A digest of Baltimore news from local sources.
From the Baltimore Sun: Rawlings-Blake to Trump on Twitter: ‘Girl bye’
"Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump traded blows on Twitter Sunday, with Trump calling the mayor a 'joke' — and Rawlings-Blake responding with a dismissive 'Girl bye.'
"Trump, who is no stranger to lambasting political opponents in 140-character bursts, wrote that he'd noticed Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat, campaigning for her party's presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, whom he has nicknamed 'Crooked Hillary,' or in this case simply, 'Crooked.' Then he hit the mayor on her record in Baltimore and called her a joke.
"'I see where Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake of Baltimore is pushing Crooked hard,' Trump tweeted. 'Look at the job she has done in Baltimore. She is a joke!'
"It might've ended there. But Sunny Hostin, a senior legal correspondent and analyst for ABC News, tweeted at the mayor, bringing Trump's tweet to her attention.
"'@realDonaldTrump is heckle tweeting my friend @MayorSRB,' Hostin wrote. 'Badge of honor my friend.'
"Twenty minutes later, Rawlings-Blake fired back.
"'Girl bye,' she tweeted at Hostin and Trump, 'if he can't take criticism from "a joke", what's he gonna do when somebody real comes for him? #notready'
"The exchange followed Rawlings-Blake's sharp criticism of Trump's decision to skip the 2016 National Urban League conference — hosted in Baltimore last week— as a sign of the Republican presidential nominee's 'unwillingness to extend himself to the African-American community.'
"'If you plan to be president, you should plan to be president of the entire United States and when you have a national organization of this stature and refuse to participate at this national conference, it speaks to what your priorities are moving forward,' Rawlings-Blake said last week. 'African-Americans in this country have a strong tradition, a strong history and an extremely powerful future.'"
From the Baltimore Sun: Helen Delich Bentley, congresswoman who was a staunch advocate of the port of Baltimore, dies
"Helen Delich Bentley, the colorful and cantankerous former Maryland congresswoman whose fierce advocacy for the port of Baltimore led to its being named in her honor, died Saturday.
"Mrs. Bentley, who was 92, died at her home in Timonium, said longtime aide Key Kidder. She had brain cancer.
"She had a long and varied career that took her from The Baltimore Sun newsroom to the Federal Maritime Commission to the U.S. House of Representatives. She ran for governor in 1994 but lost in the Republican primary.
"'Congresswoman Bentley worked with tenacity, energy, and passion on behalf of her constituents, making her a rare breed in politics and a role model to public servants across Maryland,' Gov. Larry Hogan, also a Republican, said Saturday. 'She was a trailblazer for women in media and government, a longtime champion for manufacturing, maritime issues, and the Port of Baltimore which proudly bears her name as an everlasting tribute to her achievements.'
"He ordered flags in Maryland to fly at half-staff.
"Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, dean of Maryland's congressional delegation, was a longtime friend of Mrs. Bentley. 'She fought for jobs and she fought for the little people and she always put people and their opportunity to earn a living over petty partisan politics,' said Mikulski, a Democrat. 'Helen was a fighter and she believed in constituent service and she took on bureaucracy and foreign governments to get jobs in our community.'
"Mrs. Bentley's passions in life were to preserve and promote her adopted hometown's port, the U.S. maritime industry and American manufacturing. Gruff at times, she spoke out relentlessly in her unmistakable gravelly voice against anyone that threatened them.
"Into her 90s, she remained a force in the business of the port. For 70 years, little on the waterfront escaped her notice."
From City Paper: Korryn Gaines vigil remembers her life, establishes a counter narrative
"Ryan Gaines has a whole lot to say. His daughter Korryn is dead—shot, no, assassinated some say, by Baltimore County Police after a six-hour standoff in Randallstown on Monday—and she was a freedom fighter and she better be remembered as such.
"'If you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything' is something he taught her, he recounts to 200 or so on Friday night at City College at a vigil for Gaines.
"Behind Gaines, balloons spell out 'Korryn' and nearby, rows of candles also spell out her name and near that, candles construct a Basquiat-style crown shape. Off to the side, a photo of Harriet Tubman, who infamously wielded a shotgun during her underground railroad missions—and will soon be on our twenty dollar bill.
"The 49-year-old father of six delivers a game-kicking sermon wherein all of the 'Can I get an Amen's you expect are replaced with the more colloquial 'you feel me?': children in Flint and Baltimore and damn near everywhere drink 'glasses of lead' and Korryn's head like his other kids' heads is full of lead and he doesn't think that's a coincidence or an accident; the police continue 'to demonize' his daughter; milk is not even milk here in America, but pus and other shit stuck in there to contaminate and control minds; and he discusses the conveniently bungled history that preaches a white Jesus, just one of many things that white people have retrofitted.
"Funny how they won't take credit for lead poisoning whole communities and the so-called 'black-on-black' crime that he says they enable through allowing tragedies such as lead poisoning to take hold: '[White people] take credit for everything else, why won't they take credit for teaching us to kill each other?'
"Other speakers of the night include Ralikh Hayes of Baltimore Bloc who calls Gaines 'a mother, warrior, sister, cousin, niece'; poet Kondwani Fidel who reads his poem "Welcome 2 America" ('Welcome to America, home of the slaves...'); and activist Tawanda Jones who welcomes the Gaineses as part of her 'new extended family' and encourages them to 'never stop' fighting.
"The vigil is as much a corrective as a remembrance. The family feels forced to bypass the pleasantries of 'proper' tribute and grief to jump right to righteous anger—the first steps toward establishing a necessary counter-narrative to police and media portrayals of their loved one.
"Certain talking points return throughout the evening: If Gaines threatened to kill the police if they didn't leave, why didn't they leave and return with a new plan, why'd they just go ahead and shoot her?; if she was indeed, 'mentally ill' as they say, isn't that further evidence they shouldn't have shot her?; some people can't shake that haunting video of an officer in the entrance of Gaines' home silent, gun pointed at her; that Gaines anticipated and was prepared for this kind of confrontation and that it speaks to a long history of black armed struggle."