Political Commentary Corner

Former police union lobbyist and “Democrat for Hogan” Bobby Zirkin’s podcast lauds right-wing political propaganda as common-sense moderation. We reveal the political logic behind The Baltimore Sun platforming the former state senator, how his Zionist, pro-mass incarceration, pro-fossil fuel commentary sets up a potential U.S. Senate run for the Maryland Senate in 2028, and how the left should preempt this clear political posturing. 

When Maryland tried to reform its district court commissioner law, which has allowed testimony with investigation to a commissioner without a law degree to justify arrest warrants, they failed because of opposition from the “victims’ rights lobby.” Despite this law allowing folks to be arrested for mistaken identity and false testimony, the lobby argued these reforms would make it harder for victims of domestic violence to get protection. This episode discusses what happened after LBS called out the victims rights lobby, consisting largely of white women, for ignoring the structural violence this system produces, largley to black men. We analyze the inability of the possibility of seeing Black men as victims and the limitation of victims rights advocates calling themselves liberal or progressive feminists but supporting racialized narratives from Sinclair Media and Fox 45 around fear of crime. 

While the general assembly made some meaningful progress on limiting Maryland’s epidemic rates of charging youth as adults, of over 30 charges that automatically start youth accused of crimes in the adult system, only 7 of them were removed in 2026. In this episode, we analyze debates on the floor of the Maryland House and Senate to see how Democrats' inability to center youth innocence and the racist narratives around Black youth as innately criminal led Democrats to fall back on notions of moderation, incrementalism, and "balance," tacitly ceding ground to Republicans repeating Sinclair Media/Fox 45News talking points on youth criminality. To make more progress on youth justice, Democrats should center analysis on racist overcharging of youth, racialized bias in policing, and directly confronting media mythologies on youth violence, rather than seeking to avoid critical debates on these issues. 

Every spring/summer, anxieties about Black youth in public spawn news stories around fights and fears about commerce and public safety. This episode will reveal how racialized tropes around Black youth are used to justify charging youth as adults and obscure white youth/adult public disorder. 

We continue our examination of northwest Baltimore, discussing the internal dynamics of the state central committee and examining how an understanding of the racialized social control logic within Zionist ideology reveals “moderate” democrats as replicating racialized overpolicing and denying sovereignty to oppressed communities both here and abroad. We conclude by comparing the colorblind politics of current state senator Dalya Attar with the antiracism of her opponent for the 41st district senate seat, delegate Malcolm Ruff. 

A minority population faces oppression from a dominant group that exercises political and economic power over the region disproportionate to their numbers. Racialized tropes about the indigenous population being innately dangerous justified policing and application of force that violate existing rules, which, though limiting the power on paper, fail to change the material reality of oppression. The framework describes both the West Bank in occupied Palestine and Black neighborhoods in Baltimore. In this first of a 2 part episode, we examine the politics of Northwest Baltimore, seeing parallels between Zionist control of Palestine and political oppression here in Baltimore, incidents of police brutality, and political corruption as an extension of racialized power imbalance. We examine ties between existing Democratic political networks in Baltimore and well-known Republican Zionists and examine examine the racialized politics of safety in Northwest Baltimore. 

Despite the focus on national political battles, local politics has been a critical battleground for conversations around Zionism. We look back at 2023 debates in the Baltimore City Council around two contrasting resolutions, one reflecting a Zionist frame, the other   a call for ceasefire and attempting to balance concerns over anti-Semitism with Islamophobia. Through attempts to equate antisemitism with anti-Blackness and the Hamas attack on October 7th, the Zionist resolution is revealed as an attempt to frame questions about Israel with hate speech and obscure the systemic violence against Palestine. The political forces supporting the Zionist frame, including Sinclair Media and its board member, former head of AIPAC Howard Freeman, pushing Zionist propaganda, are shown to be the same forces pushing anti-Black and pro-mass incarceration propaganda in Baltimore. The negative responses to Black lawmakers who abstained from the vote on this resolution and supported a more balanced resolution demonstrate a weaponization of accusations of anti-Semitism against Black politics. . Finally, the political forces seeking to chill speech by punishing organizations that engaged in pro-Palestinian speech, reflected in the anti-Council on American Islamic Relations bill pushed by delegate Dalya Attar, created an environment of punishment for activists at a local level and produced the conditions that led to the bipartisan support of genocide that has defined the past two years.

In the face of persistent mass overdoses, some in Baltimore have begun to argue that policing is the only compassionate response to addiction. We argue this is false empathy and reinstates the war on drugs under the guise of care. We respond to the arguments that policing is a tool to connect folks to treatment. We conclude with a critique of public health driven harm reduction centered responses to addiction toward a revolutionary comprehensive approach centered in Black health sovereignty. 

 In this episode we expose how the Anti-Defamation League trades on its historic reputation as a civil rights organization to attack critics of Israel as anti-jewish. We deconstruct news coverage of the suite, revealing much of the incidents of bullying are constitutionally protected critiques of Israel. We give a history of the phrase “from the river to the sea,” and address claims it is Anti-Semitic. Additionally, we expose how analogies of Jewish oppression to Black oppression ignore critical differences between the two groups. We conclude by contrasting historic use of civil rights law to promote Black sovereignty to current uses of civil rights law against Black communities and critics of the state of Israel. 

Maryland passed the 2nd Look Act to give individuals with long jail sentences a chance at release. We look back at the floor debates on 2nd Look. While the advocates sought racial justice for the Black community, debates focused on defending why so many folks were ineligible for the 2nd Look, how hard it would be to get relief, and notions of forgiveness and contrition. We argue Democrat’s acceptance of Republican framing made it harder to push back on key amendments that were attached by Republicans and moderate Dems to weaken the bill, showing the dangers of not centering racism in debates around criminal justice reform.