The Fight For Criminal Justice Reform in Maryland With Dayvon Love

Dayvon Love is a Baltimore-based political organizer and the Director of Public Policy for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS), a grassroots think-tank that advances the public policy interests of Black people. In 2010, Love co-founded Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS), one of many organizations that successfully pressured the state of Maryland to disband its plans to build a juvenile jail downtown. LBS has also led legislative efforts and advocacy efforts regarding criminal justice reform, youth and community empowerment. Dayvon is also the author of “Worse than Trump: The American Plantation”, a book that offers an important critique of the American political left and a political alternative to the exploitative relationship that Black people have to white institutions. Dayvon is also the author of “When Baltimore Awakes” which is a comprehensive critique of the way the white supremacy is embedded in the Human/Social Service Sector in Baltimore.

In this episode Dayvon and I talk about the struggle for criminal justice reform in Maryland from the 2010 fight against the Baltimore City Youth Detention Center, through the tough on crime bills and sentence enhancements that came in the wake of the Baltimore Uprising, the criminal justice elements of the cannabis legalization effort in Maryland, up to the current fights against Democratic sponsored Juvenile Crime Bills in the General Assembly which seek to bring more children into the criminal justice system.

Throughout this discussion Dayvon challenges the narratives, the political forces, and the media framing of Black people's inherent criminality and explains how this notion helps those that would push tough on crime bills, but also those who want to be allies, but may not understand how to navigate that space. We are using a framework for this discussion which requires an understanding of history, an aggressive confrontation of the current political order, a vision for the future, and a strategy for using the time between now and the future to build the institutions and ecosystems which will make the future.

In this context that means while rejecting the expansion of the criminal justice system and the criminalization of Black Youth, we must also envision strengthening and investing in the community based institutions which can help children and communities to avoid crime and violence, and to redefine accountability so that the default is not the criminal justice system. We use that as a jumping off point for discussing the radical political activity between now and the future and for discussing what a liberatory future looks like in which Black people can practice freedom.