Baltimore Tent City and the Victory in Progress
After 10 days of protesting, occupying, and holding the space in front of City Hall, Tent City residents and organizers won a victory — but a victory in progress. We built friendships and relationships with each other. We endured highs and lows. We were frazzled and sometimes drained, but we were resolute and determined.
The day before we started the protest/occupation, Baltimore Bloc called for deposing Baltimore’s Confederate statues (August 13). The very next day (August 14), Baltimore’s SCLC led and Baltimore Bloc, 300 Gangsters, and Baltimore Free Farm assisted in occupying the lawn in front of City Hall to call attention to Confederate SYSTEMS and their impacts in economics, criminal/social justice, and housing.
What we saw over the course of 10 days was nothing short of remarkable. Allied activists organizations SCLC, Baltimore Bloc, 300 Gangsters, Baltimore Free Farm, and more gelled as the residents of Tent City raised their voices and assumed leadership of the protest/occupation. We sought to transform critical SYSTEMS, POLICIES, and PRACTICES in Baltimore City.
It was not easy. It was not perfect. But the residents in Tent City along with allied activist organizations defied odds and forged a solidarity that forced the city to negotiate an agreement that present the POTENTIAL for a new way of addressing homelessness in Baltimore City.
As of now, this agreement (aka the Tent City Accord) is only a sheet of paper. The real meaning is in the enforcement and implementation of more permanent housing following a two week assessment process (housing). A workforce training and hiring process is a part of the agreement (economics). According to the Tent City Accord, residents are given FULL control of the shelter. This is a completely unprecedented step in the current shelter system that many described as oppressive and dehumanizing.
When I teach my students at Morgan State, I tell them that the Civil Rights and Black Power activists in the 1960s won the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the 1968 Fair Housing Act. These were landmark pieces of legislation that helped dismantle the old Jim Crow. But where policy change often falls short is in the enforcement and implementation of said change. This is exactly what happened with the great Civil Rights laws of the 1960s: the federal government slacked in vigorously implementing and enforcing the policies. And they have been poorly enforced and systematically gutted since then by the Roberts Court — see Rocco vs. DeStefano (2009), Shelby vs. Holder (2013), Texas vs. Inclusive Communities (2015). This shows that any major policy victory can only be viewed as a victory in progress. The victory of policy change is only as good as the work it takes to make the policy work for the people. The work done AFTER policy changes is as important as the struggle it took to achieve new laws and policies.
Therefore, for me and perhaps other organizers, the Tent City Accord might represent major policy change and the chance for this to become a different system for addressing homelessness in the city. But we realize that the policy change is only as good as its enforcement and implementation. Will the city uphold its end of the bargain? Will they provide real permanent housing at the end of the two weeks? Will the city work with residents to implement creative cooperative solutions such as: 1) backing a worker cooperative that Tent City residents control, 2) setting up a community land trusts with rehabbed existing houses, or 3) financing and waiving zoning restrictions for new tiny houses?
The work is not done and the struggle continues! We won concessions and potential system changes by organizing and struggle, but the promise of realizing those changes can only be achieved through more organizing and insistent struggle. Baltimore is still in the midst of an escalating fatal opiod and fentanyl OD crisis and homicide epidemic. Mass rental evictions and foreclosures are the open floodgates that currently create homelessness faster than services can be expanded to help re-house folks without homes. Lead poison still poisons thousands of our Black children and we must #BmoreLEADfree.
Finally, we must dismantle Baltimore Apartheid. We can make the down payment as a city with a $2 billion Racial Equity Social Impact Bond that will allow us to address the historical trauma inflicted on the Black Butterfly. Please continue to support Tent City residents and the organizing work in Baltimore as we continue the push for social justice and racial equity.
