After eight weeks of private meetings, organizers behind the “squeegee collaborative” held its first public meeting this week to hear from the community about how best to tackle the issue of squeegee workers at busy intersections. The squeegee collaborative is co-chaired by John Brothers, president of the T Rowe Price Foundation and Joseph Jones, the CEO of the Center for Urban Families. The group includes 150 people from squeegee workers to local residents and city officials.
Roughly 200 people gathered inside the New Shiloh Baptist Church near Druid Hill Park on Tuesday night. The tone of the meeting was relatively calm as speakers, including squeegee workers, shared their experiences with the crowd.
Photography and recording was not permitted during the two hour public meeting, even for members of the news media.
“We talked about accountability for all of us in the community,” said Faith Leach, deputy mayor of the Mayor’s Office of Equity and Human Services.
Leach said that means all residents are held accountable for their actions, both motorists and squeegee workers on city streets.
While the practice of washing vehicle windows in Baltimore has been a tradition for decades, hotly contested by some as a nuisance while lauded by others for entrepreneurship hustle, the issue became a major community concern after the fatal shooting of a motorist downtown in July. Since then, a minor who was squeeging at the corner and interacted with the baseball bat wielding motorist, was charged with first degree murder.
The concept of a “squeegee collaborative” was already part of the city’s plan prior to the fatal shooting, Leach said.
Davion Hodges, a former squeegee worker who is now 22 years old, said he had a lot of financial responsibilities that drove him to work on street corners. At one time, he was only two credits shy of a high school diploma. Hodges eventually graduated high school and is training to become a welder.
Hodges told the crowd that squeegee kids are not bad, they just need help like affordable housing or support filling out job applications to get back on track.
Meeting attendees were asked to share with the collaborative which types of services young people in Baltimore need, what type of accountability measures could help ensure the safety of both workers and motorists, but also any other ideas the collaborative should consider.
Local residents floated ideas like allocating some of Baltimore City’s $641 million American Rescue Plan Act money for community development efforts. Black-owned businesses could be hired to renovate some of the city’s vast vacant housing stock so that neighborhood children might see people who look like them can be successful in the workplace.
Baltimore resident Margaret Lloyd said she attended the meeting because she was concerned for the safety of both community members and squeegee workers after the homicide of 48-year-old motorist Timothy Reynolds on July 7.
Lloyd said what she learned at the meeting was that these workers are simply struggling to get by like everyone else and she realized as a grandmother and elder it’s her responsibility to do something for them.
“I’m going to offer more love to them when I see them, but not be afraid. I’m going to be firm and stern as if they were mines,” Lloyd said.
The city plans to release a new strategy to help squeegee workers in October, about a year since Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott rolled out his own 90-day squeegee worker action plan.
