Midday

For more than 150 years, the Secret Service has protected Presidents and their families, other government officials, and visiting dignitaries. Originally housed in the Treasury Department, agents in field offices across the country also investigate financial crimes like counterfeiting.

In her best-selling new book, Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service, award-winning Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig writes about the agency’s struggle to operate amid what she observes is a unique set of contradictions. With vivid detail and trenchant insight, Leonnig notes that those contradictions, coupled with years of flawed management and a longstanding frat-boy culture have led to problems-a-plenty at this once storied agency, which has recently been ranked as the most hated places to work in the federal government.

If the Secret Service isn’t functioning optimally, the ramifications for democracy and governmental stability are significant.

Carol Leonnig’s book is the product of interviews with nearly 200 current and former Secret Service agents and supervisors, lawmakers and government officials spanning eight presidential administrations, and it is informed by the invaluable insight Leonnig has gained since she first started covering the Service for the Post in 2012. Her account is often chilling, as she reports on an agency that has had more than a few close calls, and which is woefully in need of technological modernization and a fundamental cultural change.

Carol Leonnig joins us on our digital line from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

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On this Memorial Day, we mark the anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history. One hundred years ago today, a white mob began a two-day terror campaign that wiped-out a thriving Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Greenwood section of that city had come to be known as “Black Wall Street.” It was destroyed. 300 African Americans were killed. Hundreds more were injured and thousands were left homeless.

Carole Boston Weatherford is an award-winning author of books that chronicle important events in African American history. She has written a book for children that tells the story of this horrific event that is beautifully illustrated by Floyd Cooper, who is also a multi-award winning artist.

The book is called Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre.

Carole Boston Weatherford joins Tom on Zoom…

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(This interview was first broadcast on April 9, 2021)

Tom's guest in this archive edition of Midday is the author of a book about three accomplished Black women: Alberta King, Louise Little and Berdis Baldwin. It’s part biography of these women, and part clarion call for recognition of all Black women.

Anna Malaika Tubbs writes that erasure, mis-recognition and historical amnesia are, sadly, part of the formation of African American female identity, and her book is part of her effort to erase that erasure. In exploring the revolutionary power of these women, who came of age between the two World Wars, Tubbs shows how their stories inspire the struggle for survival today.

Alberta King, Louise Little and Berdis Baldwin were each accomplished in their own right, and in their own way. Between them, they raised many children, three of whom grew up to be among the most significant figures in the American Civil Rights movement.

The book is called The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation.

Anna Malaika Tubbs joins us on Zoom from Los Angeles, California.

(Because this program was recorded, we couldn't take any new questions or comments.)

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As we enter this Memorial Day weekend, folks are feeling much, much better about going out and enjoying the things we weren’t able to enjoy during the long months of the pandemic. For people who are vaccinated, going to a restaurant is no longer tantamount to risking your life. For unvaccinated people, it’s a different story, for them and for those around them, but as more people, including teens and children, get their jabs, that special date or taking the family out are no longer a problem.Today on Midday, three perspectives on restaurants.

Tom's first guest is Marshall Reston, Jr.. He is the President and CEO of the Restaurant Association of Maryland, an organization that represents about 25% of the restaurants in our state. Marshall Reston joins us on Zoom.

Tom speaks next with Emily Lerman. She is a co-founder of the Mera Kitchen Collective and a Project Officer with the Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy, an organization that helps co-op businesses get funding and get organized around a worker-owned model. And with her friend Irena Stein of Alma Cocina Latina, Emily is employing restaurant workers and preparing free meals for World Central Kitchen.

Tom's final guest today is Christina Tkacik. She covers restaurants and dining for the Baltimore Sun. She’ll be here right after this quick break.

All our guests joined us on Zoom. Theses conversations were recorded on Tuesday, so we couldn't take any calls or online comments for today's broadcast.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Tom's guest on today's edition of the Midday Newswrap is veteran Baltimore journalist Jayne Miller. She's been reporting for WBAL Television for more than 30 years, and is now the chief investigative reporter on the station's "11 Investigates" I-Team. For the past 15 months, she’s been reporting on the state’s response to the COVID 19 pandemic, and last February, she herself became part of the story, when she tested positive for the virus.

Her recovery from the disease has been slow. We’ll talk about it, and we’ll talk politics and public policy as the race for Governor begins to take shape, Mayor Brandon Scott uses his veto pen for the first time, jurisdictions consider how to spend American rescue Plan money, the Baltimore police department says how it will advance equity and credibility in the department, as Congress stalls on efforts for federal police reform.

Jayne Miller joins us today on our digital line from her home in Baltimore.

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Today, we’re going to have some fun with a delightful book about English expressions, those idiomatic turns of phrase whose provenance isn’t always, or perhaps, hardly ever, known, but whose place in our language is undisputed. We're talking about phrases like “over the moon,” or “under the weather”; “on top of the world,” or “in over your head.”

