Midday

Tom's News Maker guest today is the Commissioner of the Baltimore City Police Department, Michael Harrison. He was sworn into office in March, after a successful tenure as commissioner in New Orleans. That tenure continues to be credited with the sharp decline in murders and robberies in NOLA over the past three years. A decline in murders here in Baltimore continues to be aspirational. Just this morning, our city recorded its 300th homicide for the fifth year in a row. That number includes a few deaths which were ruled homicides this year following assaults that occurred in prior years. But the stubborn and horrifying fact is that more people have been killed so far this year than at this time in 2018, and we could be on track to equal the city's near-record homicide count of 343 in 2017.There have been some periods lasting a few weeks in which fewer people were killed in that same period in the year before, and there have been fewer robberies and burglaries than in prior years, but the rate of some other crimes, like car jackings, are up. Crime is on everybody’s mind, including the Commissioner’s. Since being sworn in last spring, he has reorganized his senior staff, he has made some progress on curbing overtime, and he’s launched an aggressive recruitment campaign to fill long-standing patrol shortages. We take your calls for Commissioner Harrison a little later in the program, and welcome your Tweets and emails and your comments on Facebook, where this conversation was livestreamed. Watch the video here.

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Disney has jumped into the crowded field of streaming with Disney Plus. ABC and NBC are on the defensive about their handling of #Metoo stories, and how will Facebook’s ongoing legal battles influence the role of social media in the 2020 election?

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Last August, the New York Times began a groundbreaking series, The 1619 Project, a series of podcasts and an entire edition of the Times Magazine dedicated to the often untold history of the slave trade. The scars of slavery were central to the founding of our Republic, and the impact of slavery’s legacy has extended to all areas of the American experiment, from economic inequality to mass incarceration, to education, health care, and arts and culture.This coming weekend, a symposium at the University of Baltimore Law School will explore the impact of slavery on the criminal justice system in America. Today on Midday, a conversation with two of the legal scholars who will be presenting at the symposium, which is entitled “400 Years: Slavery and the Criminal Justice System.” We begin with Michael Higginbotham, the Joseph Curtis Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law and the author of Ghosts of Jim Crow: Ending Racism in Post-Racial America. Then, Tom speaks with Roy L. Austin, a former Department of Justice and Obama Administration official who is delivering one of the keynote addresses next weekend. Mr. Austin joins us on the line from Washington, D.C.The Symposium runs from 2:00 to 6:30pm on Friday, November 15 and from 9:45am to 3:30pm on Saturday, November 16. The event is free and open to the public. Listeners can register to attend either or both days of the symposium at law.ubalt.edu. The symposium is sponsored by the Baltimore law firm of Kramon ---- Graham.This conversation was streamed live on our Facebook page. To watch, go to www.facebook.com/wypr881FM.

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Next, Tom welcomes two guests: First, the stage director Dr. Shirley Basfield Dunlap. She is directing a special multi-media performance tonight at Morgan State University – a performance that takes its cue from The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project.The show is called Since We’ve Been Here: Commemorating 400 Years of African Presence in America. Dr. Dunlap is an Associate Professor and the Coordinator of Theater Arts at Morgan State University. Since We’ve Been Here: Commemorating 400 Years of African Presence in America starts at 7:30 tonight in the Gilliam Concert Hall at Morgan State’s Murphy Fine Arts Center. Dr. Eric Conway will conduct the Morgan State Choir as part of the show, and he also joins Tom in Studio A. And coming up next weekend and the weekend before Thanksgiving, also at Morgan’s Murphy Fine Arts Center, the gospel song-play Black Nativity by Langston Hughes. Dwight RB Cook directs that production which includes spoken word, dance, gospel and spirituals.

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Tom’s guest today is the comedian Lewis Black.Since the mid-1990s, his “Back in Black” rants have been a popular fixture on The Daily Show on Comedy Central.Black is also an author, a playwright and an actor with credits that include movies and television.He’s appearing next Tuesday night, Nov. 12, at the Modell Lyric Theater here in Baltimore in a show that will benefit two causes that have long been near and dear to his heart: the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and Pathfinders for Autism.

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The great jazz singer Tierney Sutton joined Tom today. She has been nominated for a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album eight times – that’s a Grammy nomination for every CD she has released in the last 10 years.She’s been touring and recording with her band for the past 20 years. Her latest CD, Screenplay, is a collection of great songs from movies. Tierney Sutton will be appearing this Saturday and Sunday at Baltimore’s newest, wonderful jazz club, Keystone Korner in Baltimore’s Harbor East.

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It’s another edition of Midday at the Movies, our monthly look at what's new in films, and filmmaking.Our movie mavens, Ann Hornaday, film critic for The Washington Post, and Jed Dietz, the founding director of the Maryland Film Festival, joined Tom in Studio A with tips on what to see this weekend in local theaters.

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It's Thursday, which means theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom in with her weekly review of the Maryland stage.Today, she discusses Radio Golf, by August Wilson – the final installment in his ten-part Century Cycle. Directed by Carl Cofield, Radio Golf is the story of an African-American real estate developer running for mayor of Pittsburgh in the mid-1990s who struggles with his role in gentrifying his childhood neighborhood.

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Baltimore Mayor “Jack” Young joins me to talk about reducing stubborn levels of violence, rising water bills, making Kirwan recommendations a reality, and other front burner issues affecting our city.

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Today on Midday Culture Connections: a conversation about an effort to engage Squeegee Kids by helping a few of them form a new company that produces and markets bottled water. It’s called Korner Boyz Enterprises, and it’s being launched by young people with the assistance and guidance of people at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), the University of Maryland Law School, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and a non-profit called Equity Matters.

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