Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley appeared on
Meet the Press on Sunday passionately calling for “an agenda for America’s cities.” He said we as a nation must address the structural weaknesses in our economy. He referred to shipping jobs overseas, and the need to employ tens of thousands in infrastructure repair and development.
Unknowing, silly, racist and right-wing politicians and pundits have tried to blame O’Malley, who served two terms as Baltimore’s mayor more than a decade ago, for the reaction of Baltimore's people to the murder of another Baltimore resident.
Governor O’Malley called for structural change in our economy. He also said we have to stop offshoring our jobs, and begin investing in the repair and development of our infrastructure, which would put tens of thousands of people to work at good union jobs.
Governor O’Malley will not be blamed for the disinvestment of business and our government in our people and our country that has lasted for almost 40 years.
I’ve been in the back of many police vans. If your hands are cuffed behind your back and your feet are shackled, and the driver of the van intentionally drives roughly, that is street punishment, corporal punishment. The intent is to hurt you. In Freddie Gray’s case, he was killed.
My friend and once my neighbor, George Pelecanos, wrote the HBO series The Wire about Baltimore. One day when we were chatting on his porch, he said one thing they learned while creating and writing The Wire was how technology on the docks destroyed so many good union ILA jobs, leaving young people with no economic options other than drug trade. Too often the only investment in our cities are suburbanites cruising, looking for drugs and prostitution. A truly great country does not watch the destruction of good jobs and say oh well, technology is to blame. The market will fix it.
The market ain’t fixing shit for anyone except those at the tip of the top.