For more than a decade, husband-and-wife educators Harold and Shirley Kobliner collected sayings like these that they heard in conversations and on various media. They compiled and organized them in a book that includes thousands of expressions.

Joining Tom today is their daughter, Beth Kobliner, to help us understand something about some of these phrases that so captivated her late parents, and to play some games that test our colloquial knowledge.

The book is called So to Speak: 11,000 Expressions That’ll Knock Your Socks Off.If you’d like to join in, give us a call. Calling, rather than e-mail, is going to be your best bet, your chance to run the table, your opportunity to hit the jackpot. (Get it?) Call: 410 662 8780. Studio director Luke Spicknall mans the phones (and runs the board).

Beth Kobliner joins us on our digital line from from New York City.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Tom's guest today is the data scientist, scholar, and author, Dr. Lawrence Brown. A former member of the Morgan State University faculty, he’s also been a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He teaches in the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute’s Bunting Neighborhood Leadership Program, and he has spoken and written widely on racial equity and health issues. He's the founding director of a racial equity consulting and educational enterprise, The Black Butterfly Project.

Dr. Brown has written a provocative book that challenges us to change the frame in which we understand racial equity, and what it will take for America to move toward a more just society. Brown chronicles how the long history of land dispossession, the migration of African Americans away from the Jim Crow South, the subsequent displacement from the Urban Centers in which they settled, and the destabilization of Black neighborhoods has led to a segregated economy, and on-going historical trauma that amounts to an American system of apartheid.

Dr. Brown makes concrete proposals as to how to dismantle this apartheid and improve outcomes for Black Americans in housing, education, policing, and public health.

The book is called The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America.

Lawrence Brown joins us on our digital line from his home in Baltimore.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Last week, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott vetoed a controversial bill that would have allowed renters a couple of alternatives to paying lump-sum security deposits. One alternative, supported by most housing advocates, would have allowed renters to pay the security deposits in installments. Another provision of the bill would have allowed renters to purchase “surety bonds” that would place liability in the hands of a company who would in turn be able to bill renters directly. This provision is the one that prompted the Mayoral veto and staunch opposition to the bill from a large coalition of housing and social justice advocates.If the veto is sustained, what options would be better for renters and landlords? If security deposits are as barrier to finding quality housing, how can that barrier be overcome?

Today on Midday, Tom talks with two lawmakers, a housing advocate and a reporter about this issue, and we’ll take your calls and comments. We invited the sponsor of the bill, Councilwoman Sharon Green Middleton, who said she could not appear due to a schedule conflict, as well as officials with the MD Multi Housing Association, which represents landlords. They declined to appear as well.

We begin with Baltimore City Councilman Zeke Cohen. He represents the first district. He and Councilman Ryan Dorsey voted against the legislation, which passed the Council by a margin of 12-2, with one abstention.

Then we hear the perspective of Tisha Guthrie, a housing advocate who was part of the coalition of groups opposed to the bill that Mayor Scott vetoed. Guthrie is the treasurer of the Bolton House Residents Association, a building that overlooks the State Center complex in midtown. Tisha Guthrie is also part of Baltimore Renters United, the group that coordinated the public opposition to the bill that passed in the City Council 12-2, with the firm support of both the President and Vice President of the City Council, Nick Mosby and Sharon Green Middleton.

Next, Tom turns to another member of the Baltimore City Council, John Bullock, who represents the 9th District.

And in our final segment, Tom talks with Fern Shen, the founder and editor of the Baltimore Brew. She’s been covering this story closely.WYPR’s housing reporter Sarah Y. Kim has also been following this story, and you can find her coverage here.

All our guests today join us on Zoom.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Tom's guest today is Michelle Zauner, a successful indie-rock composer and musician who has written a wonderful book. One could also say that she’s a compelling writer who has a great band (called Japanese Breakfast).

Her songs are good because they speak to universal notions in a unique and universal way. Her book is good because the story is poignant and sad and beautifully told, a remembrance flecked with joy, regret, and insight enlarged and invigorated by her ear for the rhythm of the beautifully formulated sentence, the tempo of the tale, the recurring melody of love and respect that floats through the pages of this memoir.

It’s rare for a debut book to garner as much attention as this one has received, but in this case, that attention is richly deserved.The book is called Crying in H Mart. Author Michelle Zauner joins us now from New York City on our digital line...

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Joining Tom now are two African American activists and organizers who are part of the leadership team steering The Baltimore Children and Youth Fund. The Fund was created in 2017, after being approved overwhelmingly by voters in a referendum the year before. The Fund is virtually unprecedented in that its assets come from city property tax revenues, but the process for distribution of those assets resembles that of a private foundation.

Dayvon Love is the Director of Public Policy for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle. He was instrumental in getting the Fund established, and he is currently serving as the Fund’s Community Engagement Lead.

John Morris is an attorney and a former dean at Sojourner Douglass College. He is a co-founder of Change4Real, a development initiative in Oldtown. He serves as treasurer on the BCYFund’s Board of Directors.

Dayvon Love and John Morris join us Zoom.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.