actors cry and whine and piss and moan about being the victims of racist abuse because someone dares highlight their backing of a nation state and its military—is as dangerous and sleazy as it is tedious and, one can only hope, diminishing in its returns.
On August 8th at the Real News Studio, a screening of the new documentary Beyond the Wire—directed by filmmaker Dr. S. Rasheem—was followed by a panel discussion featuring seasoned conflict mediation organizers from the film. The participants explored their grassroots efforts to challenge the corporate media establishment’s heavy emphasis on crime—which drives city policy and the local economy—and redefine Baltimore’s historical present as a city of abolition.
Credits:
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Speaker 1:
I’m going to be super brief. I largely just want to, again, thank everyone for coming out. I’m the producer of this film, but I’m sure you guys know you can’t do something like this by yourself, right? So I want to also thank the Baltimore Legacy Project Youth Crew who’s outside, who took your. I mean, they’ve just been really on point getting B-roll setting up. Really appreciate them a lot. Also, the folks that you saw in the film, thank you so much for trusting me with your voice, your story. I don’t take that lightly. And when I say you don’t do it by yourself, one of the. Oh, I also want to shout out. She’s not in here, but the narrator is actually here too. She’s part of Baltimore Legacy Project Youth Crew in the front. Her name’s Empress. Yep. But someone who is definitely in the thick of all of this with me is there’s several cinematographers, but there was one person who was the lead cinematographer, more or less the director of photography on this project.
They were also the editor who edited all of this. They also edited the trailer that I did, and there was a lot of back and forth. Do this, do this. I mean, that’s a person who I spent really most of my time with in terms of creating this. And I just wanted to give a few moments for him to just say a few words. His name is Imani. He’s making his way up here. His name is Imani. Imani.
And I’ll let you finish explaining.
Speaker 2:
No, great job, everybody. Thank you all for coming out. This was amazing, right? I mean, this was one of the best things I worked with. I’ll be real quick. My name’s Imani Mulayer. I was part of the production crew, but also the founder of the Baltimore Cinematic Universe. And for some people who know it, some people don’t, I can just let you know we are a film studio. We’re new in Baltimore with a core mission is to change division of Baltimore around the world to have a new perception of our city. Yeah. So yeah, I’m a TV producer, lifelong TV producer, two-time Emmy Award-winning. We have a whole staff of award-winning filmmakers. We have a whole advisory board of all the leading industry experts in the city. We launched in December thanks to Nancy from the Parkway. I think she was here. But yeah, there you go.
Thanks, Nancy. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Nancy Froctor back there. And since then, we already have four TV shows, one feature film, one vertical series, either in active development or already shopping to major networks. And so I started working with Rashim because I was like, how do we offer this to the Baltimore community? All of our resources, all of our pipeline. So after the success of this documentary, I said, that’s what we can do. So today I want to announce that’s what we’re doing. The Baltimore Cinematic Universe is opening up our film studio to the city, to individuals, to organizations. If you have a story that you need to tell, we do everything from feature films, TV shows, web series, social media campaigns. More importantly, we produce and we distribute. We get it out. We promote and market it. So your video will be seen by the people who need to see it.
And we work at all production levels, all budget levels. We just want to continue our mission to get that real Baltimore out. So feel free. You can contact me directly. I’ll be here for the rest of the evening. We’re online, baltimorecinematicuniverse.com. My email, Imani, I-M-A-N-I at baltimorecinematicuniverse.com. All social media, all that. But yeah, yeah, we’re here to stay. We’re going to make a difference in the city. So hopefully we can do it with y’all. Thank you.
Speaker 3:
All right. If you are a panelist, come on up to the stage. Beyond the Wire. One of the things that I’ve said, and y’all have heard me say versions of this in other premiers, that one of the beautiful things about this film is that I think it gives words, images, narratives to a feeling, to an instinct, to an inclination that I think a lot of people had, but just put words and the images to it. And one of the things that when I talk in general in policy arenas about the work of violence prevention, like the work of it, I think for a lot of people, it’s rather abstract. A lot of people don’t know the work. So what I’m going to first ask each of you to do is to introduce yourself, your organization affiliation work, and then answer this question. When a lot of people think about public safety, they think about the courts, thinking about police, think about jail.
And that’s not what any of y’all do. So in your introduction of yourself, if you can talk about your own contribution to declines in violence and homicides in Baltimore, talk about your work and your contribution to it, because it’s important for the audience to have a concrete sense of what the work is. So I’m going to start at the end with Brother Anthony and then come down this way.
Speaker 4:
I like
Speaker 5:
The plane. Thank you. Good evening, afternoon, everybody. First and foremost, I want to thank God for this opportunity. Of course, giving him all of the honor, all of the praise and all of the glory. I also want to begin by, of course, thanking Dr. Rashim for this amazing opportunity and the great work that she has done and continue to do with this project and helping us control the narrative about the real Baltimore, as we say. So I want to begin with a quote here that kind of just set the tone for me. And those who do this work will already know where this quote is from. And those connected with this facility absolutely will know where this quote is from.
Do your little part. Do whatever you can to help change these conditions because we’re moving into a critical period in history, not just for poor and oppressed people, black people, but for humanity itself. Do whatever little you can, but you need to do something. That quote is from one of my elders, one of my mentors who helped mold and shape me to be who and what I am today. The late great Eddie Conway, Eddie Marshall Conway. And so I’m honored to be here at the Real News Network where his influence is still alive and well in the work that we do. I also want to thank all of these amazing panelists here who are literally the boots on the ground and doing the work that we do. I’m honored to just share space with them anytime we get the opportunity, especially Ms. Erica here. The other two I’m with every day, practically seven days a week.
But Ms. Erica here, we have the lived experience at doing this work. She literally did the victim offender mediation in my own case, who set me down with the families of the victims in my own case, literally. So anytime I have the opportunity to be in the same space with her is a blessing because that got me off to doing the work. I couldn’t engage the work without doing that first after my own release. So right after that, that kind of gave me the license, the permission to do what was in my heart to do anyway, which was kind to help other young 15 year olds in Baltimore City not make the same horrible decision that I made at the age of 15. For the last four years, I’ve had the great honor and privilege of serving as a community engagement specialist for We Are Us where we literally boots on the ground, door to door, block by block, street by street, engaging the people in this city that most people don’t want to engage.
But we’ve been up to that assignment and that task over the last two, three years. As of August 1st, I’ve kind of moved into a new space. I’m now the director of reentry services for the We Are Us organization where I have the opportunity to work more hands-on with the people behind the walls who are preparing to come back home into the community to kind of get their mind, their heart, their spirit right, to let them know that they have a debt to pay as well even after and beyond their release from incarceration to kind of fix some of the stuff that we kind of messed up in our communities. So that reentry space and work is what I’m headed into now. And I’ll leave it at that.
Speaker 6:
Hi everybody. So I’m Erica Bridgeford. And I just got to say out loud, I just now over there realized who he was. I mean, I’ve been engaging with you in community. We’ve been hugging. I did not realize he was the same person in that mediation because the work that we do at the Baltimore Community Mediation Center is confidential work. So from the mediator side of it, we had permission from Anthony and the person that he was in mediation with. A part of what they talked about gave permission for him to tell his story about their conversation and for us to tell the story. But I’ve always told it in anonymity. So I never remembered what his name was. I remembered he was 15. I know what happened, but I never remember what his name was or what he looked like. And this is my third time seeing the film and it just hit me.
I was like, “What he talking? What?” And so over there I had to like. So okay. So I’m just blessed and amazed and shocked at my own ADHD and menopausal brain right now.
But a piece of that too is that I literally meet thousands of people a year. I have trained thousands of people at this point to be mediators and in conflict management. I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of mediations. So I’ve been in person and during the pandemic, it was during the pandemic. So we did it on Zoom, but in person, helping people resolve their conflicts, mediate things. We say it’s never too early and it’s never too late for people to sit down and have a conversation about what’s really going on between them. And so even after there’s been harm, even after people have filed assault charges, they still have the power to make the decisions about what does justice look like to them? What does resolution look like? All of that stuff. And so I have been, before I got involved in mediation, so I’m turning 54 years old this year and that’s when y’all ppose to say, “Girl, you look good.
Okay.” My favorite thing to do on any panel because I almost didn’t survive birth, but that’s a different conversation. So for at this point, over 30 years of my life, I’ve been doing something in this city to help nurture Baltimore’s peace and Baltimore’s joy. And so to Dayvon’s point, all of the things that my contribution has been taking the pain of my brother being murdered in the streets of Baltimore, my stepson being murdered, two of my cousins who were brothers being murdered and years apart from one, just since I was 12 years old, seeing people die in the streets of Baltimore, taking that pain and letting it remind me of the purpose that God gave me as my parents called me into being. And anywhere that I go saying, “Oh, if there’s something I don’t like, what is my soul calling me to do about it?
What is my part to do about it?” So I became a mediator in 2001. I became a trainer in 2002. I helped lead the 300 Men March movement. Now Baltimore Peace Movement, which was Baltimore Ceasefire. Funny story. When I left 300, I said, “Y’all not going to get me to lead a movement.” So I don’t know how I ended up leading a movement. I also, when I became a mediator, I was like, “Oh, executive director, that don’t look like the fun job. I’m never doing that job.” And now I’m the executive director at that same place. And so I’m blessed to be standing in my purpose and doing my purpose work. And I know that it is not a mistake that I was born at this time in history in Baltimore City to parents who were teenagers who said, “Let’s have a child that’s going to change the world.” And they intentionally named me after people who they believed were changing the world.
And then they nurtured me as a Black girl born with one hand in West Baltimore. They nurtured me to be everything I could possibly be. I scare them to this day.
I’ve been talking since I was five months old, so they never knew what was going to come out of my mouth. They always had to go meet with teachers because I was challenging authority. My children worry about me. It’s not safe to be in the streets after a murder happened. And that’s when I’m going. And so they nurtured me to not just be physically who I’m supposed to be, but spiritually to walk in strength and power and to not look at it like, “Oh, it’s dangerous.” I look at it like, “Oh, I’m covered. I got a gang of angels, ancestors, spirit gods.” Everybody walking with me. So it never occurs to me that I’m in danger. All it occurs to me is that people are hurting and I’m showing up with love. And I hope that people are open and allow me. I’m grateful that people allow me into their neighborhoods to just give them any little bit of love that they might need in those spaces.
And so like I was saying in the film, and I will keep saying, it doesn’t matter who is in office and what they do in their four or eight years that they have, that time is not enough to see what we are seeing happening right now in this city with these drastic drops. It is decades of work before them. It is people who kept saying, “We love our city. We’re not giving up on our city.” While the narrative is throw Baltimore in the trash, we kept saying, we going in the trash. You see trash, we see gems and value. And we kept pouring love into our city because our city is us. You can’t separate yourself from where you live. If you say, throw the city in the trash, where do you think you going there? I mean, you living in dumpsters now? And so a big part of my part to what’s happening right now is I am aware and I’m grateful that when people see my face, they see a symbol of hope.
