No Invisible People

 

One year ago today I could not write. The news from Baltimore about the Key Bridge loomed over the day like an enormous cloud. 

Six construction workers perished:

Miguel Ángel Luna González, Alejandro Hernández Fuentes, Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, José Mynor López, Maynor Yasir Suazo-Sandoval, and Carlos Daniel Hernández. 

Today I want to send you over to Baltimore Beat to read a piece about the workers who lost their lives that night and how the Baltimore Museum of Industry is working to honor them.

No invisible jobs: Baltimore Museum of Industry exhibit will highlight immigrant workers who died in the Key Bridge collapse, Grace Hebron, Baltimore Beat 

“They were living and working what is, in many ways, a typical experience for immigrants who come in and do that middle-of-the night work that nobody else wants to do. We wanted to honor that,” BMI’s executive director Anita Kassof told Hebron. 

There’s no paywall. There’s never any paywall at Baltimore Beat.  

It’s a free paper. Subscribe and it will come to your inbox. At the same time, it is distributed in print from specially made Beat Boxes within Baltimore. And since it is a free publication, they rely on donations. The seed money - - a $1 million gift from Baltimore-based Lillian Holofcener Charitable Foundation - - got them started. Continued financial support, both big and small, keeps them going. 

You really can’t find the kind of work that they do anywhere else in Baltimore. It matters that they tell those stories. We can’t know what we don’t see and we can’t care about what we don’t know.  

Right now the powers that be are systematically scanning government databases and removing every story that is not white. Struggles, accomplishments, bravery, contributions: if they were Black or brown or LGBTQIA or women or…(it goes on and on) their stories and honors are being purged. 

Who will push back against this suppression of America’s story? Independent news organizations who make it their mission to speak the truth about their communities are in the best position to do that, because they are doing it already.

Just as many folks these days don’t seem to understand that the value of vaccination comes not merely in protecting oneself from illness but also in protecting those around us, I think we sometimes forget that supporting this kind of journalism isn’t solely about its value to us personally. When we invest in independent local journalism we are also making that information available to others, as well. Think of it as herd immunity against sensationalism and disinformation. 

Rather like libraries. But that’s another story altogether. 

If my blog post today had a subtitle it would have to be: 

No invisible people: Baltimore Beat highlights the stories of Baltimore that other media outlets neglect.

Village Green/Town² Comments

Learn more:

Baltimore Beat

Baltimore Museum of Industry