Final Reflection

Our final class project was eye-opening to say the least. I learned a lot about the city of Baltimore and it's inhabitants. I always felt I was doing more than a school project; what we were trying to accomplish was too important and necessitated much more work, effort, and cooperation than a school project would have needed.

This project provided us with life experience. We had to work very closely with our group members and with the community of Baltimore. These were the most important elements of the project: needing to work as part of team and having to understand and properly portray the story of the people of Baltimore who's voices go unheard. These cannot be changed for future students taking this course.

Working as a team and knowing your role in it worked great for my group, but I believe the cooperation and dedication we had to one another was fairly unusual. I think that in order to best prepare groups for the work they will be doing, they need to do some kind of group work or activities before hand, however I'm unsure of how to best do this. Possibly groups could simply learn how to edit audio or have mock interviews with each other just to figure out what everyone is best at, they could work on easier assignments first that require teamwork, or maybe they could go into Baltimore to start getting a more personal understanding of what they are doing.

This semester, the most important thing I learned was that race still plays a very large role in today's society than I believed it ever could; people are still clearly discriminated against without the world at large knowing about it. I honestly wasn't sure what I expected to learn from this class, but I feel that I have become more aware of the world around me after this course. I was guilty of making assumptions of people who don't deserve that. I consider the history of what has happened in our country that has affected them personally and had a great influence in both placing them in the horrible living conditions, or lack there of, that they must endure, and in earning them unjust assumptions and treatment from the world around them.

Now what I want to know is what can be done to, at a local level, make the lives for Baltimore citizens normal, uninfluenced by the past. I know that it would at least require for the city of Baltimore to provide plenty of affordable and healthy housing, but that won't be enough; and on a national level that probably won't even scratch the surface. On a personal level, I need to not fall back into old ways, and try to help others understand what's happening where I can. Hopefully, if enough people were to do this it would eventually inspire positive change. Change is hard for a lot of people though, they're afraid of it even if it leads to the greatest possible outcome. How do you combat that?

The Law, and How to Tell its Story

I had a really difficult time wrapping the fact around my head that Eddie Conway had been imprisoned for 44 years and was only recently released. I haven't even been alive for half that time, and my parents are only 46. He was imprisoned for nearly the entire time my parents have been alive, I can't even begin to comprehend what it must have been like for him. I was also surprised to hear about how the group he was a member of, The Black Panther Party, was targeted and their members were killed or imprisoned despite the fact that all they wanted was peace for everybody. I've heard stories like it before, but hearing it first hand from someone who was made into a victim is so different.

Our group has a few ideas about how to tell the "Law" part of the story. There are interesting facts that could be shared in this segment, such as statistics of what type of people are imprisoned in Maryland, what they were convicted of, student arrests, etc. Data that has been shared with us in previous lectures seems to point to a racial difference in how the law is applied enforced. Race is hugely important in this topic, it's not something we can ignore, there are clearly differences in how separate races are treated and that needs to be addressed. I feel that we should interview lawyers (defense attorneys and prosecutors) to gain an understanding of the topic from individuals who have devoted their lives to studying and practicing "Law."

Project Proposal

I feel that this project is best adapted to a radio series if we make our five segments separate but connected. I think that each segment should focus on their own topic related to the overarching issue of racial discrimination in Baltimore. By doing this, each group could give the historical context of the issue they are covering (such as Red Lining for housing gentrification) so they can tell a complete story about that topic's past and its long lasting / present day effects. This presentation style would make so if a listener who caught segment three of our five part series could fully understand everything that is mentioned within that segment without the need of hearing the previous second and first segments because all the context would be provided for them already.

That being said, I'm not entirely sure what the best way to represent history in this series would be. I know that I'd want each segment to focus on their own history, but I am unsure of what the best way to present that history is. I don't think providing a quick 2-3 minute lecture at the beginning of the segment is best for getting and keeping an audience interested. Perhaps we could mention key points that have had very large and noticeable impacts for today and possibly use clips of our in class discussions with our guests to input a professional's knowledge on the topic.

Finally there are the topics themselves. I think that some key topics would be Housing, Policing, and Law to name a few. I realize these sound vague, but further detail could include statistics of where student arrests in Maryland are, under what charges are people in Maryland incarcerated for, what types of people are incarcerated, etc.



Has 50 years of change in Baltimore assisted at all in lessening racial discrimination?
How likely are ex-convicts to find work after they have done time?

