Reply to Governor Wes Moore’s 2024 State of the State Speech-Part 2

Written By Andy Ellis

Making Maryland Safer-Moore’s Top Priority

“Our administration will continue an all-of-the-above approach to public safety”- Governor Moore.

While “an all of the above approach” sounds good, and scores political points, it is bad policy. It is a core part of the Democratic Party response to the 2020 global uprisings around policing. It seeks to find a middle ground between demands to “defund the police” and to “hold criminals accountable”.

Yet, as we can see from the Moore administration an “all-of-the-above approach to public safety” is often just a talking point to justify and redeem the current approach to pubic safety. Any approach that relies on over-policing, criminalization of youth, and widening the net of the criminal justice system has proven time and time again to fail. It fails people who might be involved in crime, it fails victims of crime, and it fails communities. 

I want to get to a world where we collectively abolish policing and prisons as we know them today. However, in the current political order, a juvenile and criminal justice system exists and is expanding. A politics rooted in justice, peace, democracy, and ecology must include a direct confrontation with these systems. In the current political order the justice system gets massive amounts of resources to maintain public safety with a hyper focus targeting a few, mostly working class, Black and Brown communities. People, organizations, and networks that are trying to build peace in those same communities often lack the resources, infrastructure, or the public sector support they need to scale their work across the community.

In order to change the political calculation Democrats and Republicans make about crime, and to change the balance of resources and investment, we need a Green politics rooted in Justice, Democracy and Peace. 

I want to deepen this argument by focusing on two elements of the “All of the Above Approach” that I believe illustrate the flaws of the Moore Administration and the Democratic Leadership in the Legislature. 


Juvenile Crime

Moore begins the section of his speech about safety by decrying ”false choices that dominate the public safety debate.” He goes on to offer  an example of exactly that kind of false choice: “Do you want to hold criminals accountable or do you want to focus on rehabilitation?”

Further, the Moore administration and the Democratic Leadership in the General Assembly are partnering together on a bill (HB814/ SB 744)  that will decrease the number of choices available when young people are charged with a crime. Based on the theory that both accountability and rehabilitation are best performed by the juvenile justice system, these bills drag more kids into the system. Moore describes it this way: “Marylanders are seeking justice for victims of crime — more accountability for people who break the law — and better rehabilitation for our children.”

The Democratic leaders in the General Assembly are introducing and the Governor is supporting this bill in large part because in the current politics of the two party system. Its a story with decades of history. Right-wing media and elected Democratic States Attorneys benefit politically by  heightening the fear of crime. Elected Democrats respond by passing policies that are tough on crime, and very often specifically tough on juvenile crime.  Nodding at  this political reality, State Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Democrat from Baltimore said, “While youth offenders account for less than 10-percent of the crimes committed, unfortunately it is clear that they’ve become the biggest part of the crime perception problem in Maryland,” while introducing the Bill at a press conference with Governor Moore.

I talked to Dayvon Love, Director of Public Policy at Leaders of A Beautiful Struggle about this February 8th, the day these bills were heard in Annapolis. Our discussion touches on this bill in the larger context of Maryland’s fight for criminal justice reform and  building new systems of public safety.

Dayvon argues that resources should be invested in community-based work that can provide different forms of accountability and rehabilitation. Much of this community work is already being done by existing groups, organizations, and networks. Much more could be done by grassroots groups that could grow with resources.  Whenever appropriate, young people who would be better served by being diverted away from the justice system should be diverted away from the justice system.

My campaign wholly agrees with this approach and we will be developing policy focused on transforming public safety so that the justice system is the solution of last resort, instead of the solution of first resort.

The Green Party platform has long taken this position and we intend to build on that tradition as we develop policy and build political power here in Maryland.

Statewide Center for Firearm Violence Prevention and Intervention

During the State of the State address, Moore said “And I’m proud that Maryland will be the first state to answer President Biden’s call to launch a statewide Center for Firearm Violence Prevention and Intervention.” This is part of the Governor’s package of bills on Public Safety. 

