“On the shoulders of our ancestors, we stand. Áshe!” said Andre Turner, as he solemnly went to sign his name in the book of city commissioners.
Mayor Brandon Scott then fastened a pin bearing the crest of Baltimore City to Turner’s lapel. Turner, who identifies as the grandson of a sharecropper, is one of nine commissioners sworn in as part of the Community Reinvestment and Reparations Commission on Wednesday morning.
Before Marylanders legalized recreational cannabis, Black residents in the state were twice as likely to be arrested for possession than white residents, according to data from the American Civil Liberties Union. Now, Baltimore City’s newest commission is looking for ways to try and right some of those wrongs.
As Scott explained, the commission will oversee a portion of funding from the state’s recreational marijuana tax by “... determining for which purposes these funds can be used, and directing the expenditure of funding to community-based organizations for services and programs intended to benefit our hardest hit communities in accordance with state law.”
When Maryland legalized adult cannabis use, the legislature also mandated that each county or city would get a percentage of the tax revenue that could be reinvested into communities that were impacted by cannabis prohibition. This state fiscal year, Baltimore City is receiving almost $13.5 million.
All of that money will be kept in a lockbox, thanks to city voters who approved Question G during the 2024 general election. Now, as per the city’s charter, that money is under the commission’s control– meaning it can’t get siphoned into the city’s general fund.
Both the fund and the reparations commission were the brainchild of City Council President Nick Mosby.
“I think it's a monumental step in the right direction,” said Mosby the morning after the measure passed. “I mean, the reality is we have to start somewhere. When we talk about some of the failed policies that have impacted our communities for far too long a lot of times, we just kind of talk about it as almost pie in the sky, but this is something that is of substance, that we can hold on to.”
The commission has a lot of leeway on the way it will divvy up the money — as long as its targeting communities impacted by cannabis prohibition — which were primarily Black and low-income. Almost all of the commissioners who spoke with WYPR say they want to hold listening sessions with the community to let that drive the conversation.
Still, many commissioners have areas of opportunity they want to explore. Khalilah Harris– who has worked in policing reform– recognizes that incarceration or displacement through the “War on Drugs” is a factor in lower home ownership rates for Black Americans.
“ … that they now have an opportunity to rebuild those communities through ownership, and not just as renters. So they can really have the level of pride of ownership that many of us experience, and that has been held back from people who are formerly incarcerated based on inability to obtain a mortgage or inability to attain a job because it's on their application.”
Baltimore County has set up a similar commission to oversee their cannabis money, each Maryland county has discretion over how they handle their portion of tax revenue.
While the state debates other, broader, reparations bills, this is one of the largest efforts in the state of Maryland to try and right some of the historical injustices faced by Black Americans.
Raymond Winbush is a new commissioner and longtime reparations scholar at Morgan State University.
“When I started doing research on reparations 30 years ago, I said, not in my lifetime will we have commissions like this,” said Winbush. “So, this is a realization of a dream as far as I'm concerned.”
Winbush says the damage from the war on drugs has impacted generations, but he thinks the commission can work on solutions that will last for generations too.