When people see me and I say, “Oh, I look broken, but I’m whole, just like Baltimore looks broken and it’s whole.” I’m grateful that one thing I get to be at this time in history is a symbol of hope and hope in action, not just hope in theory.
Oh, that’s right. We’re used to passing mics down. We have our own this time.
Speaker 4:
It’s on. Okay. Well, what is it? Good afternoon, good afternoon, good afternoon. Well, I’m Ebony Harvin. I’m a pastor of New Solid Rock Church, which is located in the Pigtown area. I first want to just give honor to God. Honor to God, honor to God, honor to God. Thank God for all of you guys here. The great doctor that wrote this and put all of us together. I work with We Are Us, and I’m the project manager for the Thrive Academy. And Thrive Academy, I deal a lot with young people. And that’s my passion. I love young people. When I say I love young people, I love young people. And when I see young people, I see me. I see my children. I see nothing but greatness. And I’ve been doing this work for over 25 years. And when I say over 25 years, over 25 years.
Pastor, on Sundays because I’m a talker, I can talk, talk, talk. But this work right here, it’s about doing the work. And doing this work in these streets, as our brother Anthony mentioned, I’m with these two, like six days a week. I’ll say that we can be more in Baltimore City and there’s so much greatness in our city. We have to see beyond what we see. And I was a teen parent. I was a teen parent. And I thank God that I have an attorney. I have a school teacher. I have an entrepreneur. I did lose one of my sons to gun violence. It’ll be eight years on August the 15th, but God, but God, but God, but God. So before that happened, I was doing the work. And after it happened, it slowed me down a little. But now I just work extra harder.
I’m out there doing whatever I can to let another mother know that we’re going to do what we can to save life. We’re going to educate our young people. We’re going to make them see different and see that you can be more in Baltimore City. Some of the other things that I have done, have a used car dealership in Glen Burnie.
Speaker 6:
Come on, hustle.
Speaker 4:
Yes, yes, yes. I’ll say this, you guys. So sometimes when I get this mic in my hand, I’m like, look, let me just be quiet because I’m a little all over the place. But my most important gift, you guys, is just truly loving on our young people and loving Baltimore City. And when I say I love Baltimore City, my children say, Ma, you have so many children. What’s going on? I say, yes, the entire Baltimore City youth, they belongs to me. They belongs to me. So if y’all have any problems with the good, just, hey, let me find Pastor Ebony. So I’m not going to talk too much. I’m going to pass this mic on. But yes, you guys, just always remember this, that this city is so powerful. We’ve been through so much, but the strength, when I say the strength that this city have, the strength.
Baltimore City. And listen, five years from now, every other city that experienced some of the things, the heartache, the pain that we did, they’re going to say, wait a minute, we want to be like Baltimore City. Everybody came together on one accord because guess what? And community is unity. But once we come together, we’re going to be that change that guess what the world need to see. Not just other city that the world needs to see. So you guys, I’m going to pass this on to. He said, don’t pass the mic. I’m passing the mic. Okay. Listen, listen. I said I’m going to pass. I’m going to be quiet. Okay. I’m not passing the mic. Go for it.
Speaker 7:
Hey, good afternoon. My name is Delmont Player. I’m a lot of things. So I’m We Are Us. I’m ICAN. I’m LEC, which is Lived Experience Committee under Carolyn Shrugs. I’m AVP, Alternative to Violence Program. Absolutely. But in a nutshell, I’m the youth that you see out here. So quick story, I went to prison when I was 17 years old. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t write. I became one of Maryland’s most violent and disruptive prisoners. I was sent out of state. I did Fed Time. I’ve been in and out of Supermax. I’ve been beat by the police, rives broke and everything. I was probably one of the worst prisoners in Maryland State history. And I don’t say that. I say that humbly because I want you to understand the pits that I climbed out of. But at one point, something clicked, something changed, because the more you know, the better you have to do.
I’m a Muslim. I’m an FOY, so I’m a husband, I’m a brother. But what I often like to say is that for me, the work really began to resonate for me when the gang culture really ushered into the prison system. I didn’t come in under the gang culture. When I came in, it was man everybody for every man for themselves. But at some point, the gang culture began to usher into the system. And I’ll never forget, I came into the day room one day. And I’m not saying to say this is like when the change started because for a couple years I was already fighting with who I was becoming and who the world had been telling me I was, who the system had been telling me I was, who the court systems told me I was, who the streets told me I was. But I came in the day room.
It was the older guy. They were one of our pioneers from back in the day. And when you get old in the system, it tend to chip away at you. So he wasn’t as active, as agile as he used to be. And I came to the day room and he said, back then they used to call me by my last name. He said, “Lord Player, they won’t let me get on the phone.” And I was like, “What you mean?” He said, “Man, they saying because they was clicked up. This click had this phone, this click.” So what I did, I walked around the day room. I went to everybody on the phone because I get it in. And I said, “I’m at the U. I’m out of you.” So they clips begin to end. Yeah, I’m stealing. So I would hang the phone upside. That means ain’t nobody on it, but don’t touch it.
Let the phones hang. So at some point, about three, maybe four phones was hanging. Somebody came to the day room and said, “Man, I’m trying to get on the phone. Who on the phone? I’m still at the microwave cooking.” Somebody say, “Lord, player.” So he come over to the phone. “He said, Lord, player. “He turned and me say,” Player, “he said,” Player, you on the phone? What phone you getting? “I said,” I’m getting on all of them. “I said,” Yeah, I’m getting on all of them. And I’m with all the dumb, whatever. We can do whatever. “And like I said, God had a plan. Allah had a plan for me because really I suppose died behind those walls. But I noticed that the young brothers from various different organizations was willing to follow me in my ignorance and in my stupidity. And I realized at that time that I’d had about 17 years and nothing had changed.
All the work I continuously put in, it never stopped the next kid or next man from rising to think he can take the throne. So it never really stops. So the next day, what I did was I called a group of little young brothers in the yard and I grabbed a book called Mine is the Master by James Allen. It’s a compilation of all the books he ever wrote. He wrote a lot of people know him mostly for as a man thank you. And I just would read little parables out of that book to them, and then we would just build on it. And from there, it just trickled in my teachers from Moss number six, all that. And it continued to trickle. And then I started hearing about what different organizations was doing in the streets, Peace Movement, We Our Us, Baltimore Brothers, Uncle T Channel for Change.
So what I did is I got all the good men that was in the institution that I was in, and we went to all the various organizations, BGF, Blood, Crip, Murder Inc. DMI, whatever. And we brought them onto a board in a commission. This is how I met Carolyn Shruggs. We brought them onto a board under a program that we ran called GRIP. We would’ve overseas and GRIP was gang response intervention program. And what we did was every time a beef happened, we went on the compound and brought all the gang leaders into a room to squash it. And then there was meetings that took place in the chat when the Nation of Islam chat where I would stand between two knife slingers essentially and tell them that, man, your guys can’t move and they guys can’t over. That’s what I talk about, putting our lives on the line.
So I was mediating conflict behind a wall that spills out into the community. One of my biggest supporters to this day is the men and women that I left behind the prison walls. I still mediate conflict so it don’t spill out here into society. So that’s who I am in a nutshell. And that’s my portion.
Speaker 3:
And again, for me, it’s important for people to hear those stories and hear that context. You know what I’m saying? Because it’s important, I think, to normalize the fact that this work is happening and what it takes. And what I hope people get from these responses is that this is work. Each of the people on the stage, they’re the ones that got to do it, the work that they’re doing. It takes a certain kind of person, pedigree, perspective to do it. Pastor Ebony, you talked about the importance to you of young people and really loving on young people. Could you talk about what are some of the misconceptions that people have when it comes to youth, particularly as it relates to gun violence? What are some of the things that for you, you think it’s important for this audience to know about young people and gun violence in Baltimore City?
Speaker 4:
One thing, we have to stop judging young people from what area they’re from. We have to stop judging them because of their family members. A lot of our young people are judged and truly you don’t even know them. We have to learn how to understand that none of our young people are born murderers. None of them are born criminals. Some type of trauma happened in their life. A lot of our young people are on survival mode. But if you get a chance just to know them, not the costume that they have on, because guess what? I’m going home. I’m 10 years old and I’m going to a house where my mom is out there getting high. I got to take care of a seven-year-old and a five-year-old. I don’t know where my father at. So instead of us judging, how about we just have a conversation with them?
See what they need. How can I help you? Because a lot of times these young people just need some love. They need some support. But as long as we look at them, they coming outside, that little boy bed, that little girl, look at her. But you don’t know their story. So we have to help them rewrite their story. And I’m going to say this real quick. I received my honorary doctorate degree. And at first I was sitting up there like, wait a minute, me? My son went to school all these years. And my son, he said, Ma, let me explain something to you. When I was up there, sitting up there studying at night, you was at a hospital where a child was shot. He said, when I was sitting up there worrying about a test, you was up there praying because guess what? Some little girl or somebody, something just happened to him.
He said, For 25 years, I’ll watch you work hard. And when I said work hard, work hard. He said, when I was sitting up there saying, I’m going to pass this test. He said, look, the test that I thought that I was going to pass, you was up there making things happen, relocating families, relocating young men that got caught up in mess. He said, so you deserve it. So I say on today, you guys, I didn’t. I was sitting up there like, wait a minute. Do I really deserve this? I do. I do. I’ve done over 300 funerals in Baltimore City, but God, but God. So I was able to help that family or help them in the midst of their pain. So I say this back to your question, I’m a little all over the place, so y’all mind me. Okay? All right, y’all got to get a Sunday morning message.
But no, no, no, no. So let me get real back. One thing, just please, please stop judging our young people from where they live. Stop it. When you get to know these young people, you’ll say, My God. Some of these young people have been through some things that in my 50 years I haven’t experienced, but God. And when I say but God, but God, I have a young man, and I’ll say this, he lost his mother and his father. He was 15 years old. He got himself in some trouble. His grandmother said, “What did you do to my grandson?” I said, “I listened to him because a lot of times we got to get to the root of the problem in order to fix a problem.” She said, “Wait a minute. I sent him to this therapist. I sent him everywhere.” I said, “He needs somebody to experience some things.” I said, “See, I’ve been through some things.
Amen. So I can listen. I can relate to him. Okay?” I said, “So instead of us you guys judging our young people, give them a chance.” And when I say give them a chance, just give them a chance. Just listen to him. When you see them young men on the corner, don’t walk past them. Say, “How you doing?” When I see young men, guess what I don’t say? I don’t have to say, “Pull your pants up.” Oh, that’s past Ebony right there. They’re going to pull their pants up because it’s about the relationship. And I’ll say this, when you’re doing this work, I fear nobody but God. I’m not afraid to go to East Baltimore, West Baltimore. And I grew up in Charli Hill. Love Cherry Hill. Amen. When I say love Char Hill, love Cherry Hill. So you guys, just one thing. Just always that young person want.
They want to know that, hey, somebody care about me. Somebody love me. How many want to feel loved? How many want to feel loved? That’s it right there. And that’s All they want. They just looking for someone to love them. And I’ll say this, I love on our young people too. I love the hell out of them. That’s it. There we go.
