Community Fellows 2022-23

Aishah Alfadhalah 

Topic: Examination of the shared experience through food for immigrants and other minority groups 

Organization: Mera Kitchen Collective

Track: Food and Land Justice

UMBC Partner: Sarah Fouts

Description:

Mera Kitchen Collective is a community-driven, food worker cooperative. We focus on the empowerment of chefs from around the world by celebrating our skills and talents in the kitchen, highlighting the value newcomers add to the fabric of our society. We recognize that the diverse populations of individuals in Baltimore are segregated in certain areas in a Black city and immigrants are concentrated in various neighborhoods. In 2018, Mera Kitchen Collective collaborated with UMBC to amplify the stories of immigrants through a podcast project. We extend this project by using food to discuss the underlying segregation of immigrants in relation to other minority groups in Baltimore. The goal of the podcast is to highlight the shared experience and parallels of food access and rituals for immigrants and other minority groups in Baltimore. This will be done through a podcast and mapping of food experiences (i.e recipes, ingredients, people, businesses). 

Betty Bland-Thomas 

Topic: History and Preservation of Sharp–Leadenhall

Organization: South Baltimore Partnership

Track: Racial Equity

UMBC Partner: Courtney C. Hobson

Description:

Established by former slaves and German immigrants in approximately 1790, historic South Baltimore neighborhood of Sharp–Leadenhall is rich with over 200 years of African American culture. Once anchored by large churches and thriving businesses, the community was home to the Baltimore Society. Sharp Leadenhall is the birthplace and childhood home of the Honorable Elijah Cummings. However, despite this rich history, it has been overlooked for decades due to the mass destruction caused by disinvestment and gentrification. South Baltimore Partnership is a community-based organization located in historic Sharp-Leadenhall. Since 2010, our mission has been to engage the community through active resident participation in programs and events. With the Baltimore Field School, we would like to strengthen the infrastructure of the organization to better support our residents, as well as showcase the rich history of this community to Baltimore and beyond. Projects can include the development of our website as Sharp-Leadenhall does not have a strong online presence; the development of a walking tour that can attract visitors from the Inner Harbor and the Baltimore Convention Center; and other public-facing events that allows people to engage with our community through its past, present, and future.

Curtis M Eaddy 

Topic: The Beautiful Side of UGLY Cultural and Equity Project

Organization: Presidential Brand

Track: Racial Equity

UMBC Partner:  Bill Shewbridge

Description:

The Beautiful Side of UGLY studies the cultural climate to determine economic and social indicators that help to propel equity within Black communities. This humanities project focuses on building cultural references that depict and enhance the diverse lives of the African Diaspora through social innovation, content marketing, and cause-related events. With an artistic lens, we celebrate and uplift the people, places, and things impacted by trauma, blight, and disinvestment.  We have five pillars to which we organize our causes to guide our work: Thought, Art, Commerce, Health, and Divinity; each with its own principles and framework. Working with UMBC for the Baltimore Field School 2.0 project provides us the opportunity to research our target audience and areas, activate our Thought pillar to begin engagement, collect data, and create the narrative of the need for Black American participation in society.  Our work aimst to inspire a generation and ignites a desire for learning, faith-building, and collaborative economics, while raising awareness of the many accomplishments of and opportunities for people of the African diaspora. Together we’ll explore and uncover harsh realities that hundreds of thousands of residents face everyday and present to them a new platform to address it.  

Cameron Granadino (with Eddie Conway)

Topic: The “Say Their Own Word” Series Digitization and Programming Development

Organization: The Real News Network

Track: Journalism/Public Information 

UMBC Partner: Beth Saunders 

Description: 

In 1980, TRNN’s Eddie Conway helped organize a prisoners’ educational outreach program called “Say Their Own Word,” where thinkers and scholars came to Maryland Penitentiary and spoke about topics like impending U.S. fascism, the prison-industrial complex, capitalism, increasing surveillance, and many other issues that have become even more pressing today. These speakers included Amiri Baraka, Askia Muhammad, Bruce Franklin, Nijole Benokraitis, and Charlie Cobb. Prisoners worked closely with librarian Brenda Vogel, who wrote the grant that funded the To Say Their Own Word project. Brenda Vogel was one of the project directors, along with Eddie Conway, a former member of the Black Panther Party and political prisoner during that time. Their leadership is an example of the synergy in community organizing that transcends prison walls. We will work to digitize, document, and develop programming around this series. 

