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America Tonight
BALTIMORE – A few weeks ago, I stood in the middle of riot-torn North Avenue, watching the city I call home crumble before my eyes: the sound of crunching glass under foot; the smell of burning buildings; the sight of protesters screaming at police in SWAT gear in a haze of smoke from torched cars and businesses.
Last weekend, I celebrated my wedding anniversary in that same city, at the waterfront hotel where I tied the knot. It was wonderful. From our room, we saw the beautiful views of the glimmering Inner Harbor, often called “the crown jewel of Charm City.” Nearby, luxury yachts sailed past million-dollar condos as tourists walked a promenade lined with high-end restaurants offering $16 cocktails.
Just three miles separate these two parts of Baltimore – three miles that might as well be opposite sides of the planet.
As I looked out the hotel window, I looked past downtown toward the shattered neighborhoods in the distance. I recalled my recent interview with former Mayor Kurt Schmoke.
“There's rot beneath the glitter,” Schmoke said, referring to a memorable study in the 1980s about the city's future. “We've got to just own up to that and recognize it.”
The rot is severe. One in four Baltimore residents lives below the poverty line, and the median household income is more than $30,000 below the state’s average. Recent research from Johns Hopkins revealed the city's black residents, who account for more than two-thirds of the population, have a much worse chance of upward mobility. If you don’t believe white privilege is real, read my report on that.
Recently, while on assignment, I found myself on a block of Baltimore that didn’t have a single occupied home. Every door was boarded up; trees were growing out of broken windows and missing rooftops. The next block over, a few families with children sat on their front steps as a police helicopter hovered overheard. An old factory on the corner appeared to have closed decades ago.
The results of this multigenerational poverty are deadly.
Before joining Al Jazeera America, I covered crime for the city's CBS affiliate, WJZ-TV. I can’t even count the number of homicides I reported. While police and politicians often blamed gang-on-gang activity, I’ll never forget how the violence was also inflicted on too many innocent people stuck in impoverished neighborhoods where the drug trade overrides respect for human life.
The screams of mothers and fathers finding out their child died are haunting.
Today, those screams echo through Baltimore more frequently. Baltimore just recorded its deadliest month in 40 years. Violence rages as the police department is left demoralized by criminal charges against six officers in the death in Freddie Gray, with protesters demanding reforms. One unnamed officer told me simply: “We don’t know what to do.”
During my anniversary weekend, the only Baltimore police officer I saw was directing traffic around a fender-bender. The sounds of the riots were replaced with trendy music and chatter of diners. The restaurants were packed with a mostly white clientele from well-to-do suburbs and neighborhoods feasting on gourmet crab cakes and sipping fine wines. For them, it was an evening escape to Baltimore.
At the same time, just a few miles away, violence continued with two more double shootings Sunday and still no arrest in the brutal execution of a 7-year-old boy and his mother last week. Adding to the 43 killed in Baltimore in May, according to The Baltimore Sun.
Over the years, many inner-city parents who lost children told me about their dreams, that their kids would do well in school and escape to a safer place. In Baltimore, that completely different environment is just down the road, but unreachable.
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