Speaker 5:
Davon, can I add something to that? You
Speaker 4:
Answer while I’m passing the mic. Okay, let me stop passing the mic.
Speaker 5:
Can I add something to that on the young one of you?
Yes, sir. We took a group of young people to Dr. Rashim’s facility about two weeks ago, about 25 of our young people in the Baltimore Brothers Program to help Dr. Rashim with another project specifically towards youth that I hope she’ll share some more information about. But she started, when we brought them in the room, she started them off with a question that I’m going to ask you. She asked the young people that we brought to her, “What percentage do you think of young people in Baltimore City are involved in crime and violence?” And we heard all kinds of numbers, didn’t we, Doc? One said like 90%. One was like 99%. All kinds of numbers. But the actual facts, the truth is less than 5%.
But there’s a narrative that’s prevailing, that’s pervasive, that young people are not just inherently criminal, but pervasively involved in crime and violence. There’s just not no truth in it at all. And what troubles me the most about the narrative is not just the projection of the narrative, is that some people will allow themselves to be used as vehicles to portray the narrative. I’m talking about people in positions of leadership, authority, and power who make comments about young people that are just not rooted in facts, who take isolated incidents involving young people and allow themselves, their office, their position to portray narratives as if all young people in Baltimore City are doing this. I just wanted to add that to that answer.
Speaker 3:
I appreciate that. No, it’s good. So Erica, one of the things that I think in this kind of Western civilization, Eurocentric cultural environment, oftentimes spirituality gets marginalized. People tend to marginalize it. And a lot of what you talked about in the film and even what you’ve talked about a little bit on this panel so far, the importance of spirituality. And again, that’s another one of those things that for some people can feel abstract. Can you speak to the spiritual impact that the work has had and why that’s such an important aspect of the work?
Speaker 6:
Okay. So I’m going to try to describe it in a simple way, like how I would describe it to children. I used to be a preschool teacher and an elementary school teacher, so I think. Okay. All right. And what you’re talking about is what I call colonizer reindeer games. Y’all like that? Free to use it. Trademark archabrish boy. Okay. Where like, yes. Okay. So we are all more unseen than we are seen. And this is not about religion or who you call God or any of that. It is just a scientific fact. Human beings, what you are as a being, you are more unseen stuff than you are seen stuff. If we remove all of the space out of your human body, your physical mass would fit on the tip of a pen. And I mean, not a writing pen, I mean like a needle pen.
So there’s this physical aspect of there’s more to us than what we can actually see and touch, which means there’s much more going on with us.
And so if you ever wonder if that’s true, if there’s way more of you that’s unseen, your thoughts are an unseen realm. You’re right now having a gazillion thoughts that can never be physically spoken, heard, manifested. But they are a part of how you feel right now. They are a part of how you’re experiencing this. We’ve all been saying the same words to everybody in this room, but everybody in this room have not heard us say the same things because of the unseen part of you that is so vast and that influences the experience you are having as a human being. And so what we do with that unseen part of us that whispers quiet nudges to us about what we could do, what we should do, what we shouldn’t do, make this right, make that left, don’t answer that email. Ignore that person. Call your cousin and apologize.
Y’all know the shit y’all be ignoring.
There’s so much about who we are that when we just manifest a little bit of it, it changes things. And here’s the very elementary example that I used some years ago when the Baltimore Ceasefire Now, the peace movement started that it just occurred to me recently we’re seeing now. So in 2017, people were being killed every 19 hours in Baltimore. And Baltimore had more murder than it had ever seen in its history. And people were saying there’s nothing we can do about it. So murder is this vibration. So I’ve just got finished talking to you about how much you are vibration. So there’s this vibration about murder that makes you feel like you as one person, there’s nothing you can do about that. But there’s this unseen part of you that says, “But I want to do something. I feel like if I was just more kind to people because you don’t know what people are going through.
I feel like if I just shared that post that I saw that was positive so I could add to positive algorithms and the interwebs that are also vibration.” And so I compared it to an ocean because that’s what people would say. “Oh, y’all just spitting in the ocean. This little bit of stuff y’all doing, it’s not going to work. Y’all just spitting in the ocean. “So I was like,” They right. I’m just spitting in the ocean. “But if the ocean is red and the unseen parts of me are nudging me to go take a little dropper full of blue ink and just start dropping it in that ocean, somebody’s going to say,” She crazy. What is she over there doing? “Just like they told Harriet Tubman.
It’s crazy. It’s dangerous. The tide going to come in and take you away. People going to come and try to take your dropper away from you like I can’t go find another dropper and find some more blue ink. You know what I mean? Okay. And while people saying that, somebody is going to say, but that little part where she at is starting to turn purple, it looked like. Right? And somebody else is going to say, I always wanted to put some blue ink in the ocean and they going to come and put their little blue ink. And more and more people are going, they’re putting their little drops in the ocean. And before you know it, the whole ocean is turning purple like it started doing in 2023 when the murder rate was 20% less. And people was like, wait a minute. Something is happening.
And we was like, I’ve been over here at the ocean. Before y’all could see it start to change, I’ve been following my spirit. I’ve been following the calls on my heart. I’ve been healing the things inside me that need to be healed that I know are standing in the way and blocking more of my power, more of my authority, more of my confidence in whatever it is that I’m supposed to be doing in this world. And I’m over here working on me while y’all calling me crazy and my blue drops are blessed. And they call more people who say, uh-oh, well, I want to be a blue dropper too. And now that the ocean is purple and looking more blue, people that’s been talking trash about Baltimore want the credit. People that just want to lock everybody up in Baltimore want you to think it’s their policies that’s changing things.
And so the spiritual aspect by science, by universal law, when you are focused on something with strong emotion, you have no choice but to manifest into your physical experience, that thing. That is just how it works. That’s how creation works. And so we have been focused on Baltimore’s joy with strong emotion. We’ve been focused on Baltimore’s love, Baltimore’s value, Baltimore’s gangster with strong emotion. There was no choice but for us to start experiencing in our physical realm, all of the things that we know God created us to be.
Speaker 3:
So Brother Delmont and Brother Anthony, this next question is for the two of you. Both of you mentioned both on this panel and in the movie, the importance of doing work behind the walls and its influence on the work that’s happening in the streets of Baltimore. Can you talk a little bit more about the importance of, and walk through some of the mechanics of the work that happens behind the walls and how that translates out into the streets in terms of the work to reduce violence?
Speaker 7:
I knew he was going to do that.
Speaker 2:
Fight, fight, fight, fight.
Speaker 7:
So growing up in the juvenile justice system, I did Skid Straight. I did Big Brother. I did Choice Program. I did Big Brother. So I did all the youth programs, but none of them worked. The reason why they didn’t work because I didn’t sit in front of men that I resonated with. So the people they would sit me in front of was guys who was nothing like me, had experienced nothing like I experienced, who didn’t have brothers that was in and out of prison, cousins that was in and out of prison, mothers and fathers who were strung out on drugs. Everybody, guys that they hung around with 10, 15 years they sent you. So that’s the one thing that I think make us so impactful with the young men. But to be more specific is without saying names, I’ll give you a scenario of an entire family.
So a father gets locked up when me and my guys basically growing up. His father goes to jail for shooting somebody a couple blocks over. Both of them got sons. So before we even encounter each other, our families is already telling us that we don’t get along. We don’t deal with them. We don’t really know what the whole situation is about. We just inherit a beef. So now we grow up and we condition that we just don’t like these guys. So any little thing triggers the beef. Now a kid goes to jail. A father is already in jail. He goes to jail for somebody that’s involved in his family. So now he got to what we call home field advantage because the father’s already been on the scene 15, 20 years in the prison system and he considered a soldier. So now a young man has to walk into a prison system at 16, 17 years old and contend against grown men who are hardened criminals, who have been serving time for 15, 16 years, who have all kind of connects through the prison system.
So now he has to rise up and rise to the occasion. So situation like this, so now he get in, he has no uncles. He has no big cousins on the yard. So in response to that, since you did that behind the walls, and that’s my homeboy and we out here, we going to address it out here. So since you did that and we can’t get you and you got the prison system and he can’t do nothing to you, we’re going to touch your peoples out here in the street. So we going to send you a message from out here. Every time something happened, we going to hit one of yours out here. So stepping in between it, it don’t really seem like much. But the ripple effect of a lot of people in a lot of those murders, a lot of that stuff come from behind the prison walls.
Orders, hits, because somebody get touched on a yard and they feel like they can’t do nothing. So I’m going to send somebody out there to do something to your mother. There are tapes and phone recordings where they have men on the phone because somebody took somebody off for some drugs behind the wall and say, “Man, go to that house and do something, beat his mother up.” Because since he won’t act like he ain’t playing, people get on the phone, they call people parents and tell them, “If you don’t pay that money, we going to do X, Y, and Z to him.” And so how do they children respond to that? So mediating conflict behind the wall, it has a profound effect. And not just mediating conflict from behind the wall, but mediating conflict from this side. When I was speaking at the situation what happened with one of our elders and I was just saying people so quick to, like Pastor Ebony said, throw the youth away.
And the brain science is real that the brain doesn’t fully develop until the age of 25. That is a true thing. It’s not that. No. Am I saying that I didn’t know that I was doing right from wrong? Hell no. I definitely knew that.That’s why I tried to put on black to try to disguise it. But what I’m saying is you did not know the magnitude of the prophetic effect it was going to have and the ripple effect on yourself, on your family. So when something like that happened with a youth out here, that man got family on the inside. So now we got to be on the phones mediating conflict because if those young men get caught and go behind those walls, they got to stand on business. So it’s somebody back there that want to address that. If just for no reason, just because he got on the phone and heard his mother say, “Yeah, they out here doing that.” He say, “Yeah, when he come back, I’m going to knock his head off just for GP.” So yeah, it’s very important that we are mediating conflict on both sides of the fence because I’m telling you, the ripple effect that it has when somebody is stabbed behind those prison walls or somebody is shot out here on the streets, whether they’re part of organization or whatever, it spins behind those walls and vice versa.
It spills out into the streets.
Speaker 3:
And Brother Anthony, let me add to the question because I think the other thing that I’ve heard you address that I think is important for this audience to hear is WeRS has the Stop the Beef hotline. No law enforcement involvement in that process. Can you talk about the importance of that? Because I think there’s some people who can’t fathom why it’s important in that particular context for law enforcement to not be involved.
Speaker 5:
Absolutely. I’ll say this, right? There’s so much that we do on the Stop the Beef side of this work that you’re just never going to hear about. You’re never going to read about. You’re never going to see on Instagram, Facebook, that part of the work. Because it involves a level of confidentiality where if the individuals involved don’t trust us, not only do you not stop the beef, but you potentially put yourself in harm’s way, as he articulated in the documentary. So all of the people, all of the parties involved have some sort of connection to the criminal legal system. So traditionally, that’s just not going to work with law enforcement in the room. Not only is it not going to work with law enforcement in the room, but we’re never even going to get them to the mediation. If they believe in the slightest way we have any connection to law enforcement, that we cooperate with law enforcement in any way, they’re never even going to be in that room.