Tisha Guthrie

Topic: Bringing Our Community Joy (BOC Joy): Community-led Development, Starting at the Root

Organization: Baltimore Renters United / Poppleton Now

Track: Food and Land Justice

UMBC Partner: Nicole King

Description: 

Baltimore has an indelible history of racially repugnant housing, policing and educational policies. Equally egregious is the stealthy “redevelopment,” often referred to as urban renewal, reinvestment, or renaissance, happening in Baltimore and cities like it. This trend devastates the lives of individuals and also the neighborhoods of Black, Brown and other under-represented people. The result: residents are uprooted and end up in the dustpan of displacement. This fracturing manifests on all levels and causes long-term damage. The Bringing Our Community Joy: Community-led Development, Starting at the Root (BOC Joy) project proposes a holistic approach to address this problem and heal with a 3 step process: (1) self-care, (2) community care, and (3) community organizing. Across the country, community-led movements are redirecting the trajectory of local policies, insisting that community priorities be reflected in budget line items. In a city like Baltimore, which has suffered and continues to be blunted by trauma after trauma, a more comprehensive approach is our best chance at building a sustainable movement. The people of Baltimore deserve emotional, physical and mental spaces to dream. The BOC Joy project strives to provide such a space.

Eric Jackson

Topic: The VAULT: A digital hub for Black Land and Food Sovereignty.

Organization: Black Yield Institute  

Track: Food and Land Justice

UMBC Partner: Charlotte Keniston 

Description:

As an extension of our political education work at Black Yield Institute (BYI), the proposed project builds upon an active collaboration between BYI and a researcher-practitioner from UMBC. The VAULT is a political education platform that includes tools and information related to Black Liberation struggle and Black life, publicly available for learning and organizing. Engaging all senses, the content includes an open-access library, a multi-media archive, and an interactive food creation portal. The intended audience of The VAULT are both Baltimore residents and much more broadly those who are engaged in the struggle for Black Land and Food Sovereignty. 

Yesenia Mejía-Herrera

Topic: Representations of Indigenous Traditions from Latin America in Baltimore

Organization: Creative Alliance

Track: Racial Equity

UMBC Partner: Tania Lizarazo

Description:

As a part of my work with the Artesanas at the Creative Alliance and as the director of the CIELO program (Creatives, Immigrants Educators, from Latin America Origins), I will work with the immigrant communities to encourage, promote, and honor our Latin American cultures and traditions. Absences of Indigeneity in Baltimore’s Latinx community represents a disconnect for many people, like myself, from our Indigenous cultural traditions. I aim to create spaces that allow for: 1) the documentation of these traditions so that they may be transmitted to future generations; 2) the preservation of our own traditional cultures; 3) the development of a collaborative archive of Indigenous Latin American culture in Baltimore; 4) using social media, the strengthening of acceptance and empowerment of and reconnection with our Indigenous traditions. Amidst the homogenization of our cultures, we aim to develop a network of people who speak Indigenous languages in Baltimore and/or continue to pass on their culture through their music and oral tradition, create content that values this knowledge, and encourage Baltimore to become a city that respects all people regardless of where they are from or what languages they speak while creating a more nuanced understanding of Latinidad and Latin America.

Lisa Snowden

Organization: Baltimore Beat

Track: Journalism/Public Information

UMBC Partner: Jasmine Braswell

Description:

Baltimore Beat is a nonprofit newspaper dedicated to covering news in Baltimore City. In the traditions of the Black press and the alternative weekly, Baltimore Beat’s community-focused reporting prioritizes thoughtful engagement with local readers—especially those with limited internet access and those who are a part of underrepresented communities. We are especially interested in stories about and by people in marginalized communities. To that end, as part of the Baltimore Field School, we will support a reporter to work on a specific topic related to housing justice. This project will include reported works, to be published in Baltimore Beat’s bi-weekly print newspaper. They will also be published on the newspaper’s website. We also plan to host several public-facing events where the reporter, story subjects, and experts would further discuss the topic. The end result of this project is not only a reporter that has experience that they can use to further their career, but an informed and engaged public and possible changes in policy.