Midday

Today on our program: The role of non-profits and philanthropy in the COVID-19 pandemic, through the lens of two local leaders.

With the profound social and economic disruptions caused by the coronovirus, the need for food, child care, and medical services has never been greater.

How are charities and grant makers responding? And how are non-profits themselves staying afloat to continue their important work in their communities, at a time when the challenges of providing assistance to those in need are stretching resources thin?


In the first half of the program, Tom talks with John Hoey, the President and CEO of The Y In Central Maryland. Among its expanded array of community-support activities during the pandemic, the Y is now providing day care at more than a dozen emergency child care sites.


In the second half of the show, Tom is joined by Shanaysha Sauls. She is the President and CEO of the Baltimore Community Foundation, a 45 year-old coalition of more than 800 charitable organizations that collectively support food assistance and other services for residents in all corners of Baltimore City.

In mid-March, the foundation made emergency grants to nearly 20 front-line non-profits that were distributing essential supplies like diapers, formula, food and hygiene products to area residents. The COVID-19 Response Funding collaborative has brought together several area foundations to assess needs and make grants.

For more information on what these groups are doing, and how you can help, click on their links above. And remember: tomorrow is Giving Tuesday! See what you can do to help the people and organizations in your local community.

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Sen. Chris Van Hollen on the latest small business relief bill. Mariah Acap and Tim Hicks of the Baltimore Body Shop share their experience applying for a Paycheck Protection Program grant and Mary Ann Scully, the president of Howard Bank talks about the challenges of keeping up with the massive demand for help.

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With more than 60,000 deaths nationwide from Coronavirus, more than 1,000 here in MD, the racial disparities in those who are infected, and those who die from COVID 19 continue to be staggering, and heartbreaking. Nationally, African Americans are dying at twice the rate of whites and Asians.

Today on Midday, we examine what is happening in two MD African American communities that are Hotspots for Coronavirus: Prince George’s County and here in Baltimore, the Park Heights neighborhood in the northwest corner of the city.

Representative Anthony Brown represents parts of Prince George’s County in Congress. Willie Flowers is the Executive Director of the Park Heights Community Health Alliance. Dr. Lawrence Brown studies racial disparities in health care at the Population Health Institute in Madison, Wisconsin.PR, your NPR news station

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We’ll hear how Baltimore Co. is responding to the pandemic and what the shutdown might mean for the county’s proposed budget. As County revenue declines, what will that mean for funding schools, police and other essential services? County Executive Johnny Olszewski, Jr. joins us via Skype from his office in Towson.

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As the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic continues to mount, universal testing for the coronavirus is still an aspiration for most Americans who might want to know if they've been exposed to the disease. In order to get a coronavirus test, in most cases, a patient must have an order from a doctor.

Tom's guest today is a physician who has to decide who should be tested. Dr. Rameen Molavi is a board-certified internist who’s been in private practice for more than 20 years. He’s a partner at Park Medical Associates in Lutherville and he teaches part-time at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

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Tom's guest is the acclaimed writer Louise Erdrich. From her debut novel, Love Medicine, published more than 35 years ago, through 16 subsequent novels, Erdrich has introduced readers to some of literature’s most fascinating and intriguing characters and dazzled her legions of fans with prose that is consistently distinctive and powerful.

Her latest novel is called The Night Watchman. It takes place in rural North Dakota in the 1950s. It chronicles the efforts of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians to thwart the government’s attempt to terminate them, which is to say, end federal recognition of the tribe, and force them off their ancestral land. It’s based on the story of Ms. Erdrich’s grandfather, Patrick Gourneau, who led the Turtle Mountain Band’s fight against what the government called “emancipation.”

Tom spoke with Louise Erdrich on March 11th, when public understanding of the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic was in its nascent stage. They talked about the pandemic before they began recording their conversation, but they didn’t discuss it in the interview. On that day, Louise Erdrich was at the end of a 6-city book tour, still flying in full planes. She was in Lawrence, Kansas. They spoke in the afternoon, before her appearance that evening at Haskell Indian Nations University.

Louise Erdrich lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis.

A reminder that because this conversation is pre-recorded, we can't take your calls and comments.

