baltimore

Tyree Colion, a rapper and ex-gang member, risks his life setting up No Shoot Zones in communities with record murders. Late on a Sunday evening in July 2017, rapper and former gang member Tyree Colion was stabbed in the neck in East Baltimore. Bleeding, the 42-year old pressed a t-shirt into his wound with one hand and launched a Facebook Live broadcast with the other. He turned the camera on himself. "I'm losing too much blood," he said, gasping for air. In the background, his female companion could be heard screaming for help, pleading with him to "hold on". "Yo if I die, keep pushing them zones," he said, before falling onto the pavement and losing consciousness. Several thousand Facebook subscribers who were tuned in knew the "zones" Colion was talking about. But for Tracy Cox,...

Rasheed Aziz remembers visiting Baltimore in 2006. The empty, hollow buildings sprawled the entire block, he says. Buildings lacked roofs, doorways were boarded up, and tree limbs grew into missing windows. Aziz is the founder of CityWide Youth Development, which he began in central Florida to bring economic development to impoverished neighborhoods using manufacturing and entrepreneurship. In 2006, he decided to move himself—and his nonprofit—to Baltimore after his trip there. During that trip, he says, he saw a need for sustainable employment opportunities in underinvested areas in that city. “I’ve never looked through a window of a building and saw tree limbs before,” says Aziz, remembering his first visit and the “culture shock” he experienced. “That means there’s no roof. It’s a hol...

Tag: baltimore

Black Entrepreneurs Lead the Charge in Baltimore’s Economic Renewal