An oft overlooked perch on the I-95, northeast urban corridor, Baltimore is a small city by the standards of the region. There are about 620,000 people within its confines, and another million and a half or so in the surrounding suburbs. Largely overshadowed by America’s company town, Washington, D.C. is only forty miles down the interstate.
Baltimore is also a very poor city and a very black city. About two-thirds of the population are African American, and more than a fifth of the city lives below the federal poverty line. The main economic engines of the mid-20th century, manufacturing and the docks, have largely dried up as companies shipped jobs overseas or replaced workers through mechanization. For example, the steel mill at Sparrow’s Point was the world’s largest only a few decades ago. Now it employs only a tenth of the workers it once did. And in my uptown neighborhood, factories dotted the falls along the Jones River as early as the 1830s. During the 20th century, workers made everything from Noxema to London Fog trench coats. All of that is gone now. And so are most of the white people and money.
Given Baltimore’s geography, urban density, and dilapidated economy, it’s not surprising that the Occupy movement sprouted here fairly quickly. The first protest arrived on October 4th at McKeldin Square, a public plaza in the heart of downtown, nestled between the commercial hub known as the Inner Harbor, and the intersection of the city’s two busiest streets.
That first night, several dozen people slept at the square. Most of them have been there ever since, and their numbers are growing. Size-wise, it’s not on a par with Occupy Wall Street, but then again, Baltimore’s population is about 1/12 of Gotham’s.
However, Occupy Baltimore has followed the Occupy Wall Street model. Protestors have dedicated themselves to real democracy. They have formed a general council in which everyone present is eligible to vote. The council has devised rules of organization, procedures for running the occupation, and worked towards hashing out the details of their protest agenda. For now, 
it’s a generalized statement against the malfeasance of large corporations, particularly the financial institutions that are perceived as having created the current economic crisis.
But as we’re constantly being reminded these days, democracy is messy and inefficient, which is one of the many reasons why the founders created a republic instead. Democracy requires patience. Then again, not all statements are verbal. It’s no coincidence that McKeldin Square is right across the street from some major bank office buildings.
But in addition to protesting economic inequity and political chicanery, it seems to me that one of the sentiments driving many of the people in Baltimore, and indeed at Occupy movements elsewhere around the country, is the desire to establish some sort of community through these occupations. Many of them are setting up institutions and rules that go far beyond the basic logistics required for a peaceful occupation. In addition to supplying food and shelter, we are seeing all sorts of social activities entrenching themselves. Ad hoc libraries, music performances, film screenings, crafts workshops, group exercise such as yoga, and educational programs far removed from the ostensible issues at hand are just some of the many examples of people building communal institutions and engaging in communal activities.
Having established a shared space, many Occupy members are now using these sorts of seemingly extraneous activities to do more than ward off boredom or indulge in favorite past times. They are attempting to build some of the relationships one would find in an actual community. While familial ties are often the basic community building block, social relationships are also vital. By doing things that superficial criticism might dismiss as irrelevant or even ridiculous, Occupy members have begun to mimic some of the social relationships once found in historic human communities around the world.
Furthermore, many of the general assemblies are devising a
nd issuing statements that represent another vital community function: establishing values and ideals. This can be seen in some of the rules and proclamations that Occupy movements are coming up with. Often going far beyond what is strictly necessary to maintain an occupation, they are attempting to define morés and codes of behavior in much the way an actual community would. Communities establish rules of behavior and even belief systems as a way of creating authority and organizing members into a coherent group.
In the next post, we’ll examine some of the ways that Occupy Baltimore has attempted to create a community, its prospects, and some of the unintended consequences of those efforts.