That’s just not going to happen. That’s the reality of it. So that’s not to say that law enforcement doesn’t have a role to play in solving crime and violence in the community. That’s separate from mediating conflict, completely separate from resolving beefs and disputes, especially where blood has already been spilled.
So involving law enforcement from that perspective makes no sense at all for us. And you’re never going to hear about that. You’re never going to see two people that called their hotline, that called one of the mediators and said, “Bro, they shot my brother. I’m going to burn half of East Baltimore to the ground.” You’re never going to hear that. And you’re never going to see our response to it. You’re going to see our public response to mass shooting events. You’re going to see that. You’re not going to see what we do behind the scene in terms of who we calling, who we talking to, what we talking to them about. Because that confidentiality has to be there and that level of trust has to be there between us and them. So that’s the reason for the no police involvement. But for this audience particularly also, according to the Department of Justice statistics, over 650,000 people are released from prison throughout America every year.
650,000. I want that number to sink in. These are the number of people that are coming home from prison every year, according to the federal government. In that same report, they said that here in the state of Maryland, almost 10,000 people are in this revolving door of going into prison, coming home from prison every year, right here in the state of Maryland. All of them are coming home to a community near you.
So it only makes sense that we put some effort into rehabilitating the 2.2 million people that we have locked up behind these prison walls. We incarcerate more people in this country than any nation on the planet. There are some states that incarcerate more people than any other civilized nation on the planet. But as a society, we give zero thought. Zero though to the fact that these two million people, the majority of them at some point are coming home. And if there is nothing done to help repair them, then it leads, it produces a cycle of crime and violence that continues. So we got to get to this tendency, the orientation and the mind to return to criminal behavior and conduct. And that don’t stop when they’re released. It actually starts when you send them there. We have to be involved in that. So that’s the part I’ll add to the incarceration piece.
Can I say
Speaker 8:
One thing?
Speaker 3:
So I’ll let y’all say two quick things. After they say what they’re about to say, we’re going to do Q&A and we’ll pass a microphone around. So if you have questions, you can raise your hand. We’ll bring a microphone to you. Go ahead. I
Speaker 4:
Just want to say one thing. When it comes to the Stop the Beef team, in order to stop a beef, you have to have a relationship. And when I say have a relationship, have a relationship. And I deal a lot with young people, you guys. They have to trust you. And when I say trust you, trust the fact that I know that they care about me, they want the best for me. So it’s all about the relationships. So if we are us have a situation, they can reach out to other organizations that’s trustworthy. And one thing I thank God for the organizations that we all work for, we don’t have a foot in and a foot out. Got to be real about this thing. It’s no halfway thing. Either you’re going to be real or you’re going to be fake. And when you are in that position, these young men and young ladies, because there’s a lot of young ladies now that’s carrying guns, you have to be able to put your life on the line.
There’s many a times that our lives just there. Not knowing if we’re going back home, but God. But one thing, relationship, keep that. You have to have a good relationship. And I’m going to be quiet, okay? There we go.
Speaker 6:
About the reentry part, just how important it is to. Just listening to Delmont talk, it’s like, oh, he’s somebody that society would’ve been like, oh, throw him away. You one of the most dangerous and we can’t control you and the choice program ain’t even work. And they’re saying like, okay, throw him away and look at what we have. And so all of the research shows that what happens in the first 48 hours when somebody comes home from prison determines where they’re going to be three and six months later. And so if they come home and they have not resolved conflicts, if they have not rebuilt relationships with the people who’ve been raising their children, if they have not really gotten clear about what does getting a job look like when I come home, I know I’m going to go live with my aunt, but really what’s going to happen when I go there?
If they have not had hard conversations with people who they believe have harmed them. And so when we do reentry mediation and people can two years before they come home, we go into the prison. Whoever they said they wanted to talk to comes in. It took a lot to just build a relationship enough with the Department of Corrections to get them to let us be in rooms with the person who’s incarcerated and who they want to mediate with and no COs can listen and no COs are in the room.That was five good years of Lord Charcotian banging her head against brick walls to be like, no. Because nobody is more institutionalized than people who work within those systems. So all of those people kept saying to us, oh, if y’all come into prison and work with them, they going to be tricking y’all into sending them money and sending them drugs.
And I’m like, boo, it’s just y’all just bringing the drugs in here. I don’t know what y’all talking about.
But when people are coming home, if they have not built strong relationships, if they have not rebuilt trust, if they have not resolved conflict, if we don’t understand that there is no such thing as an offender who has not first been a victim of a lot of things, sometimes it’s a mediation between the son who one of the things he went to jail for is he kept stealing from his mother while he was selling and using drugs. And him and mom are now in mediation before he comes home. So you would go in thinking, oh, he’s the offender, she’s the victim. And we go, okay, what do you all want to talk about? And the first thing out of his mouth to his mother is, how come you always put men before me? And that’s where we’re starting the conversation. And so whatever it is that can be.
And getting into prison is very hard work. It’s as difficult as getting into schools. So just the comparison is crazy. But to get in and be able for people to really have real conversations where there’s no CO presence, there’s no police presence, there’s nobody that works in the prison. There’s just the grassroots volunteer mediators and the people who are having the conflict and need to work it out and make plans about what does a smooth transition home really look like? What is success? What is healing? All of that stuff, what does it really look like? The research shows that people who have that opportunity are in that first two hour session, 8% less likely to reengage with the criminal justice system at all. They can have as many mediations in prison as they want before they come home. With every additional session, it increases by another 10% that they’ll be less likely to reengage with the system.
And all that is happening is they’re building a stronger relationship with the support systems or whatever it is coming home is going to look like. They’re building a stronger foundation to actually, when they come home in that first 48 hours, it’s going to determine a much healthier place they’ll be three and six months later.
Speaker 3:
All right. So what I’ll do is if you have a question, I’ll ask you to raise your hand and a microphone will come right to you. You’ll see a young man in the red vest coming to you with the microphone.
Speaker 8:
Thank you. And just so much respect to all of you for giving hope to Baltimore and our communities. It’s humble to be in your presence today. And I wanted one shout out to Tawanda Jones who’s been doing work in the community to get accountability amongst the police and to reduce the amount of police brutality and violence in our communities that also leads to the violence, community violence. They’re interlinked. And so somewhat in that vein, and I think some of you were kind of touching on this, the fact that our state’s attorney is trying to take out safe streets through the Inspector General’s office, both the state’s attorney’s office and the police trying to grab credit for the things that we all know. I’ve been saying this for a long time, that the only reason we’ve had the reduction in crime is because of folks like you guys doing the work, people who really understand the community and are been a part of it.
But at the same time, I heard you say it takes everybody and everyone has a role, et cetera. But how do you move in those spaces where the police, law enforcement and the state’s attorney’s office are involved? You can’t extract them from everything. We could do it from conflict mediation, et cetera. So the question is, how do you guys move in those spaces to maintain enough of a relationship, but also not to be trapped in it as well?
Speaker 5:
Absolutely. Yeah. Good question. Absolutely a good question. It’s common sense that law enforcement is part of the village. It has its role, its responsibility, its assignment. And that’s why I started with the quote from Eddie Conway that said, “Do your little part.” That’s their part that they have to do. And we hope that they would do that part. We’re not advocating that we don’t want law enforcement to do their job. But what we are saying is that in the work that we do, just specifically in terms of the conflict mediation, that doesn’t work with law enforcement there. I would hope that the state’s attorney is committed to doing his job Right? Because if your idea is that it is acceptable to kill men, women, and children, if your idea is that it is okay, it is cool to harm the elderly in the community, then prison is a mercy for that individual.
But that’s not our job to do, but we will hope that the people whose job it is to do that will deal with that as they should. And they have every right to claim whatever credit that they feel they deserve for doing that. But we are clear in terms of the work that we do. In terms of reducing homicides in non-fatal shootings, we know what we have contributed to because we know what we do on a day-to-day basis throughout every area of the city. So I want to be clear that everybody has a role to play. Everybody has a part to play. There’s no part of the village that gets to sit on the sideline in this and say, “Nah, I’m going to sit this one out.” So we hope that BPD is doing their job and improving that doing they job. Anybody that will say that the Baltimore City Police Department in 2026 is even remotely close to the Baltimore City Police Department from 2015 is just, you’ve been missing.
I don’t know where you’ve been at. Completely different institution, but that’s not our job to talk about. I mean, we don’t talk about it. We let them talk about it. Do y’all job talking about it and we’re going to do what we do over here. We interact. Of course, we interact in the work that we do. We’ve been to plenty community engagement walks with law enforcement. They come, they show up and we politely tell them, look here, we got this.
We’ve been doing this pretty good on our own. Thank you for showing up. They had all of the community meetings, events. We’re in the same space, the same room. So we’re not ducking or not working with each other in a collaborative aspect of doing the work, but we talking specifically about the conflict mediation part. There’s no police involvement in that from our perspective.
Speaker 6:
So the way that I have navigated in all of my work throughout the 30 or however many years with law enforcement specifically and city agencies, state’s attorney, all of that is we just explain to them why it behooves them to do their part in supporting what it is we’re doing. So Patricia Jessame, she was state’s attorney way back in the day. And we did research that showed if people use mediation with us, it reduces the court’s load, right? Because people can make agreements in mediation to drop the charges because they’ve actually resolved whatever the conflict was. And so now the state’s attorney, all they got to do is honor that the people wanted to drop their charges.
And so that made Patricia Jestami set back in the late ’90s a contract every year to fund a position for one of our case workers so that we receive stuff from the state’s attorney when people have conflict. And so when and Ivan Bates comes along, who. When and Ivan Bates comes along, who when we were both on Governor Westmore’s public safety transition team, him and I had very different ideas about what should happen. His office signs a contract with the community mediation center every year to send us money for that position. And I’m not sure he knows it. And I’m glad that he doesn’t know it because from what I’ve experienced, I think that if he knew it, something weird would happen where maybe suddenly we would not get that money.
But in building those relationships and saying, it behooves you. You live in Baltimore too, or you have to work in Baltimore too. And so this work is helping to make your job easier. If we are doing police complaint mediations where a community member who had a problem with the police officer gets to sit down and have an honest conversation with that officer who’s in that community, y’all are saying you need police community relationships to be better so that the murder rate can come down and so that policing can be better. Don’t you want to be seen and saying you support community being able to have these hard, confidential conversations? You know what I mean? And so if you are and honoring individual officers humanity. So Erica Bridgeford is an abolitionist from that standpoint. I think the police department need. I just get rid of the whole thing, do something else.
That’s not where we are in human history right now. I honor and understand that. So I work within while visioning the world that I want, I work within the world that I have. And so from that standpoint, I can honor individual officers as human beings when they show up directly in front of me. And so if you are respecting and honoring what I do, if I show up because somebody got killed on this block and here I am doing a sacred space ritual and I look up and two police cars have blocked off the block because I’m crazy and they got killed in the street. So I’m kissing the ground right in the middle of the street where they were. And the police see that. And without a conversation, they just block off the street so that nobody interferes with the sacred work that’s being done.
