AFRO Election Questionnaire

Headquarters
2519 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218
410-554-8200
1816 12th St., NW
Washington, DC 2009
202-332-0080
Office of John J. Oliver, Jr.
Chairman/Publisher
March 15, 2016
Dear Candidate,

Starting in April, the AFRO American Newspapers, will initiate the publishing of AFRO endorsements for selected election contest races for the April 26th Primary Election.
To facilitate our decision-making process, please complete the following questionnaire and return it at your earliest convenience, along with a copy of your resume and a headshot photo and e-mail to editor@afro.com, no later than 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 30, 2016. Please place the AFRO Election Questionnaire and the office you seek in the subject line of your e-mail. Only those who submit completed questionnaires will be considered for an AFRO endorsement.
We will be inviting in for interviews, candidates of selected election contests. If your election contest is selected, you will only be invited if you have completed and returned the AFRO Questionnaire by the March 30th deadline.
Thank you,
John J. Oliver Jr.
Chairman/Publisher
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
JOBS/PRISONER REFORM:
 
What will you do to ensure former inmate citizens are meaningfully integrated back into the community in a manner so as to reduce recidivism?
 
Cindy Walsh is the only candidate with a platform of rebuilding all communities in Baltimore as they are for the citizens now in these communities.  I will be bringing small business construction and fresh food economies as the platform for building strength and stability to a community.  This means with no outsourcing each community will see demolition, recycling of debris for rehabbing of houses for those most housing insecure, hauling away of huge amounts of concrete and bad housing to open real estate that will become a grand public green space.  We are downsizing each community as needed, but retaining the real estate as green space to allow future growth. This will be several acres of central space with a great public greenhouse, a barn for small animal husbandry, trees and especially orchard trees with each community having a unique fruit to offer the city.  The citizens will do the work-----own the small businesses needed to do these jobs------and those engaged in all development projects will be eligible for ownership of those rehabbed houses.  This provides a platform for the poorest in a community for housing stability, food stability, and small business ownership.  The grand public green space will be attached to a public school and public health clinic in each community and will attract plenty of middle-income families to create that mixed-income housing needed in most underserved communities.  I want the public housing being dismantled from city center---the high-rises which did need to be re-purposed----to move to each community connected to the mixed-income housing formula.  There would be a public shelter in each community as well making sure housing is assured for any community need. 
 
I will be growing a diverse community economy by funding small businesses in cultural arts, music, media, emerging technology-----each community will have a recreational venue that citizens from one community will want to frequent and vice-versa.  All of this will act to fuel new businesses in different industries.  As well, I see rebuilding our manufacturing base as small business manufacturing and not global corporate factories.  This means local citizens may want to join in worker-co-op manufacturing businesses-----producing things needed by citizens in their communities and the City of Baltimore and surrounding areas. 
 
All of this will create the conditions for our ex-offenders to integrate successfully with their community of choice. There will be support and tracking for these citizens to help facilitate their success.  As well, I will be building a Baltimore Public Justice system that has been missing and with that comes access for all to civil and criminal justice.  This would have a department where ex-offenders feeling they have been forced to plead to crimes they did not commit or feel they were wrongfully charged and convicted can seek redress.  If a case is there we would move for expungement.  Many Baltimore citizens will see favorable results in clearing their criminal record.
 
 
 
DEVELOPMENT:
 
How will you balance community development and growth with the need to preserve the cultural heritage and to enhance the vitality of Baltimore’s low and moderate income neighborhoods?
 
The current Master Plan of Baltimore Development has for decades been to allow communities to decay with the goal of bringing global corporate campuses and global corporate factories back to what is designated Baltimore as International Economic Zone.  Trans Pacific Trade Pact TPP is a policy moving through Congress that allows those global corporations to operate in the US as they do overseas.  Gov Hogan’s C.O.R.E is an example of this as is the UnderArmour campus in West Baltimore.  In each case these will be massive real estate grabs that take most of the communities from south to north Baltimore as a corporate campus.  This means the same activity as with East Baltimore----all housing will be destroyed; all work outsourced all over the nation; and nothing more than a global corporation coming from all of this.  People will continue to be pushed aside.  So, to answer your question above-----this development will not consider history or cultural heritage at all.
 
Cindy Walsh plans to do the opposite.  I will keep global corporations from gaining hold of our Baltimore economy while we rebuild our local community economies and in doing that building of individual communities will indeed honor the integrity of history and culture valued by citizens.
 
 
 
How will you utilize city-state cooperation in order to achieve your vision for an improved quality of life for the community?
 
 
 
The State of Maryland has garnered too much power over Baltimore as regards development, economic growth, and our public schools.  I will reverse all of this power and bring it back to Baltimore.  Baltimore is a sovereign city-----we have no reason to have so much of our public policy decided away from citizens and communities.  The State has budget obligations which I will fight to keep from being dispatched to global corporations as is our Federal funding.  This is what keeps Baltimore from rebuilding its small business economies and sending funds directly to communities to rebuild as they envision their communities.  No other candidate will do this---they will step aside and allow this global corporate campus development continue.
 
The State of Maryland owes Baltimore approximately $700 million from the $1 billion subprime mortgage fraud----they owe a $600 million lawsuit from Baltimore City Schools won by the Algebra Project a little over a decade-----there are Enterprise Zone funding for two decades that should have gone to affordable housing that never did and Baltimore HUD has failed to uphold Federal equal opportunity housing and education----all of which when enforced bring tons of revenue to Baltimore and it will go out to all communities for development.  So, to answer your question, I feel a Baltimore exerting its sovereignty to the State of Maryland is extremely beneficial to quality of life for all communities.
 
