Some Baltimore City state delegates Tuesday accused one of their own of using a Martin Luther King Jr. memorial address to further her own political ambitions and slam Gov.-elect Martin O?Malley.
Del. Jill Carter, D-Baltimore City, offered the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day address to the House of Delegates during its regular Monday night session.
Carter, who has said she might run for mayor, indirectly accused outgoing Mayor O?Malley of not focusing enough attention on the social and economic problems plaguing Baltimore neighborhoods.
“When will justice come to all of Maryland?” Carter asked during her brief address to the House of Delegates. “When will those we elect to run our cities and states focus on finishing the job they have before seeking the next opportunity?”
Carter also lamented the sharp disparitiesbetween the city?s booming Inner Harbor and some of its older residential neighborhoods, and the struggles of the school system.
“Watch as shining towers of steel, concrete and glass rise in the Inner Harbor and downtown, while those that live in the forgotten areas of our city serve life sentences in substandard schools, and travail neighborhoods of boards, bricks, broken glass and broken spirits,” she said. “Here in the great state of Maryland, in her largest city of Baltimore, we send more black boys to the penal system than we graduate from high school.”
“Baltimore took a bashing in her speech,” said Del. Talmadge Branch, D-Baltimore City, the No. 3 Democrat in the House of Delegates. “It?s wasn?t fitting. When you talk about Martin Luther King, you think of things that are more national. … I think the speech was a little too focused on only Baltimore and Baltimore problems.”
“I think the whole thing was unfortunate,” said Del. Carolyn Krysiak, D-Baltimore City. “They?re not problems you can solve overnight and I?m sorry she chose to focus on that when there are thousands of people working very hard [to change things].”
But not every member of the city?s delegation agreed.
Del. Curt Anderson, D-Baltimore City, hugged Carter as she returned to her seat after the speech.
“I thought her comments were comments of someone who?s lived in the city and who knows what the problems are,” he said. “There is a crisis in the city, ? and it?s got to be brought up. I think it was perfect. If King were here, he?d be just as upset as she was.”