I’m going to go over there and hug them and thank them. Thank you for being a human person happened to be wearing a. And you used your authority in that moment to benefit the healing of this community. And so when we treat each other with humanity in the moments that we can and in the work that I do, I’m helping to, when there are those disputes between police and community, I’m a bridge that can help them work on understanding one another as well. While in my personal life, I might be totally against policing, period. You know what I mean? But when I got my mediator hat on, I’m a trusted bridge because in that bridge role, if I hold up one side, this is the bridge and I hold up the side that I agree with, everybody falls into the boundary. So the ethics of our work is very important, whatever your ethics are in it.
And when institutions and agencies and policymakers see that you stand in the ethics of the work that you do without attacking and demonizing them while holding them accountable when it’s necessary, if your humanity shows up, somebody’s humanity is going to show up in that and it’s going to make it go how it’s supposed to go.
Speaker 5:
David, I also want to add this to that. And a lot of times what we get caught up into, we get caught up into the politics of law enforcement, the offices, deceits in terms of the. Because it’s a whole different reality on the ground as opposed to the people who are sitting in the seats running the offices and the administration. It’s a totally different reality. On the ground, BPD has phenomenal community engagement officers that we interact with on a daily basis. I mean, we know them, we got their numbers on speed dial. They have our numbers. So we interact with them daily on the ground. I mean, the real people. And a lot of times that gets lost in the translation of the politics that you see in newspapers and on news shows. And like the chief of school, we are in the schools all day.
We’re in all of Baltimore City public schools engaging young people. So I mean, the chief of Baltimore School Police, Jeff Short is one of us. He’s with We Are Us. So his staff, his team, they do the same kind of work we do from a community perspective, not from a law enforcement perspective. So I mean, just wanted to separate the politics from the community engagement and the people that do the work on a daily basis. They love Baltimore just like we do. And the people with the boots on the ground are doing the work from a community engagement perspective, not necessarily from a law enforcement perspective.
Speaker 7:
Yeah. I was just going to add, when I was growing up, it used to be a thing called officer friendly.
So what we do, we don’t dislike the police. And that’s never to be misunderstood. We love good police. We love good police work. You know what I’m saying? Because if we have a situation with a stop the beef where we need to relocate somebody, we call good police. When we have a situation when a brother need to turn himself in to mediate a conflict because people is in the streets hunting him, we call good police. But again, like Anthony said, you’re not going to really hear about that. You’re never going to hear about us meeting an officer or a couple officers in a house in West Baltimore for a brother to turn himself in. You going to see them on TV walking them into the building like they went and caught him. But we respect good policing, but we have a job to do. I always think about Bill Belichick.
If you ever had been fortunate enough to go to their arena, it’s no signs or nowhere on the wall. Just one thing when you walk in that building and say, do your job. So that’s what we do. We do our job. And then we expect good policemen to do their job when it’s their turn. But when we out and we mediating, we trying to stop it before we even get there. We trying to stop somebody before they pull a trigger to have to engage with the police. We trying to alleviate all that. We trying to cut that off before we even get to that point. Because when you get to the point of no return, then you get into, like he said, a lot of unnecessary politics. So yeah, we work closely with a lot. There’s a lot of, like you said, speed down everything else.
So I definitely want to think that we not, and I often say this when I’m speaking about Stop the Beef because I’m one of the mediators, that the reason why we do no police involvement, because we come from a community and a culture where you’ve seen men from the nation of Islam had to stand in between police and the community doing the Freddie Gray ride. Because our people in our communities have a distrust and a distaste for law enforcement because things have happened that went uncovered, beaten alleys, drugs planning on them. So the last person they want to call is the police. The last person they want to talk to or see is the police. So now you’re starting to see when, because of work like that, you seeing officers sometime may come out and it goes. So now they starting to get to like, oh, when the officer, well, oh yeah, that’s officer such and such.
When I grew up, we knew the officer’s name. High them bright eyes. High them what’s the name? We got out of there because we knew them. They knew our parents. But now they trying to put people in the community to police a community that they don’t know. So when you try to police a people that you don’t know, it’s always going to be conflict. So they got to be boots on the ground also back in the community so you can have an officer so everybody knows. So we come in. You can walk in your community and stop something that I can’t because it’s your community. But if I walk into them little brothers and I say, man, they see me coming. And I go to one of the brothers. And this is real quick. I was just in Hershey Park the other day, literally with some other student because I’m a student support staff member.
Ran into a couple of my little Baltimore brothers. They out there and I jumped up on them. Yeah. Sent a picture to Captain Andrew. And when I was walking off, the grandmother didn’t know who I was, but moms did. So when I was walking off, I heard her say, “Who was that?” She said, “Well, that’s one of the brothers. They everywhere.” And he and Hershey parked acting crazy. I’m just popping up on a whole nother gig. So yeah, you know what I’m saying? But you got to know your people’s communication and relationships matters no matter what you’re doing in this line of work in the community.
Speaker 3:
So after Pastor Ebony makes a remark, we actually have time for one more audience question. Yeah. So Pastor Ebony, you go ahead and then we’ll address what’s happening in the back. Go
Speaker 4:
Ahead. I just want to say one thing. As you mentioned, back in from like 2003 to 2010, police department. And as far as experience, it was hard. Certain things that I witnessed in Baltimore City. And at that time I was a youth pastor. 2018, so I grew up in Cherry Hill. And I’ll say this real quick. My son was murdered August the 15th of 2018. And I would always pray, do the prayer walks for Safe Street and Cherry Hill. Never worked for them. Self-employed. Did 20 something years with Marriott General Manager. However, when my son was murdered and I made it to the scene, I threw my wallet up. So at that time, Safe Street workers, they were trying to find my wallet. The two detective that came in my office at my dealership two days later was like, “Hey, your coworkers, they got rid of all the witnesses.” So I’m saying, “What are you talking about?” He said, “Yeah, one of the officers told me you work for Safe Street, so unfortunately we don’t have anything for you.” And I’m sitting up there.
I’m hurting. Oh my God. And I’m sitting up there saying, wait a minute. First of all, I never was on that payroll. What I do, I volunteer. Bust my butt every day. Hard work dealing with these young people out there. But because they assumed or some of the officers was not doing their job, did not like me. They told these two detective, oh yeah, she worked with Safe Streets. They got rid of all of the witness. So maybe they’re going to figure it out. Maybe they’re going to go and try to hurt them. And I asked that officer, the detective, I said, “Sir, are you serious?” I said, “You just told me that you can’t do anything about my son murder.” He wasn’t in the streets or anything that because someone assumed that I worked with Safe Streets and because they don’t like these guys, they’re not going to do anything about my son murder.
Three weeks later, but I tell you about God.
One of the detective, he called me, he apologized. He was like, “I want to tell you that I’m sorry.” And I was so hurt. I told him, I said, “Get up out my office.” I said, “Leave.” I said, “Leave.” I went down to Southern District and I asked them, the lead detective at the lead office at that time, I said, “Yes, I fight for these children, but wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong is wrong. Right is right. That’s in my book. I don’t care who you are.” And I said, “Because you assume, not knowing who I am, not knowing I work hard.” I’m the general manager at that time, I think at the Fairfield at BWI. I said, “You assume because I’m out here in the community working, that I work with this particular group. So you’re telling these detective not to investigate my son murder. Till this day, the young man has not been arrested.” So when I say that, it’s hard sometime, and I thank God for Colonel Russell because yes, me as a pastor, because of certain things that I witnessed in Baltimore City with the police department, with my own eyes or what they done to young people, it’s hard.
It’s hard. So I’m learning. I would say this year, 2026, I see more officers that genuinely care now in doing their job. My thing is, do your job. Don’t beat them up. That was my thing. Lock them up if they’re doing wrong, but you’re not going to beat them up in my face. You’re not going to plant guns on them. You’re not going to do things like that. So when you say as far as relationship and trust in the officers, I would say today I do. I was a chaplain as well for five years for Baltimore City Police Department. And they had to learn me and I had to learn them. But that’s one thing that I tell you guys. If you don’t know someone, don’t judge them. Get to know who that person is. And this other detective now, he’ll reach out, say, “You know what?
I’m truly, truly sorry. I know it been a long time. I’ve retired, but I’m going to do whatever I can to help you.” So say this, we all go by off of what we experience, what we experience. A lot of these children go off of what they experience. A lot of young men and young ladies that I dealt with in Baltimore City, I had people calling me, “Hey, can you take this gun?” And I’m saying, “A gun?” Well, Sarge said, “If I don’t get a gun, they’re going to plant this gun on me.” So our children experience so much. So then we wonder why they don’t trust the police. That’s the reason why. That’s the reason why. Our young black men have been through so much, but God, you guys, but God. So listen, I’m a pastor, but just to answer your question, I know I’m going to be quiet.
I know I keep saying I’m a pastor, but just to answer your question, it’s all about relationship with the good ones. And I’ll say the good ones. It’s a lot of good ones out here that get up, put that uniform on, that genuinely care. And they are the ones that we have relationships with, that we trust. So that’s it. Yeah. Had to get that off of me.
Speaker 3:
All right. We have time for one more question from the back.
Speaker 9:
First of all, I’d like to say thank you to each and every one of you for the work that you do in our communities. I just left Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, The Lifers Group. Listen to all the things that you just talked about. Listen to the women tell me about the things that you just said, the reentry, the lack of it, the lack of cooperation from the staff, all that. It’s a story that you all know, so I’m not going to repeat it. A couple of weeks ago, me and a couple other ladies did what we called a quarrying call. It was a call to every organization in the city of Baltimore that we knew that was operating and helping our young people, our seniors, whatever community involvement you had. You had an organization we called you out and guess what? See that group up there?
They all were there. They all were there. On the back of my t-shirt, it has a number of groups that were there. And what all we called to say was this. Our young people need us. We are the solution to Baltimore’s problem. You all just said it. You were the solution to lowering those murder rates. We, all of us in here are the solution to what’s Baltimore is going on in Baltimore, not within our young people, with our seniors not feeling comfortable to walk to the store. Our organizations can offer that assistance. All we’re saying is that we can get this done in our city. Let’s continue to have these talks. Let’s continue to have these gatherings. Let’s continue to show up. First day at school was coming up. We got six young men who attacked a 74 year old man a couple of weeks ago at a 71.
You all probably seen it on the news. Guess what? They have not been apprehended, but guess what? It’s going to be groups like We Are Us, Del Mon’s group, pastor’s group. It’s going to be groups like them who go, somebody’s sister.
One of those six men have a mother, a sister, an uncle, a neighbor who knows who they are. Call one of these groups, please. Tell them, let them walk your son. Let them walk your son. Let them talk to your son. Let him do media. Let him do whatever. But try to get them before they kill somebody else. We don’t want them to have a murder charge. They just got an assault charge right now. Let’s get those young people, but also let our young people know accountability is there. It has to be done. But you got the support of a whole community. So if you need to talk to someone to get out of a gang or you’re in a situation where you’ve been bullied into something you don’t want to do, we are us. I mean, I can’t even name the many groups. This lady right here,
You all talk about re-entry. That’s Monica Cooper. Yes, it is. Okay, that’s Monica Cooper. She does the reentry programs. She has an organization called Maryland Justice Project. We would not have a pre-release center proposed now. It hasn’t been built yet because the women in this state of Maryland, they didn’t feel we deserved a pre-release center until Monica got on top of them. Now we are getting a pre-release center so that the women come home can get all the services that you say we needed. Yeah. So there are other people. There’s Mr. Linda Moore in this organization with the Second Good Coalition, who I’m a member of. There’s Delmar. All of you all are members of the Grived Experience Committee. Formerly incarcerated people in this city are doing some great things, you all. We are doing some great things. And all I’m saying to you all is support those organizations that are helping.
