Midday

Last year, Baltimore had the unwelcome distinction of having the highest homicide rate of any US city of more than 500 thousand people – at 58 per 100 thousand residents. Most of those homicides were committed with guns.

Baltimore City Police Commissioner Michael Harrison was on Midday last week, and he pointed to a strategy of “focused deterrence” as the centerpiece of the BPD’s efforts to stop the violence. Some variation of that strategy has been tried several times in recent years. But as the Department has begun to slowly implement reforms mandated by the federal Consent Decree, the murder rate remains high, while trust in police in Baltimore’s communities of color remains low.

That distrust is premised in large measure by what the DOJ called, in a 2017 report, a “pattern and practice of unconstitutional policing.” A new report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research offers solutions. It’s called Reducing Violence and Building Trust: Data to Guide Enforcement of Gun Laws in Baltimore.

Its lead author is Daniel Webster. He is the Bloomberg Professor of American Health in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Professor Webster is the director of the school’s Center for Gun Policy and Research. Daniel Webster joins us via Zoom…

Longtime community development activist Ray C. Kelly joins us as well. He’s the former CEO of the No Boundaries Coalition, and he is a member of the monitoring team that is overseeing the BPD's consent decree with the Department of Justice. He’s also the founding director of the non-profit Citizens Policing Project. He joins us, by phone, in his unofficial capacity as a community advocate.

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

Today, a conversation about how the coronavirus pandemic is creating not only hotspots for the virus, but new epicenters of hunger in countries all around the world. Millions of people, already suffering because of armed conflict, climate change, poverty and broken food supply systems, are now at greater risk for starvation.

The United Nations reports that there are nearly 60 million more people who are under-nourished now than there were in 2014. Arif Husain is the chief economist at the UN World Food Program. He estimates that by the end of this year, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of people experiencing acute hunger in the world could increase by as much as 80 percent, to more than a quarter of a billion people. The relief group Oxfam says that could mean as many as 12,000 people around the world dying every day from hunger -- a death rate higher than that from COVID-19 alone.

To understand how hunger relief organizations are responding to this deepening crisis, we begin today with Haydee Diaz, the Head of Programs in Uganda for Catholic Relief Services. She joins us via Zoom from the Ugandan capital, Kampala.

Then, Tom is joined by Sean Callahan, the CEO of Catholic Relief Services and a 31-year veteran of the Baltimore-based agency… and Daniel Speckhard, the former US Ambassador to Greece and Belarus who now serves as the CEO of Baltimore-based Corus International, a family of agencies that includes Lutheran World Relief and IMA World Health. Joining us by Zoom, the relief-group leaders discuss the ongoing efforts of their organizations to alleviate poverty and hunger in developing countries, problems that have been seriously exacerbated by COVID-19.

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

We are joined now by the acclaimed filmmaker and cinematographer, Louie Schwartzberg. He is the creator of what critics have described as a “mind-blowing,” and “consciousness-shifting” film called Fantastic Fungi. Produced by Schwartzberg's innovative Moving Art production company, the documentary explores the surprisingly key role that fungi -- a.k.a. mushrooms -- have played in the earth’s evolution, and the hope they present for securing the earth’s future. The film features renowned scientists and mycologists such as Paul Stamets, and bestselling authors and healing advocates such as Michael Pollan, Eugenia Bone and Andrew Weil, whose narratives guide us through the extraordinary complexity, beauty and importance of the fungi kingdom, and the solutions it might offer for humanity's most urgent medical, nutritional an environmental challenges.


Schwartzberg's 81-minute film is now available for online rental from a variety of participating theaters around the country. Fantastic Fungi will aqlso become available on Apple TV on Tuesday, August 4 -- the same day that Schwartzberg launches his new podcast, called Wonder & Awe.


Before that, on Sunday, August 2, Schwartzberg will be the Keynote speaker at the Logan Visionary Virtual Eco-Conference, presented by the American Visionary Art Museum. It’s a free public event but pre-registration is required, which you can do here.

Louie Schwartzberg joins Tom from Los Angeles via Zoom.



A note about other virtual offerings this weekend, at two of Baltimore’s premier music venues. Tonight at 8pm at An die Musik in Mt. Vernon, it's Folkal Point's exclusive broadcast of a show by the eclectic dance band Brave Combo. And mark your calendar for next Friday, August 7th at 7:00 at An die Musik, when the great pianist Lafayette Gilchrist teams-up with the acclaimed saxophonist David Murray for a livestream event. For details, click here.

And at Keystone Korner Baltimore in Harbor East, tomorrow and Sunday at 3:00 in the afternoon, the great vibe masters Warren Wolf and Joe Locke will perform livestreamed shows with the bassist Jeff Reed. For info and streaming pass, click here.

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

Tom's guest for today's Newsmaker interview is Baltimore City Police Commissioner Michael Harrison.

A recent Baltimore Police Department report describes the status of the department’s five year plan to reduce violence and implement a court-ordered Consent Decree. Crimes other than homicide are down, and the department claims improvements in managing resources, data, and technology.

But as is the case in many cities across the country, in many of the same Baltimore neighborhoods that have been afflicted by violence for generations, homicides are still part of daily life.

Amid months of protests calling for defunding the police, the Baltimore City Council has cut $22 million from the department’s budget and suggested it’s time to "re-imagine" public safety.