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On this special edition of Midday, six reflections on the April 27, 2015 Uprising, and how the community at the epicenter of that unrest - Sandtown-Winchester - has fared since a 25-year old black man named Freddie Gray died from injuries he sustained while in police custody. At the heart of the protests and the rioting that erupted after Gray's funeral: anger and frustration with a system steeped in racism, inequity and apathy; and a police force that operated with seeming impunity... (Special Election Notice - 7th Congressional District - Click to Read) <--break-> We begin with a focus on how community-police relations have evolved since 2015: Tom talks with Ashiah Parker, chief executive officer of the Sandtown-based community development group, No Boundaries Coalition. Ms. Parker is also a member of the Maryland Commission to Restore Trust in Policing, a State commission formed to examine the culture of corruption that allowed the Gun Trace Task Force criminal enterprise to thrive for years. Tom also speaks with Sean Yoes, Baltimore Editor of the Afro American Newspaper and author of the book, Baltimore After Freddie Gray: Real Stories from One of America’s Great Imperiled Cities. Then, a focus on the rich cultural and commercial history of West Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Avenue corridor, which runs from Penn North, the epicenter of the 2015 unrest, down to MLK Jr Blvd, skirting Sandtown and Uptown along the way. Tom's guests are Brion Gill, the executive director of the new Pennsylvania Avenue Black Arts and Entertainment District; and Jim Hamlin, a community native and founding proprietor of The Avenue Bakery on Pennsylvania Avenue. In the final segment, two more perspectives from an innovative community development group that’s been working for more than two decades to move Sandtown forward. Tom talks with Todd Marcus, community activist, jazz musician and executive director of the non-profit Intersection of Change, and with Daria Baylis, coordinator for IOC’s Jubilee Arts training and cultural programs, which have engaged tens of thousands of West Baltimore teens and adults over the years. <--break-> Audio for this program will be posted by 2pm today.

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Wes Moore and Erica L. Green are two thoughtful observers of Baltimore, then and now. They’ve collaborated on a book that will be released this summer called “Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City.”

Wes Moore is the CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation, one of the largest anti-poverty organizations in the country. He’s also the New York Times-bestselling author of “The Other Wes Moore” and the host of Future City here on WYPR.

Erica Green is an award-winning reporter who covers education for The New York Times. She is a former Baltimore Sun reporter who was part of a team that was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for its breaking news coverage of the death of Freddie Gray and the events that followed.

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Staying safe at home and on line. Zoom enables some of us to work remotely, worship, and stay in touch with friends and family. But do these video meetings make us vulnerable to cyber-crime? Tech expert Tina Williams Koroma has tips on cyber security, and Baltimore Councilman Yitzy Schliefer talks about the City’s cyber preparedness.

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The COVOD-19 pandemic poses a particular threat to people in prisons - both inmates and correctional officers. The basic tenets of virus mitigation, social distancing and frequent hand washing, aren’t possible, and the number of older inmates is substantial. Roughly 12 percent of the nation’s 2.3 million inmates are over the age of 55.

Last Sunday, Governor Larry Hogan issued an executive order that will accelerate the release of inmates who meet certain criteria, such as those who are already scheduled to be released within the next four months. It came after weeks of urgent appeals by health experts and human rights advocates.

There are about 18,400 people currently in custody in correctional facilities in MD. It’s estimated that the Governor’s executive order will result in the release of about 800 of them. Is that enough to slow the spread of COVID 19 among this very vulnerable population?

Today, Tom talks first with Baltimore City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who has been a vocal advocate for the expedited release of prisoners. We join her by phone at her home office in Baltimore.

Next, Tom is joined on the line by Tammie Owens, the president of the Prince George's Correctional Officers Association, the union that represents the corrections staff at the County Corrections Center in Upper Marlboro. Lt. Owens' union was one of the signers of a letter to Governor Hogan urging him to protect staff and inmates in the prison system.

Then, Tom welcomes Leonard Rubenstein, a lawyer with the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Rubenstein organized a collective letter to Governor Hogan in late March, and again last week, on behalf of 200 faculty at Johns Hopkins, about the urgent need to address the problems in MD prisons. The appeal raises the fundamental question: what do we owe people who are incarcerated when it comes to protecting their health?

Two important reminders about two important pieces of mail you need to make sure you submit. If you’re a voter in the 7th Congressional District, you can mail your ballot in the special election to choose a successor to the late Elijah Cummings any time before next Tuesday, April 28th. Democrat and former Congressman Kweisi Mfume is running against former Fox news analyst Kimberly Klacik. Again, the deadline to postmark your ballot is next Tuesday, April 28th.

And don’t forget to complete your 2020 Census form. When this pandemic is over, we need to be sure that everyone is counted so that our area receives the level of support that is appropriate for our population. Every one of us has a duty to fill out the form, on-line, or on paper, to be sure we are all counted.

We also want to acknowledge that today is the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, which marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement. After Earth Day in 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency was established, and several important environmental laws were passed in the years that followed.

Today, the Environmental Integrity Project is releasing a new report today on the health of the Chesapeake Bay, focusing on the poultry industry. Here's a link to that report.

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