Tell your neighbors, tell their children. If they got a little board that they know is doing something wrong, call Muhammad. Tell them, say, “Hey, go. Come walk with me so I can introduce you to little Johnny. Come walk with me so I can. Pastor Ebony, can you come? I want you to talk to Mary Jane or Alicia or whatever her name is. We can do this. Come on now. We can do this.” And that’s what I’m saying. We. We. The we is us. Come on. The we are we. We can do this. Thank you.
All we need. We are we. We are the we. Come on, don’t forget that.
Speaker 5:
Davon, can I add one point to this right here? Yes sir. She mentioned it. And
When Ms. Gwen called me, right? I mean, I had some reservations when she called me. She wouldn’t let me off the phone till she got a confirmation. But I had some reservations and I have to share the reservations because we have to be careful. Just because we are good intention don’t mean that everybody else has good intentions. And there are some people who are deliberately trying to use isolated incidents involving young people to paint a big, broad picture and cut funds. So we have to be careful that we don’t allow ourselves to be used to promote that narrative. That was my reservation. We were there. We showed up at the walk because Ms. Gwen made the call. You can’t not respond, right? But at the same time in my mind is that the enemies of Baltimore, the enemies of young people in Baltimore who are not good intentioned are going to use this.
They’re going to use six young black men and paint the picture that this is all young black men in Baltimore. And I have a problem with that. So we just have to be careful that in our messaging, we are on the same page. That we are not promoting the narrative that this is all black youth in Baltimore City. And I’ll leave it at that.
Speaker 3:
Appreciate that. Appreciate that. So I’m going to just say something quickly. And in fact, Brother Anthony kind of teed up what I wanted to say, which is that all the work that has been talked about in the film and on this panel, this work is under attack. And folks that are familiar with LBS, Sinclair Broadcasting, David Smith, who owns the Baltimore Sun, Fox 45, ABC seven. These are folks for whom are carrying out a political agenda that benefits the law enforcement establishment, Maryland State’s Attorney’s Association, FOP, the Association of Police Chiefs and Sheriffs. These are folks that are tied into a media company and a media empire that is putting out propaganda for the purpose of taking away the resources that funded a lot of the work that you see on screen. So that’s one of the things that I wanted to make sure to communicate because in order to protect the work, we have to fight against the enemies of our community that are trying to take the resources away to do the work.
And one of the things that I’ll quickly add is that one of the things that LBS will be working on in the 2027 Maryland General Assembly is to have legislation passed that will bar the state of Maryland from doing business with Sinclair and any of the things that David Smith owns. So that’s something we’ll be working on in 2027.
Speaker 6:
Ever.
Speaker 3:
And for us, that’s our role in the ecosystem in terms of violence prevention. Our role is to protect the work. And so that’s one of the things I wanted to make sure to share. There will be another screening at the Parkway Theater on August 29th on a Saturday. Please get your tickets. Tell all your friends it’s going to sell out. So get it sooner than later. The other thing that I want to announce is that Rashim and I have been having conversations about, and I hope you don’t mind me sharing this. One of the things that I often have said to her about this documentary is that part of the beauty of it is that it gives humanity to folks that typically their humanity has to be qualified. You know what I’m saying? And because it’s an independent project, that she was able to really give voice to that in a way that folks that are operating within institutional constraints, you often have to think about what are white folks going to think?
What are the institutions going to think? And none of that appears in the documentary. And I think that the evidence of that is that the Department of Corrections is in talks and want to make this available to those that are behind the walls.
So I think it speaks to the importance of these narratives about the power of them and the importance of people actually understanding the benefit of this work and also understanding the importance of protecting the work. So again, please make sure, tell all your friends, August 29th is the next screening. When you go out and it costs money to do it, so please, if there’s QR codes out on the front desk that’ll allow you to be able to contribute, to make contributions. This project, it is independent. There’ve been a handful of folks that have invested, but not nearly at the level that you would get from films of this quality. So it’s extremely important that you all continue to contribute, to promote the work, to provide resources, and also do the surveys. Dr. Rashim is a social scientist, so she likes reading those surveys. She actually does read them.
We’d be sitting together, she’d be reading through the surveys. So it’s really important. So if you click the QR code to be able to fill out the survey, to give good feedback, it really helps the project move forward. Give the panel another round of applause.
All right. Safe travels on the rest of your Saturday afternoon. You all take care. Thank
The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently launched a process to significantly revise its Travel Management Rule, which guides where motorized vehicles are and are not allowed on almost 200 million acres of national forests and grasslands.
The USDA is proposing to flip the U.S. Forest Service’s longstanding approach to travel management on its head, forcing local forests to allow motorized vehicles everywhere except for places that are specifically closed. The current rule requires motorized vehicles to stay on a designated system of roads, trails and areas in national forests and grasslands and is an essential policy for wildlife conservation, balanced recreation, and public safety.
This comes directly on the heels of the USDA’s proposed repeal of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which would make 45 million acres of remote backcountry forests available for clearcut logging, road-building and other development, unleashing back-to-back blows to our national forests. Combined, these actions are part of the administration’s systematic dismantling of the rules and safeguards that keep national forests safe, accessible, and managed for everyone.
“This is yet another egregious attack in the systematic dismantling of public lands management of our national forests,” said Dan Hartinger, senior director for agency policy at The Wilderness Society. “Travel management provides the basic guardrails that let hikers, hunters, anglers, and riders share the same forest without chaos; removing those guardrails threatens the freedom of all public lands users to safely enjoy our national forests the way they choose. Paired with the proposed repeal of the Roadless Rule, this destructive agenda sells out future generations’ enjoyment of our forests in order to hand them over for corporate profits.”
“The Travel Management Rule creates a framework that balances uses on national forest lands. It draws on local decision-making processes to support all user groups in enjoying public lands while also protecting these places for future generations,” said Anneka Williams, policy director at Winter Wildlands Alliance. “Removing this framework for shared use threatens diverse user experiences on public lands. Coming on the heels of the proposed repeal of the Roadless Rule, it is clear that this announcement is part of the administration’s broader agenda to dismantle our public lands as we know and love them.”
“The Travel Management Rule is why dirtbikers and snowmobilers can share national forests with hikers and backcountry skiers without conflict. It’s built on local decision-making that ensures no user group gets steamrolled and all our national forest values are protected,” said Hilary Eisen, federal policy director at Wild Montana. “Just days after doubling down on repealing the Roadless Rule, this announcement makes the administration’s plan obvious: gut the rules requiring the Forest Service to manage our natural resources carefully and listen to the public, then open the gates to industry and extraction. The Roadless rescission already showed that Forest Service leadership doesn’t value public input, science, or expert management. They’ve lost the public’s trust, and should expect the public to hold them accountable.”
“The USDA’s announcement to gut the Travel Management Rule and the Roadless Rule in the same week is a one-two punch that together deals a tremendous blow to wildlife,” said Vera Smith, director of national forests and public lands at Defenders of Wildlife. “The Travel Management Rule states simply that motorized vehicles must stay on routes and areas designated locally for that use. The Forest Service issued the rule over 20 years ago to curb damage from unmanaged recreation, reduce user conflict and protect public safety. Rescinding it now is irresponsible and reckless.”
“Just after this administration moved to eliminate protections for Roadless Areas, it is now proposing to gut the Travel Management Rule that for 20 years has ensured the Forest Service manages motorized recreation in a manner that minimizes damage, protects other visitors, and responds when vehicle use is harming public land resources,” said Adam Rissien rewilding manager at WildEarth Guardians. “Eliminating those protections will not improve access. It would replace locally developed plans with uncertainty, conflict, and unmanaged use.”
“Just days after its proposed rescission of the Roadless Rule, the administration is now attempting to open up our national forests to more off-road vehicle use that will degrade the landscape and disturb wildlife and other land users,” said Thomas Delehanty, senior attorney with Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain Office. “Some places in our national forests are meant for quiet, undisturbed recreation and protecting sensitive wildlife, including endangered species. This rule would open all roads and trails to ORVs by default, meaning areas set aside for hiking, hunting, or horseback riding could soon be fair game to four-wheelers and dirt bikes.”
“The Trump Administration’s proposal to fundamentally alter the Travel Management Rule will change for the worse how Utahns experience national forests throughout the state, from the Wasatch Front to redrock country outside Escalante and Moab,” said Laura Peterson, senior attorney at Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). “The proposal will place a heavy thumb on the scale to prioritize off-road vehicle use at the expense of all other uses of the national forests, including the protection of wildlife, cultural sites, streams and wild places. This move will not improve access to public lands, but it will make the experience of recreating on public lands worse for all users, including hikers, bikers, hunters, anglers and riders.”
“For over two decades the Travel Management Rule has ensured our National Forests are managed to host an array of user groups, while safeguarding the health and future of our public lands,” said Peggie dePasquale, National Forest Wildlands Director at the Wyoming Wilderness Association (WWA). “We are now witnessing a troublesome undoing of this effective management tool that the American people, especially here in Wyoming, have come to rely on for sustainable and relied upon access. It is critical that we raise our voices to send a clear message that the proposed revision goes against public interest and is bad news for the future of our natural world.”
“The existing travel management planning process allows the public to meaningfully weigh in on where vehicles do and don’t belong in our national forests. Repealing this rule hands that decision to political appointees in Washington, who have decided that every road, trail, and meadow should be open to motorized use, no matter the conflicts with other users or wildlife,” said Center for Western Priorities (CWP) Communications Director Kate Groetzinger. “Repealing this rule is also a recipe for more wildfire in a region that cannot afford it. Putting hot engines deeper into dry forests during longer and hotter fire seasons will increase wildfire risk, and Western communities will pay for it.”
Travel management is supported by a diverse group of public lands users.
This proposal to revise the Travel Management Rule is out of touch with everyday Americans who use our forested public lands. Motorized groups, recreationalists, sportsmen, conservation organizations, local communities and other public land users nationwide have spoken out in opposition:
Pennsylvania's Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro signed an executive order on August 18 aimed at placing new restrictions on data center construction in the state.
The Details: In summary, the Governor's Press Office says Shapiro now requires prospective data developers to legally bind themselves to new state guidelines regarding "energy affordability, community engagement, workforce and economic development, transparency, and environmental protection" that give "local municipalities a greater say over development in their communities."
Key Quote: Shapiro said, "Over the past year, I've listened to the people of Pennsylvania… My message to data center developers is clear: if you can't agree to our strict requirements and get the community where you want to build to say 'yes,' you're not going to have the Commonwealth's support either. These are some of the biggest companies in the world – they can afford to be good neighbors."