Police Commissioner Michael Harrison joins Tom for the hour to share his perspectives on the challenges of policing in the city of Baltimore.

We welcome your comments and questions for the Commissioner: Call 410.662.8780. email: [email protected]. Twitter: @MiddayWYPR.

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

Tom's guest today is Adam Gopnik, a staff writer for The New Yorker Magazine for the past 34 years. The author of numerous books, including eclectic essay collections and children's novels, Gopnik's latest is an homage to liberalism.

The book explores liberalism's roots with the French Renaissance philosopher, Michel de Montaigne, and the so-called Age of Enlightenment, and traces its history through the present day. Gopnik observes that liberalism was preceded by humanism and the affection for and elevation of a sense of community, forged around shared choices. He calls it a fact-first philosophy with a feelings-first history. It favors reform over revolution. It is premised in love and empathy, and what he calls “a belief that the sympathy that binds human society together can disconnect us from our clannish & suspicious past.”


While most people associate liberalism with a left-leaning world view, to Gopnik’s eye, it occupies a kind of intellectual center, although it is not to be confused with centrism, which Gopnik suggests is more akin to populism.

The book is called A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism (Basic Books). Tom spoke with Adam Gopnik about the book when it came out last summer. It’s just been released in paperback, with a new Afterword that addresses what the author describes as the intensifying threats to liberalism from authoritarians on the right, and the left.

Tom welcomes Adam Gopnik back for the hour today. He joins us via Zoom from his home in New York.

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

It’s the Midday Healthwatch with Dr. Leana Wen, the former health commissioner of the City of Baltimore. She writes about public health issues as a columnist for The Washington Post, and she teaches public health policy at George Washington University.

More than 4.2 million people have been infected with the Coronavirus in the United States. Worldwide, that number is more than 16 million. About 650,000 people around the globe have died of Coronavirus-related disease. Here in Maryland, more than 3,400 people have died due to virus-related illness.

Last month, our state was one of 12 states in which the number of new cases was decreasing. That’s no longer the case. The number of people who test positive for COVID-19 in Maryland remains at just above 5%, which means that Maryland is one of the 34 states in the U.S. above the positivity rate recommended by the World Health Organization.

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

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to keep the nation's theaters shuttered and their stages dark, theater companies have kept busy developing and producing new plays for a variety of streamable, online platforms. Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins us again today to spotlight a few of the best current offerings, from Single Carrot Theatre's we broke up to The Public Theater of New York's The Line...

Other streaming productions Judy suggests checking out:

Black Theater Network's Black Theater Week (July 27-31)

May 22, 2020, a filmed docudrama directed by Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith, which captures one day in the life of our region;

Theatre Works' Shakespeare in Vegas; and
D.C.-based Shakespeare Theater Company's Virtual Mock Trial, streaming July 24 & 25.

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

It's another edition of the Midday Newswrap, and this week we spotlight the simmering civil rights street protests in Portland, Oregon, and the forceful and controversial actions taken against demonstrators by teams of camouflaged federal Border Patrol agents, tactical units the Trump Administration deployed to the city against the wishes of the Portland mayor and Oregon's governor and legislators.

Tom talks first with Washington Post reporter Marissa Lang who's in Portland covering the unrest. She gives us an eyewitness update on this tense and developing situation. Lang connects with Midday via Zoom.

Then we broaden the focus to other Trump Administration-related news developments, as Tom is joined by Ayesha Rascoe, a White House reporter for NPR.

Rascoe shares her unique perspectives on the political strategy behind Trump's deployment of those militarized federal agents to US cities; the resumption of White House COVID-19 briefings and the president's changing tone on the pandemic; the cancellation of the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville, Florida; Trump's call for the 2020 Census to exclude undocumented immigrants; former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's re-release from prison and his plans for a potentially explosive tell-all book; and the darkening mood at the White House as new poll numbers raise concerns about Donald Trump's re-election chances. Ayesha Rascoe joins us via Zoom.

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

They entered Congress together in 1987. Congressman Kweisi Mfume (D., Md. 7th) joins Tom to reflect on the legacy of his friend, the late civil rights icon, Representative John Lewis, who died July 17 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

John Lewis's body will lie in state at the US Capitol next week, with a public viewing that will take place outdoors because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a joint press release from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell .

The release said an invitation-only arrival ceremony will be held in the Capitol Rotunda on Monday at 1:30 p.m., and members of the public will be able to pay their respects outside of the building on Monday and Tuesday.


The joint release noted that because of COVID-19 concerns, Congressman Lewis will lie in state at the top of the East Front Steps of the U.S. Capitol for the public viewing, and the public will file past on the East Plaza.

According to the release, Lewis' family will provide details about additional memorial arrangements, including a procession through Washington, D.C., "where members of the public will also be able to pay their respects in a socially-distant manner."

The family is requesting that people do not travel to Washington from other parts of the country to pay their respects in person, due to the pandemic. Instead, they are encouraging people to post virtual tributes online using the hashtags #BelovedCommunity and #HumanDignity.

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

Today, it’s Midday on Ethics. We're exploring the ethical issues surrounding digital contact tracing and the clinical trials for a vaccine to combat the Coronavirus.

Dr. Jeffrey Kahn is the director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. He oversaw a project that led to a new book with recommendations to ensure that contact tracing is not only effective, but ethical. Dr. Kahn joins us via Skype.

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