Rev. Heber Brown, III, (third from left) with many of the young protestors.
Last Friday was an increasingly normal day for the Rev. Heber Brown III. The pastor of Pleasant Hope Baptist Church in North Baltimore was at a May 8 bail hearing for a protester charged during the riots in late April.
The protester was a local teenager named Allen Bullock. The 18-year-old was charged with eight counts, including rioting, after police said he broke the windshield of a car with a traffic cone on April 25. Bullock’s case has achieved a measure of notoriety because his bail was set at $500,000 while that of the police officers charged with the death of Freddie Gray was not nearly as high.
Ultimately, Bullock was released on bail. “He’s got a very stable two-parent home,” Bullock’s attorney, Brandon Mead, told the Baltimore Sun. “He’s got a ton of family support. He’s got a ton of community support. Many from around the country and the world are supporting this young man.”
Part of that support was Rev. Brown and the activist coalition he works with, BaltimoreUnitedforChange, bmoreunited.org. The recently formed group is made up of organizations such as the Baltimore Algebra Project, Baltimore Bloc, Casa de Maryland, City Bloc, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, Kinetecs and the Tyrone West Coalition. “Bail conditions are grossly unjust, particularly against Blacks. The average bail for the protesters is $100,000,” said Rev. Brown. “Something we have to keep an emphasis on is that it is a scam against poor Blacks.
There are 34 more people locked up. We have our lawyers and bail team trying to get the rest out of prison. We’re not the type of people to invite people out and then leave them high and dry.”
In addition to working on getting protesters released from jail, the coalition has been holding workshops on civil disobedience, hosting speakers such as Cornel West, registering people to vote and distributing free food.
At the workshops on civil disobedience, the actions of civil rights pioneers such as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks are held up as the ideal. “We teach the time honored principles of non-violent direct action. You have to be disciplined, that’s the main part of it,” said Brown. “We’re making sure the principles and the historical perspective really gets a chance to sink in. You have to approach any civil disobedience with the same discipline as the riot police displayed a few weeks ago when they just stood there in a line.”
As some of the media attention has died down, many areas of the city are close to being back to normal. The coalition is looking to prevent that. “People want things to go back to normal,
but we see that as not good because normal is unjust against our community. Our position is we’ve got to keep the pressure on and address some of the root causes,” Rev. Brown said. Asked what those root causes were, he replied, “Institutional racism, white supremacy and gross inequality.”