 
 
 
LAW ENFORCEMENT:
 
 
As an elected official what will you do to specifically improve community relations with Baltimore’s police force?
 
These are the problems I see need to be addressed.
 
The Baltimore City Hall has attached a global policing and security corporation to our police department that has trained in these most violent and abusive policing methods. It has accepted Federal funds for militarization of our police force.  Baltimore City Hall has historically never funded Police Department administrative side and there is where the oversight and accountability is created as too the transparency.  So, they create the conditions that citizens in Baltimore are shouting to end.  Baltimore City Hall installs policing policy written by Baltimore Development and allows this institution to choose police commissioners.  Baltimore has no public justice system so citizens cannot seek redress from policing abuses and the criminal justice system is corrupt and needs to be completely reformed.  The zero tolerance from a few decades never really left even as Baltimore City Hall says it has and the continual recycling of citizens through city booking and jail is highest in the nation.  The costs of simply addressing this zero tolerance uses the bulk of our criminal justice funding and most of it does nothing about real violent crime.  The use of aggressive techniques when engaging citizens in police encounters----from tasers to stun guns, from pepper spray to revolvers has created a policing tone in Baltimore that must end.  Somehow we managed as a nation to have police officers apprehend suspects with constitutional policing methods and still allowed police officers the ability to be safe.  We will return to the police officer as public servant charged with serving and protecting citizens and away from the mission of simply enforcing law.
 
I intend to fully fund an administrative side of police department and to assure full oversight and accountability and transparency as well as have a citizen board who feels fully engaged in all policing in their neighborhoods.  Reforming our Baltimore court system with the jail and building public justice structures will open our corrupt system to operating under Rule of Law, US Constitutional rulings, jailing conditions that meet the expectations of civil society and human rights. Doing this opens a real opportunity for community policing and yes, officers should be Baltimore citizens from all communities.  Creating more categories of community relations policing and removing crime quotas to allow officers to flow through all categories over a few years will give officers time to feel the history, the needs, and the goals of citizens in a community.
 
 
TRANSPORTATION:
 
 
As an elected official, what will you do to bring a 21st century transportation system to the residents of Baltimore?
 
 
Well, first I will secure the 20th century public transportation system Baltimore never had!  Baltimore has one of the worst public transit systems in the nation because it was underfunded and funds misappropriated created the conditions for failure to do time studies----failure to provide management staff----failure to provide adequate vehicles during rush hour traffic---or to prepare for emergency detours.  The MTA is the backbone of any public transit and having buses run on time and linking with transfer connections is a must.  Wait time should be no longer than 30 minutes.
 
Baltimore City Hall has been privatizing all of Baltimore’s public transit to a global corporation VEOLA Transportation----disability vans, taxis, college buses, Circulator, water taxi----all privatized under VEOLA.  Gov Hogan intends to further privatize the MTA in his inter-county rapid bus system.  This is critical folks because public transportation was the greatest democratic policy of last century and if it disappears many people will be given a pass to and from work and will not be able to afford the privatized system being developed currently. I will remove VEOLA from our public transit and make the entire system function together so all communities have the benefit of all the transit mentioned above.
 
We need more public transit!  That means biking kiosks, green walking pathways, extended water-taxis geared to rush-hour riders wanting to leave their cars at home.  Kayaking across Baltimore Harbor takes away congestion.  Getting downtown corporations to subsidize annual MTA passes as part of hiring benefits increases ridership and moving the Parking Authority from quasi back to our public agency will open the ability to make parking easy and affordable around the city because----public transit is not only about getting out of the car----
 
 
 
 
HOUSING:
 
The Baltimore City Housing Department has seen its share of problems over the past few years. As an elected official, what steps would you take to improve the quality of Baltimore’s low and moderate income housing opportunities?
 
As stated earlier, I will enforce Federal equal opportunity housing and education laws and that will include Baltimore HUD, public housing redevelopment, and Enterprise Zone requirements to affordable housing.  Since I will bring the Housing Authority back into our Baltimore Housing Agency and since I am the only candidate building all city agencies out into each community so citizens will have voice in public policy and complaints----transparency as data is collected in each community on housing issues---since my central platform issue is rebuilding oversight and accountability in each agency----my platform really does this----we will have citizens feeling they are protected and provided the housing needed at all levels.  Ideally getting a housing instable citizen into long-term housing quickly will solve many of the injustice issues felt today.
 
My appointments to all Baltimore City Agency Directorships will come from community consensus.
 
CLOSING STATEMENT:
Please share any additional comments you have about your candidacy or issues.

I like citizens in Baltimore to know that Cindy Walsh for Mayor of Baltimore has broad, popular support.  Through my non-profit Citizens’ Oversight Maryland I have over several years posted on public policy and done justice work in all communities in Baltimore.  From Maryland Assembly to Baltimore City Hall many citizens have seen me out and advocating for the policy issues on my campaign platform and with that comes thousands of Baltimore citizens following me for years---knowing me and liking my public policy stances.  This has given me freedom from a closed media and larger election venue that only allows Baltimore Development and establishment candidates’ time.  Don’t think Cindy Walsh does not have the votes to win! I will win this election for Mayor of Baltimore.
Please go to my campaign website Cindy Walsh for Mayor of Baltimore and see a long list of platform issues.  See a section labelled QUESTIONNAIRES where I respond to all community organization questions on all the public policy issues.  Check out my blog----and please go to my FB page where I post daily on public policy vital to citizens of Baltimore.
 
Thank you for this opportunity!  Cindy Walsh