The Law and Race

The statistics that surprised me the most were the ones pertaining to the types of people in Maryland jails and what charges they most likely are there with. 77% of incarcerated individuals in Maryland are African American, and African Americans only make up 28% of Maryland's overall population. 90% of incarcerated African Americans in Maryland jails were incarcerated for a drug charge. I was also astonished to hear that even though only 10% of Maryland's student population attends schools in Baltimore, 90% of school arrests are in Baltimore City. How can a minority of both these populations, make up the astounding majority of arrests and incarcerations? Do I really not know Baltimore that much at all? They don't use drugs anymore than other races do. Maybe they just get caught more than other people do, which could be possible because of how much more heavily they are policed. But if that's the case, then why isn't everyone else as heavily policed? Each race does drugs just as much as any other. The data we heard from last lecture seems to indicate that there is something wrong with the system that has led to these numbers. The policing system we have now has flaws. In neighborhoods like where Freddie Gray lived the police can easily stop and search someone they deem suspicious just because they walked the other way. These are very large issues that many people are still ignorant about I'm sure; hopefully we can fix that with the story we will be telling.

Home and Gentrification

Last class we had a few members from Communities Unite come and speak with us. They brought up some points that really impacted me. John talked about that how the police running tanks through the neighborhoods and setting up riot lines did nothing to help ease the situation, it only exacerbated the pain members of the community were feeling and transformed their pain into intense anger. Also, all of the police action that was taken showcased to the children of the community that the police do not trust them. John also mentioned that the police action that is taken now, such as helicopters flying overhead on a nightly basis, only helps to serve these two previous points. I had not truly thought too much about how the police action would affect the children, but they are raised to be distrustful of the police because the police are already distrustful of them. Rochelle said that there are kids starving not even 15 miles away from our campus and that she “shouldn’t have to tell [us] that.” That was information we should have already known according to her, and in all honesty she is right. Being so poorly informed about the city we live next to and the people living in it is a detriment to us and to the people who need our help.

I feel that there is a lot more we can add to the radio series after just a couple of our classes. We now have a larger understanding of the historical reasons and context behind the issues that are being dealt with today.  This is information that needs to be shared with people, because I am fairly certain most individuals would be surprised to hear it. I believe that personal accounts of the hardships the African-American community endures will also be more impactful when the reasons behind why they are enduring them become clearer.

A question for next panel:

I would like to know if there is a particular policy that needs to be reformed more than others to combat racial disparities (maybe one that makes it difficult to prosecute police, or one that leads to higher incarceration rates, etc.), and what changes to that policy would you want to mak

The Issues with the Police System

It was interesting to hear Michael Wood Jr. talk about the police force and the problems he sees with it. There were so many thoughts he shared that had never even crossed my mind before, despite the fact that some of them may sound simple. I never even once considered that police officers may have an “Us. Vs. Them” mentality, especially if that mentality also lead to them possibly antagonizing specific groups or types of people. I suppose this thought hits closest to home considering my cousin just became a police officer very recently in Virginia, and it’s hard for me to imagine him falling into this established issue. Michael mentioned that he believes the community should police the police, which to my understanding meant that the community should essentially be the ones who control the police to some extent. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this idea. Aren’t police officers already part of the community? They just also happen to be law enforcers; isn’t it best to let them do their job? Perhaps I misunderstood what Michael meant, but I don’t think I fully agree with him on that thought. I was also very surprised to hear so much about the systematic racism that plagues our police force. He mentioned that when the police officers who arrested Freddie Gray saw Freddie they were probably thinking “Stats, stats, stats.” It was hard to hear that, it almost felt to me that he was trying to say that because of the way the system operates police officers are encouraged not to see people, but rather just statistics.

This class has made me curious, I would like to know:

1.     What is different about Freddie Gray’s death compared to everyone else who has died in police custody, in terms of the impact or change that death has brought about? I know that it blew up on the media, but just because people heard about it doesn’t necessarily mean much has changed.

2.      What kind of policy or law changes can be brought about on the political battlefront to truly and successfully combat this issue of systematic racism in the police force?

For next class, a few questions I would have are:

1.      What can the average Baltimore citizen do to aid the people in the streets find a home?

2.      Why has public housing in Baltimore been declining, and why is there an increase in non-affordable housing? Besides the simple answer of money, is it because of a set of policies that have been set in place?

3.      What is being done to change the issues with non-affordable housing right now?

Introduction/Test Post

My name is Tyler Walsh. I am a Media Communication Studies major and I am minoring in Psychology. I like to spend my free time playing video games with my friends and just relaxing in general. I am looking forward to sharing the experiences this class has to offer with the rest of you and wish you all a great semester.