Citing the prevalence of machine-style politics and the seeming invincibility of incumbents on the Baltimore City Council, a broad based coalition of community and labor has come together to take the necessary step to return power to the community. After coalescing around the campaign to fight Mayor Martin O'Malley's reduction of services, union employee layoffs, privatizations, school consolidations and library closures, the group has continued to fight the Mayor's pro-business, anti-worker agenda.

Founding members included ASFCME and CUB, the two unions representing City employees, and ACORN, Baltimore's most active progressive community-based organization. The coalition went on to fight the Mayor's multimillion dollar corporate handout to Citifinancial, a locally-headquartered predatory lender, a subsidiary of the multinational Citigroup. The company has been indicted by the federal government for abuses, and ACORN's research shows that the lender targets low-income and minority neighborhoods and senior citizens with deceptive sales practices and high-fee, high-interest loans.

Members of the three groups used a variety of tactics to let City Council members know the outrage of the community, from hundreds of postcards, rallies, phone calls, lobbying at City Hall and packing the Council Chambers during meetings. However, just like the budget vote and library campaign, City Council members refused to stand up against the Mayor, despite obvious community pressure. Meanwhile, the company has significantly altered some of its practices and is preparing to reimburse many victims in response to the organized outcry.

Then, at a November 8th rally chaired by new AFL-CIO MD President Fred Mason, union and community leaders announced a new campaign to alter the City Council through the a City Charter change. City Council is currently made up of six large districts with three representatives each. The new proposal calls for fourteen single-member districts. Each district comprises about 100,000 people and spans both poor and wealthy neighborhoods. Therefore, all three reps spend most of their time in the rich areas, and since members pool their money and run as a slate, incumbents are almost never defeated. They become career politicians, and even as most City Councils are relatively progressive, Baltimore's consistently falls in line with the white, pro-business Mayor in a city with a majority of low-income African-Americans and an overwhelmingly working-class population.

The same system used to be in place throughout the South before they were systematically challenged by civil rights and legal groups as being racist and used to dilute and disenfranchise the black vote. Even though a significant portion of the Council is African-American, it consistently fails to represent the community's interest.

The group needs to collect 10,000 valid signatures and win a referendum in November 2002 to institute the change. Organizers believe that smaller districts means that politicians will be more accountable to their neighborhood, and those with a poor voting record will be easier to identify and defeat. Most importantly, smaller districts means less votes in each district and allows unions, community groups and third party candidates to run and win seats.

The coalition now consists of 11 member groups and represents over 40,000 low to moderate income people, workers and progressives including the Baltimore Greens, HERE, the Firefighters' Union and it has acquired the name Community and Labor United for Baltimore (CLUB). The Statewide AFL-CIO and the League of Women Voters have already endorsed the plan, and organizers are confident that the petition will gather the needed signatures easily.

Phil Andrews
ACORN Organizer