Last Wednesday, the West Wednesday coalition held its rally on the corner of Lafayette and Wolfe Streets to lift up the family of Timothy Fleming who was killed by Baltimore City Police on May 16th, 2021. To date, the family had been living in the same house where they saw him executed in the midst of his mental health crisis and live daily with the trauma of the tragedy. The coalition, with the help of Timothy Fleming’s sister Angela Sutton created a GoFundme account to raise money to move out of the house. To date, the funds have been raised with more to come to ensure the family has enough funding to cover moving and living expenses while healing from the trauma of sanctioned violence. The link to the website with more information: https://gofund.me/5761363f
Baltimore Ceasefire weekend 11/5-11/7 recap:
“This weekend this city lost five community members, including a 60 year old man in my neighborhood. If anyone has been following the multiple platforms Baltimore Cease Fire has, the messages have gone out with the call to share and attempts were made to reach the families to give them monetary support and love-it’s the other component of BCF in response if the spirit of murder shows up. That spirit showed up five times, and from my experience, it’s the most individuals killed on a weekend designed for the self-determination work to affirm life, with also at least three additional individuals surviving the shooting. This is a very heavy load to process and I suspect I’m not the only one doing the processing. I also can’t deny the myriad of feelings behind the loss of lives when there was great intention to affirm us as a collective.
While the spirit of murder was showing up, the spirits of life, care, compassion, community and self-determination too showed up this weekend. Peace and wellness walks to engage with the community took place. To see people moving the way they were, making more connections, and having dialogues about what we can do to be healthy as a community incentivize me more to keep going and keep focus. I even reconnected with a member of Temple of New African Thought who was also on one of the community walk and received mental health resource information from him.
There is what we see and hear and there’s the stealth work of many individuals not seen that holds down the peace & safety in these streets. Never give up because honestly, it’s not a viable option to do so.“