Baltozine Round-Up: Baffler #46

In the current issue of The Baffler (#46), in a feature titled "Plight of the Squeegee Kids" DC-based writer Kaila Philo looks at the controversy of Baltimore's Squeegee Kids and places them into a larger, historical, racist context:
...
When out-of-towners think of Baltimore, they often think about two things. The first is The Wire, a show inspired by one of the city’s most tumultuous periods, the late 1980s and early 1990s—when its creator, David Simon, covered crime at the Sun—years before the mayor tasked with closing out the millennium, Martin O’Malley, ushered in an era of zero-tolerance policing inspired by Giuliani’s vise-grip on New York City. (At one point, the mania for overpolicing had become so severe that a nineteen-year-old was detained for littering on his aunt’s stoop.)

The second thing outsiders remember is Freddie Gray. On April 12, 2015, the twenty-five-year-old was chased by patrolmen on bikes after making eye contact with them on a North Avenue corner. Gray was then caught and arrested for possessing a small knife that was assumed illegal. Between 8:46 and 9:24 a.m., Gray’s spine was nearly severed on the way to the Western District police station. Seven days later he was dead. The events leading to Gray’s death catalyzed citywide unrest (in various forms) that has changed the landscape of Baltimore ever since.

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 Buy The Baffler #46.

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