Where are no locals getting rowdy at City Council meetings over policy issues?

Why isn’t there a grassroots movement in Baltimore that gets rowdy at

City Council meetings to advocate for anti-poverty policy (“Baltimore City Council members: Council president’s apology too narrow. He should apologize to us, the mayor and city residents for hearing chaos,” April 27)? Why all this civility and business-as-usual in a hyper-segregated city where 1 in 3 children lives in poverty?

The outside agitator trope, used in this case to deflect the very real need for affordable, healthy and safe housing, was used time and time again against the civil rights movement or any time poor people self-organized to better their living conditions. Instead of proposing a better bill and working with housing advocates across the city, we are now talking about a guy from Boston and how he made the City Council feel uncomfortable with a little bit of political theater.

Without a grassroots movement to challenge poverty-inducing policy here in Baltimore City, things will stay the same. Like Frederick Douglass famously wrote, “power concedes nothing without demand.”

— Joe O’Connor, Baltimore