Despite the focus on national political battles, local politics has been a critical battleground for conversations around Zionism. We look back at 2023 debates in the Baltimore City Council around two contrasting resolutions, one reflecting a Zionist frame, the other a call for ceasefire and attempting to balance concerns over anti-Semitism with Islamophobia. Through attempts to equate antisemitism with anti-Blackness and the Hamas attack on October 7th, the Zionist resolution is revealed as an attempt to frame questions about Israel with hate speech and obscure the systemic violence against Palestine. The political forces supporting the Zionist frame, including Sinclair Media and its board member, former head of AIPAC Howard Freeman, pushing Zionist propaganda, are shown to be the same forces pushing anti-Black and pro-mass incarceration propaganda in Baltimore. The negative responses to Black lawmakers who abstained from the vote on this resolution and supported a more balanced resolution demonstrate a weaponization of accusations of anti-Semitism against Black politics. . Finally, the political forces seeking to chill speech by punishing organizations that engaged in pro-Palestinian speech, reflected in the anti-Council on American Islamic Relations bill pushed by delegate Dalya Attar, created an environment of punishment for activists at a local level and produced the conditions that led to the bipartisan support of genocide that has defined the past two years.

In the face of persistent mass overdoses, some in Baltimore have begun to argue that policing is the only compassionate response to addiction. We argue this is false empathy and reinstates the war on drugs under the guise of care. We respond to the arguments that policing is a tool to connect folks to treatment. We conclude with a critique of public health driven harm reduction centered responses to addiction toward a revolutionary comprehensive approach centered in Black health sovereignty.

In this episode we expose how the Anti-Defamation League trades on its historic reputation as a civil rights organization to attack critics of Israel as anti-jewish. We deconstruct news coverage of the suite, revealing much of the incidents of bullying are constitutionally protected critiques of Israel. We give a history of the phrase “from the river to the sea,” and address claims it is Anti-Semitic. Additionally, we expose how analogies of Jewish oppression to Black oppression ignore critical differences between the two groups. We conclude by contrasting historic use of civil rights law to promote Black sovereignty to current uses of civil rights law against Black communities and critics of the state of Israel.

Maryland passed the 2nd Look Act to give individuals with long jail sentences a chance at release. We look back at the floor debates on 2nd Look. While the advocates sought racial justice for the Black community, debates focused on defending why so many folks were ineligible for the 2nd Look, how hard it would be to get relief, and notions of forgiveness and contrition. We argue Democrat’s acceptance of Republican framing made it harder to push back on key amendments that were attached by Republicans and moderate Dems to weaken the bill, showing the dangers of not centering racism in debates around criminal justice reform.

We review reports on Maryland medical examiner David Fowler. We show the racist roots behind the concept of “excited delirium” he used to cover up police involved deaths, and show the role race plays in commentary downplaying findings of his wrongdoing. We also use an analysis of the legislative work on police accountability to demand the left go beyond calls to punishment of individual "bad cops" and depictions of Black suffering to garner sympathy toward building community control of public safety and legislative reforms like making police disciplinary records public.

Much was made of why the success of Baltimore's Gun Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS) disproves Trump's claim that Baltimore needs National Guard occupation. But what if Baltimore's supposedly more human "public health" approach to policing reflects the same logic as Trump's occupation? We counter pro-National Guard propaganda with an analysis of how grassroots violence prevention lies in its unique political, spiritual, and racial self-esteem perspectives. We then explain how GVRS, despite claims to the contrary, is not primarily an attempt to empower these violence prevention entities, nor a reflection of "public health" thinking, but a pro-policing strategy that reflects flawed criminological assumptions around deterrence and actually makes grassroots violence prevention work harder. Finally, we conclude by analyzing the work and media appearances of focused deterrence scholar Anthony Braga to show how this strategy mirrors the worst excesses of racist, pro-police, pro-National Guard occupation and allies him with right wing media & Zionist ideology.

The shooting of Bilal Addullah rocked Baltimore, yet police used body cam footage to deem the shooting “justified”. This episode takes a nuanced look at the concept of the “bad guy with an illegal gun” used to justify Abdullah’s death, arguing the inability to see gun carrying as a rational response to conditions of Black life united center and left responses to the killing. We compare Abdullah’s death with an incident in Baltimore County, showing the role race plays in police response to gun carrying and threats. We conclude with an analysis of how progressive rhetoric public health and police reform has been coopted to justify more policing, and how the need to center community control of public safety is the key to getting community support for shifting resources from policing to community needs.