Data Centers in PA: Data centers have been a particularly controversial issue in Pennsylvania over the past year. In December, Emerson College polling found that 42% of Pennsylvanians opposed them being built in their neighborhoods, with women opposing them more than men. Quinnipiac University polling published in July found 74% of registered Pennsylvania voters opposed data centers being built in their neighborhoods. The same polling found 34% of registered voters disapproved of Shapiro's handling of data centers, with 24% approving, including 40% of Democrats.
RELATED: The Insight: The Data Center Dilemma | AllSides
Political Context: Back in June, Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-PA) introduced a bill in the US House aimed at curbing "large corporations' ability to litigate and attempt to overturn local decisions regarding data centers." Shapiro will face Pennsylvania's Republican Treasurer Stacy Garrity in Pennsylvania's gubernatorial race in November and currently holds a significant lead in the polls. After signing the order, Garrity called on Shapiro to return $5.7 million in campaign contributions he received from donors involved in AI and data center construction. Philadelphian outlet Broad + Liberty (Lean Right bias) highlighted this in a headline.
Fetterman's Take: Days after Shapiro signed the order, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) wrote on X, "AI supremacy and energy dominance underpins our national security. China continues to fuel and benefit from our overreaction. I reject the political pandering and hyperbole over data centers or AI doomsdaying." The Washington Examiner (Lean Right) said Fetterman, whom it described as "one of the more centrist Democrats" has "consistently pushed back against such data center and broader AI doomerism throughout the summer, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been forced to take a policy position on an issue that's both new and subject to shifting public opinion."
RELATED: The Wall Street Journal Has a Strong Pro-Data Center Bias | AllSides
How The Media Covered It: Outlets across the spectrum framed the move as a change of course for Shapiro, with many highlighting that last year he touted Amazon's decision to spend $20 billion on data centers in Pennsylvania. An analysis from Axios (Lean Left) said his pivot "says plenty about the evolving politics of AI" and noted that he is "in the 2028 presidential mix." Chris Kelly of Pennsylvania's Scranton Times-Tribune (Lean Left) said for Shapiro, "any association with the data center invasion would be a heavy burden" on his presidential hopes. Kelly added, "Some may forgive Shapiro for his earnest early cheerleading for data centers, but no one should forget it." Salena Zito of Townhall (Right) called Shapiro's order "striking and a reversal of evolution in the state's approach." She said data centers have "become the boogeyman in the wings of both parties" and called for "neither fear of the industry nor unconditional approval of every proposal."
Written by the AllSides staff (of humans). Learn more. Support our mission. Suggest an improvement to this summary.
More than 150 wallets on Polymarket International are thought to be involved in insider trading on US military information, according to a report by the Anti-Corruption Data Collective (ACDC).
The Details: ACDC found 556 accounts that it referred to as "Orcas," which it said typically opened accounts within days of a successful longshot bet and won big in niche markets. Of these, 152 of them placed longshot bets in military and defense markets, winning $8 million collectively at an average win rate of 97.2%, according to Reuters (Center bias). According to the report, those are the wallets most likely to be trading military secrets. CNN (Lean Left) reported that prior to the report's release, Polymarket referred "dozens" of accounts to the Justice Department for investigation into insider trading.
For Context: There have been several instances of suspected insider trading on prediction markets over the last year. In March, bets on a five-day pause on strikes on Iran and a US-Iran ceasefire deal made anonymous users roughly $580 million and $820,000. In April, a US soldier was charged with using classified information to bet on the removal of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January.
RELATED: The Insight: The Rise of Prediction Markets
How the Media Covered It: Reuters was the first to report on the ACDC report. It framed the finding within other suspected military insider trading this year. It also cited ACDC concerns of copycat trades by bots and "deep-pocketed" users. CNN and the Washington Examiner (Lean Right) both covered Polymarket reporting the accounts to the Justice Department. CNN cited comments from the Polymarket Founder and CEO about the company's efforts to crackdown on insider trading. The outlet wrote these "haven't stopped investigators getting involved" and noted Polymarket is currently subject to lawmakers imposing regulations.
The Washington Examiner was the only right-leaning source AllSides only found coverage from.
Written by the AllSides staff (of humans). Learn more. Support our mission. Suggest an improvement to this summary.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) reportedly broadcasted "Where and how should we kill Barron Trump?" on Iranian state media and allegedly placed a $10 million bounty on the 20-year-old's head.
The Details: The three-minute video, also translated to "Where to kill Barron Trump," said President Donald Trump's son is "fully monitored." It claimed to have tracked his Secret Service and escort vehicles' positions, as well as his Xbox, FIFA, and Discord accounts. The video, broadcast on Iranian state television's Channel 3, also alleged that "a girl" spied on Barron and leaked private information from an unspecified meeting. It concluded, "This is just the beginning! Barron Trump, wait for us!"
@IsraelWarRoom/X via New York Post.">
Similar Campaigns: The IRGC-linked outlet Tasnim News Agency (not rated) released the video "Where to Kill Melania?" in July, calling on "freedom fighters" to target the first lady's location. (The title is according to New York Post's [Right bias] translation. Euronews [Center] translated the title to "Where and how is Melania Trump accessible?").
The state also released a video called "Where to Kill [Donald] Trump?!," and it allotted a billboard in Tehran's Islamic Revolution Square that read "We will kill Trump" and depicted Trump dead in a coffin. Additionally, the US Secret Service is reviewing another video that claimed to show the president's travel paths.
RELATED: Israeli Officials Tell US That Iran Plans to Assassinate Trump | AllSides
How The Media Covered It: Outlets across the political spectrum said they could not independently verify the legitimacy of the bounty. Israeli media such as The Jerusalem Post (Center bias) and The Times of Israel (Center) highlighted the story.
New York Post framed Iran's future in the conflict with the US pessimistically, highlighting, "Ahead of the Trump administration's rollout of crippling measures, Iran's currency, the rial, plunged to a new low, trading at roughly 1.5 million rials to the dollar." It also gave voice to Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who said last week, "No matter how much military power we have, if people are hungry and we do not have financial circulation and economic growth, we will not endure."
Euronews highlighted Iranian-run media commentators who justified the threats against President Trump under Islam's "qisas" rule. Mohammad-Javad Larijani, for example, said, "We will do whatever is in our power, and there is no international legal barrier to stop us." The outlet also cited Trump's January comment that the US would "wipe the Islamic Republic off the face of the Earth" if the state carried out threats to take his life.
RELATED: Trump Reportedly Switched Aircraft Amid Iranian Assassination Threat | AllSides
For Context: The Post reported, "Recently, Trump has been ratcheting up his pressure campaign on Iran, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiling an 'economic D-Day' plan to decimate Tehran's economy." The president posted to Truth Social Monday, following the reports about Barron, "IRAN IS COMPLETELY COLLAPSING!!!" However, Raw Story (Left) highlighted, "Trump has frequently claimed that Iran was nearing collapse."
Written by the AllSides staff (of humans). Learn more. Support our mission. Suggest an improvement to this summary. Image Credit: @IsraelWarRoom/X via New York Post.
Editor's Note: a previous version of this summary inaccurately implied that Jerusalem Post and Times of Israel are funded by Israel's government.
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) expanded access to abortions and transgender treatments on Thursday.
The Details: The new law expands shield laws for those seeking abortions and transgender treatments in the state, and it criminalizes "intimidation" and "interference" of services. Sherrill signed the bill, S2260/A2218, into law at a Planned Parenthood in Montclair, New Jersey, after it passed 25-15 in the Senate and 55-23 in the General Assembly in June. In a press release published on Thursday, she touted her administration's $52 million directive for abortion services in fiscal year 2027.
Could People Be Arrested For Praying Outside Abortion Clinics? The law specifically criminalizes "the intimidat[ion of a] person from becoming or remaining a patient, provider, volunteer, or assistant of reproductive healthcare services, if the conduct would cause a reasonable person to be intimidated."
While administrative spokeswoman Maggie Garbarino said the law doesn't prevent "lawful, peaceful protest or the exercise of constitutionally protected speech," she asserted that it does prevent "violence, threats, intimidation, physical obstruction, [and] property damage." But New Jersey Right to Life Director Marie Tasy contested the subjectivity in the law's wording: "Peaceful sidewalk counseling, prayer, holding signs, or simply offering help and alternatives outside a facility can easily be labeled 'intimidation' by someone who claims to feel threatened, leaving pro-life advocates open to criminal charges that are difficult to disprove and chilling constitutionally protected expression."
RELATED: Which Should Receive Funding: Planned Parenthood or Pregnancy Resource Centers? | AllSides
Is It Easier To Get An AR-15 Than An Abortion In The US? Sherrill claimed, "In the past four years, 13 states … have enacted [near] total abortion bans. It's easier to get an AR-15 in the United States than it is to get an abortion."
While each state includes nuanced legislation for both gun and abortion laws, the data is roughly as follows:
RELATED: Biden Admin 'Weaponized' the FACE Act: DOJ Report | AllSides
Written by the AllSides staff (of humans). Learn more. Support our mission. Suggest an improvement to this summary.
Dolly Parton, the legendary singer-songwriter who rose from poverty in the Smoky Mountains to become one of the most beloved and enduring figures in American music, has died. She was 80 years old. Dolly Parton [...]
The post Dolly Parton, Who Called For Epstein’s VIP Pedophiles To Be Executed For Treason, Dead at 80 appeared first on The People's Voice.
Em Lagoa está a decorrer até domingo, dia 30 de agosto, mais uma edição da FATACIL.
Quem se deslocar ao espaço vai poder encontrar centenas de stands de artesanato, comércio e indústria, muitas opções ao nível da restauração e espetáculos equestres.
Mas, o que leva muita gente à FATACIL é a música.
Grandes figuras do panorama nacional têm passado por lá nos primeiros dias e vão continuar até ao último dia.
Para já, o destaque maior vai para os Vizinhos, que atuaram esta segunda-feira e fizeram a melhor ‘casa’, em termos de visitantes.
O grupo alentejano conseguiu levar a Lagoa mais de 24 mil pessoas, o que é – até agora – o recorde deste ano, acima até do que fez o popular cantor romântico Tony Carreira, que atuou no primeiro dia.
No sábado, o palco principal recebeu uma Festa M80 e, no domingo, atuou o grupo Hybrid Theory.
Esta noite, a música fica por conta do rapper Plutónio; amanhã, quarta-feira, vai fazer-se ouvir a voz potente de Sara Correia e na quinta-feira, o humor e as músicas malandrecas de Quim Barreiros vão animar quem aí se deslocar.
Richie Campbell é o senhor que se segue, na sexta-feira, e no sábado vai, de certeza, registar-se mais uma grande enchente, uma vez que para essa noite está agendado um concerto de Nininho Vaz Maia.
A edição deste ano da FATACIL encerra no domingo, com uma atuação do grupo Os Quatro e Meia.
Um ferido ligeiro foi o resultado de uma colisão rodoviária entre um veículo pesado e uma viatura ligeira ocorrida na tarde desta terça-feira, dia 25 de agosto, na Autoestrada A12, no sentido Pinhal Novo–Montijo.