Like the juvenile crime bills mentioned above, the Governor and the Democratic Leadership in the General Assembly are partnering to advance these bills (HB 583/SB 475) . From the Fiscal and Policy Note for the bill, you can see the approach it takes: “ This Administration bill establishes the Center for Firearm Violence Prevention in the Maryland Department of Health (MDH). The purpose of the center is to reduce firearm violence, harm from firearm violence, and misuse of firearms in the State by partnering with federal, State, and local agencies and affected communities to implement a public health approach to firearm violence reduction. The center must (1) work in consultation with specified State agencies and stakeholders; (2) solicit and consider recommendations from specified communities and experts; and (3) submit to the Governor and General Assembly a preliminary State Plan for a Public Health Approach to Reducing Firearm Violence (by May 1, 2025), and a State Strategic Plan for Firearm Violence Reduction Using Public Health Strategies (by May 1, 2029, and every four years thereafter). “

I talked to Lawrence Grandpre, Director of Research at Leaders of Beautiful Struggle about this approach on my podcast on February 1st, as the Moore administration was touting this program in Annapolis and across the state. Lawrence lays out an explanation of the public health approach to preventing violence and its mixed results in places like Baltimore. This approach is becoming an increasingly popular option in policy and in funding. These programs are at their most successful when they are used  as  one option in a broader approach. However, as Lawrence explains in this clip from our podcast, The public health academy and the non-profit industrial complex are attempting to consolidate public health as THE policy approach to violence prevention and addiction treatment, and in the process crowding out and co-opting indigenous community based approaches to violence prevention.

The Moore Administration’s  Statewide Center for Violence Prevention is exactly that kind of consolidation. If established it will be the primary vehicle in Maryland for receiving federal funds, it will dictate best-practices to community and faith based organizations who seek to do violence prevention work, and it will invest in spreading this model throughout the state.While the legislation makes a nod toward allowing community organizations a seat at the table, it will ultimately  make existing community based programs, organizations, and networks subservient to the public health methodology, and to the state  government office that is built on that methodology.

The alternative is to invest resources and support infrastructure in the organizations, programs and networks that are already doing violence prevention work. Black communities in places like Baltimore have well developed methods of violence prevention, accountability, and rehabilitation. Sometimes these methods do not fit neatly in the framework of  public health nor  do they adhere to the so-called “best practices”of the foundations that fund the work of the  non-profit industrial complex . Instead of pushing these grassroots community-based approaches to the side, we need to make sure they have the resources to innovate, iterate, and grow their programs to scale. 

This requires localized, community controlled, and democratic mechanisms to administer the funding and organize the decision making. It can include a public health approach, but only to the degree that locally controlled institutions are in the lead. This is a stark contrast to the Biden and Moore administration's approach, which puts the government agency, the non profit industrial sector, and the public health industry in charge. Lawrence explains the alternative in this clip:

Our campaign is about justice: redistributing power, wealth, and opportunity to the people and communities most directly affected by unjust policies. We will confront efforts by Democrats and non-profit foundations to consolidate power and resources. We will advance an alternative political program, one that transfers power and resources into the hands of the people, communities, and organizations doing the work to make Black and Brown working class communities safer.

Conclusion

Democrats and Republicans are united in their use of fear of crime rhetoric and tough on crime policies to manipulate and manage public concerns about public safety. It has been this way for decades. Yet  In the wake of the 2020 global uprisings in response to George Floyd’s murder, they took different but similar approaches. Republicans called for more resources for police, tougher sentences, and an end to diversion programs. Democrats like Biden and Moore joined them in the call for more police and tougher sentences for violent crime, but coupled that approach with a belief that the justice system could be the service provider of first resort. They  also are calling for a  significant investment in building a  top down public health based approach to preventing gun violence. 

We believe both of these approaches are wrong. What we need is a Green politics rooted in justice, peace, and  democracy. Out of these values we will advance  a set of policies that make the justice system the stop of last resort, and make grassroots community-based democratically  controlled approaches to public safety the primary means of preventing violence and ensuring that Black and Brown working class communities can thrive.

Andy Ellis
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Reply to Governor Wes Moore’s 2024 State of the State Speech- Part 1