It's here, good people. One of those magical times of year when colorful art installations pop up across Baltimore City. From Federal Hill, the Inner Harbor and city hall, to Lake Montebello, Sandtown-Winchester, and Gwinn Falls; the city lights up with whimsical wonder after dark. Pictured above, is an installation in the inner harbor during last summer's Light City Baltimore. The fest begins again this Saturday. I can't wait to see what coolness artists have in store for us this year.
Photos courtesy of Wikipedia, Getty Images, and Time Magazine. Baltimore has a unique history of civil unrest in the heart of nature's annual rebirth - spring. One of the earliest instances happened on April 19, 1861, known as the Pratt Street Riots and became the first "enemy action" in the American Civil War. It occurred again on April 6, 1968, over 100 years later in response to the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and inequities Black citizens faced in the city; and again 47 years later on April 15, 2015, following the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. On the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination on April 4th, 1968 and the days of civil unrest that followed all over the country, I wonder what we can learn from the aftermath of riots? Riots are violent and destructive by nature, but they are also the loudest message a group of seemingly powerless people can send in opposition to power. The fallout from the Freddie Gray unrest lead to a Police Chief being ousted, an unpopular mayor declining to seek re-election, a consent decree and monitoring team put in place to push police reform, and more funding toward community investment in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood - the heart of the unrest. Time will tell if the work being done now will begin to solve some of the equity and poverty issues that plague this city, or if the trend will hold and we'll experience another period of civil unrest in the spring twenty years from now.
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AuthorBae is a Baltimore-based art lover, foodie, music-head, history buff, and afro-futurism enthusiast. Archives
July 2018
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