O alerta para o acidente foi dado pelas 17:26, tendo sido mobilizado o Corpo de Bombeiros do Pinhal Novo para o local, no troço compreendido entre os quilómetros 4 e 5 da referida via.
Segundo o Corpo de Bombeiros do Pinhal Novo, do sinistro resultou uma vítima com ferimentos ligeiros, à qual foi prestado o devido socorro no local pelas equipas de emergência, tendo sido posteriormente transportada para a unidade hospitalar mais próxima.
Por: Dino Frazão
25/08/2026
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© 2026 Os Monhacas. Todos os direitos reservados.
Este é um projeto independente de criação de conteúdos.
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O conteúdo Colisão entre pesado e ligeiro na A12 provoca um ferido ligeiro aparece primeiro em OS MONHACAS.
OS MONHACAS Duas pessoas sofreram ferimentos ligeiros na sequência de uma colisão rodoviária entre dois veículos pesados e um ligeiro na EN118, ao quilómetro 24,613, na freguesia de Samora Correia, concelho de Benavente.
O alerta para o acidente foi dado às 16:39 desta terça-feira, dia 25 de agosto, mobilizando 20 operacionais e 5 veículos de socorro. Para o local foram acionados os Bombeiros Voluntários de Samora Correia e de Alcochete, a Viatura Médica de Emergência e Reanimação (VMER) de Vila Franca de Xira e o helicóptero do INEM sediado em Évora. O meio aéreo acabou por ser desmobilizado após a chegada das equipas terrestres e a avaliação das vítimas na via.
Segundo a Autoridade Nacional de Emergência e Proteção Civil, do sinistro resultaram quatro vítimas: dois feridos ligeiros que foram transportados para o Hospital de Vila Franca de Xira e duas pessoas assistidas no local que recusaram transporte hospitalar. Devido às operações de socorro e remoção dos veículos pesados, a circulação na Estrada Nacional 118 esteve totalmente cortada ao trânsito.
Por: Dino Frazão
25/08/2026
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© 2026 Os Monhacas. Todos os direitos reservados.
Este é um projeto independente de criação de conteúdos.
Se gostou do que leu e ainda não é seguidor, siga a nossa página para ver mais conteúdos!
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O conteúdo Colisão entre dois pesados e um ligeiro corta EN118 em Samora Correia e mobiliza meio aéreo do INEM aparece primeiro em OS MONHACAS.
Carinhosamente conhecida como “Rainha” na Estrutura Residencial para Idosos da Santa Casa da Misericórdia de São Brás de Alportel, onde residia, Maria da Conceição nasceu em 1912, dois anos antes da fundação do concelho de São Brás de Alportel.
Ao longo dos seus 113 anos de vida, foi testemunha de momentos marcantes da história de Portugal e do mundo, atravessando diferentes épocas e profundas transformações do país, desde o nascimento do concelho de São Brás de Alportel até à democracia, à integração de Portugal na União Europeia e à atualidade.
Ao longo dos anos, a sua longevidade e a sua história de vida foram motivo de carinho e reconhecimento por parte da comunidade são-brasense, que acompanhou e celebrou vários dos seus aniversários.
Em setembro de 2020, durante uma visita oficial ao concelho, o então Presidente da República, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, teve oportunidade de conhecer Maria da Conceição. Desde então, fez questão de lhe dirigir uma mensagem de parabéns por ocasião do seu aniversário.
Mulher de atitude e boa disposição , Maria da Conceição conquistou o carinho de todos os que com ela privaram, deixando na memória de quem a conheceu a marca de uma personalidade singular e de uma vida extraordinariamente longa.
O Município de São Brás de Alportel recorda, com respeito, carinho e gratidão, esta são-brasense que deixa uma história de vida singular, marcada por mais de um século de memórias e vivências.
À família e muito especialmente à Santa Casa da Misericórdia, à que foi família, com uma dedicação e abnegação inexcedíveis, o Município apresenta as mais sentidas condolências, com profunda gratidão.
Portimão e Alvor são os destinos do próximo Passeio Sénior, integrado no projeto “Vida com Ritmo – Programa Mais Vida à Vida”, promovido pelo Município de Olhão. A iniciativa pretende proporcionar à população sénior do concelho um dia de convívio, cultura e descoberta.
O próximo Passeio Sénior convida os maiores de 60 anos residentes no concelho de Olhão a conhecer a história, a cultura e o património natural de Portimão e Alvor.
O programa inclui uma visita ao Museu de Portimão, instalado nas antigas instalações da Fábrica de Conservas Feu. Os participantes terão oportunidade de conhecer a exposição permanente Portimão, Território e Identidade, que aborda a relação da cidade com o rio Arade, o mar e a indústria conserveira.
Durante a tarde, o passeio prossegue pela Ria de Alvor, numa visita que permitirá contactar com uma paisagem marcada pela natureza, pela memória e pela tradição piscatória. Entre os locais previstos estão a antiga Lota e o histórico Edifício de Socorro a Náufragos, onde se encontra um barco salva-vidas dos anos 20 do século passado, testemunho da história marítima da região.
A iniciativa realiza-se em várias datas, entre setembro e outubro: 15, 18, 22, 25 e 29 de setembro, e 2, 6, 9, 13, 16, 20 e 23 de outubro.
As inscrições decorrem em diferentes juntas de freguesia do concelho. No dia 31 de agosto, podem ser efetuadas na Junta de Freguesia de Moncarapacho; a 1 de setembro, na Junta de Freguesia de Olhão; a 2 de setembro, na Junta de Freguesia de Pechão; a 3 de setembro, na Junta de Freguesia de Quelfes; e a 4 de setembro, na Junta de Freguesia de Fuseta.
Com esta iniciativa, o Município de Olhão pretende proporcionar aos seniores do concelho uma oportunidade para sair da rotina, conviver, conhecer novos lugares e descobrir o património cultural e natural da região.
Avaliação técnica dos serviços municipais aponta para uma intervenção na Pedra Mourinha e para a instalação de semáforos inteligentes na Avenida Miguel Bombarda, em alternativa à construção de uma rotunda.
Uma proposta apresentada pelos vereadores eleitos pela coligação PSD/CDS-PP/IL, indicados pelo PSD, Carlos Gouveia Martins e Alexandra Evangelista, está a dar origem a respostas concretas para dois pontos considerados sensíveis na circulação rodoviária em Portimão.
A iniciativa foi apresentada na reunião de Câmara de 17 de junho de 2026 e incidiu sobre a interseção da Pedra Mourinha e o cruzamento entre a Avenida Miguel Bombarda e a Avenida Zeca Afonso. Os vereadores solicitaram uma avaliação técnica que permitisse analisar diferentes soluções para melhorar a circulação e a segurança rodoviária.
Na Pedra Mourinha, os serviços municipais informaram que o projeto de arruamentos e de iluminação pública está concluído, estando apenas a aguardar-se a conclusão do projeto de iluminação pública pela E-REDES. Depois dessa etapa, estarão reunidas as condições necessárias para avançar para o procedimento de contratação pública.
Para os vereadores do PSD, a intervenção representa um passo importante numa zona onde a reorganização da circulação é há muito reclamada por moradores, condutores e utilizadores. O partido defende agora que o Município deve calendarizar o procedimento e avançar para a execução da intervenção.
Já no cruzamento da Avenida Miguel Bombarda com a Avenida Zeca Afonso, a avaliação técnica dos serviços municipais concluiu que a construção de uma rotunda, estimada em cerca de 500 mil euros, não se justifica perante os constrangimentos atualmente identificados e a relação custo-benefício da obra.
Como alternativa, os serviços apontam para a instalação de um sistema de semáforos inteligentes, com um custo estimado de cerca de 80 mil euros. A solução deverá permitir melhorar a fluidez do trânsito nos períodos de maior afluência e reforçar a segurança rodoviária.
Carlos Gouveia Martins e Alexandra Evangelista consideram que a resposta técnica confirma o objetivo da proposta apresentada em junho: identificar os problemas, promover uma avaliação técnica e deixar que a solução final seja determinada pelos estudos realizados.
Os vereadores deixam ainda um reconhecimento público ao trabalho dos técnicos municipais, em particular à área da gestão da rede viária, pelo levantamento realizado e pela apresentação de soluções consideradas práticas e financeiramente prudentes.
Para o PSD, as duas intervenções devem ser enquadradas numa estratégia mais abrangente para a mobilidade em Portimão, assente na melhoria da circulação, no reforço da segurança, na gestão inteligente do trânsito e na utilização de dados para apoiar as decisões.
O partido defende, por isso, que a Câmara Municipal avance agora com a calendarização da intervenção prevista para a Pedra Mourinha e com a formalização da solução dos semáforos inteligentes para a Avenida Miguel Bombarda, definindo o respetivo enquadramento técnico e financeiro e o prazo de execução.
A Biblioteca Municipal José Saramago, em Odemira, reabre ao público no próximo dia 5 de setembro, a partir das 16h00, depois de um período de obras de requalificação. A reabertura será assinalada com uma tarde dedicada à cultura, à criatividade e à comunidade, com um programa que reúne literatura, teatro, artes performativas, exposições, oficinas e música.
O momento de reabertura contará com uma leitura do texto E também aqueles dias, de José Saramago, por Sónia Barradas, numa homenagem ao escritor que dá nome à biblioteca. A cerimónia contará com a presença do Presidente da Câmara Municipal de Odemira, Hélder Guerreiro, da Presidente da Assembleia Municipal de Odemira, Rita Balbino Costa, da Presidente da Fundação José Saramago, Pilar del Río, e da atriz Maria do Céu Guerra.
A programação prossegue com a performance Desembarcamos?, uma criação de Nisa Eliziário e Mário Trigo, com produção do projeto teatral HIPÉRION. Segue-se a inauguração da exposição Substância – Arte e Psicanálise, de João Adolfo Nogueira, e uma intervenção de Estátua Viva, por Clown Enano.
A tarde será também marcada pela participação do público, através de um workshop de estampagem com objetos, dinamizado por Emma-France Raff. A programação inclui ainda duas apresentações editoriais: o livro infantil Canta-me tudo: Quando a chuva voltar, é tempo de semear, de Inês Pereira, e a publicação Histórias à Sombra do Montado (n.º 4), que contará com a presença do ilustrador Alain Corbel.
A celebração dos 26 anos da Biblioteca Municipal José Saramago inclui ainda o tradicional momento de “soprar as velas”. O programa termina com um concerto da Flower Power Street Band, encerrando uma tarde de celebração aberta à comunidade.
Depois das obras de requalificação, a Biblioteca Municipal José Saramago apresenta-se agora como um espaço renovado, mais moderno e inovador, preparado para responder às atuais necessidades culturais e de informação da população.
A intervenção pretende reforçar o papel da biblioteca enquanto espaço de conhecimento, aprendizagem, encontro e dinamização cultural, promovendo o acesso à cultura e à informação e proporcionando novas experiências à comunidade.
A reabertura, no dia 5 de setembro, marca assim uma nova etapa na vida deste equipamento municipal, que continua a afirmar-se como um importante ponto de encontro cultural no concelho de Odemira.
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