The Day the Buses Didn't Run

I will never forget the MTA ticket books I and other Baltimore City students received monthly to get to and from school. The ticket books contained two paper tickets for each day of school. One to get you there, one to get you home. These things were gold. When I attended Western High School, on the north side of the city (it had been “western” many years before, then got relocated…) I had to travel from the south end of the city, from a neighborhood called Brooklyn. To catch the bus to school—an MTA bus, not a yellow bus—we waited at a regular bus stop and waited for the specially-routed #64 to come by. Our bus took us through various neighborhoods, picking up Western and Poly (the school beside ours) students as it went.

Back then, there were only a few city-wide schools whose student bodies travelled to high school: Western, City, Poly, and a few other special programs. The rest of the high schools were zoned…neighborhood schools. Today, the city has specialized its high schools. What had been my zoned school, Southern, is now Digital Harbor—a high school with a technology focus. In fact, if you check out the city’s list of high schools, NOT A SINGLE ONE is listed as a neighborhood school (http://schoolchoice.baltimorecityschools.org/).

What does this mean for what happened Monday? A large portion of the students at Frederick Douglass High School, the school near Mondawmin Mall whose students ended up largely getting drawn into one of the darkest days in recent Baltimore history, NEEDED TO TAKE A BUS OR THE METRO TO GET HOME.

Others have written more thoroughly on this, especially the Mother Jones article about it HERE. Suffice to say, on top of the line of police in riot gear greeting students as they left school for the day, the fact that their rides home were gone (which is what I’d heard…Mother Jones said even students who could find buses to get on were made to disembark) left basically the better part of an entire high school student body milling about in precisely the place people were expecting trouble. You know what happens when you make hundreds of high school kids stay in one place? Usually trouble.

Now, many of these kids made really poor choices. Some straight up made criminal ones. And I’m a big proponent of people learning about (appropriate) consequences for their actions early—it’s much harder to learn later in life. However, the community wasn’t expecting these kids to act out (as one teacher in the Mother Jones article said, many of the kids thought the idea for purge was stupid, or the kids themselves were scared). It wasn’t because they were out of touch, but because most would say, there was not a threat on the level of what later happened. As someone who was actually in touch with Baltimore City teachers that day before school let out, you know what they were most worried about? A threat of gang activity, which police had released as a “credible threat.” They were worried for their kids, not about what their kids would do.

The truth is, we will never know what would have been different if those students had been permitted to get on their buses and go home. I do believe if the buses being prevented from picking up students have been the cute yellow buses most counties have, there would have been wild uproar at kids being prevented from getting on them and going home. I suspect if you asked any high school teacher or administrator if they thought it was a good idea to open the doors after school, push the kids out, and then make them hang out outside without a way home, they would laugh and know you weren’t actually serious, because that would be an incredibly ridiculous idea.

But that’s what happened Monday afternoon.

Today these youth are back in school. They’ve had a couple days to be reprimanded by adults for even considering acting out, and some have been appropriately arrested for their actions. There were, of course, others driving the riots (3/4 of those arrested were adults) but it still seems in retrospect that so much turned in the minutes after school got out.

The continuing reflection on the riot will look at many things, will examine how we guide our young people better, and hopefully will reflect on the tension that existed to even tip the scales to violence because the buses weren’t there. It would be great if the city and police leadership would explain why the buses weren’t there. Maybe even if, in retrospect, they admitted it didn’t help things to keep those kids there.

But then, that’s part of what started this all anyway, isn’t it? These young people live in a culture which blames them without asking why a situation escalated and if perhaps people in positions of power actually compounded and escalated things, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

Today, high school students get ID cards to use for their “school buses.” (Not all are special routes for students, many are just regular bus routes) Which is probably better…the tickets were a pain to keep track of (yep, I was known to pull the wrong ticket for the day sometimes). Most people don’t know what it is to rely on public transportation to get to and from school. Or the way you are at the mercy of the MTA, other leaders, and the crazy lady talking to her imaginary friend (this happened to me, and that wasn’t the half of it…).

Baltimore is not a city with energy behind a riot. That’s the thing. Some will (and perhaps rightly so) criticize some in leadership for underestimating the violence that would come Monday. And if it hadn’t come Monday, perhaps it would have come another day. I really wonder though…what could have been different if only the buses had come…and gone…with kids on them…

There is more going on in Baltimore than just whether the buses come or not, of course. But not riots. Protests, yes? A man died from injuries after an arrest that no one seems to suggest was violent itself. That should not happen. I have too much respect for police (many of whom I know or am related to) to believe that it’s a default assumption that a police officer will use such force as to seriously injure or kill someone and this is acceptable. The police officers I know (and, indeed, much of the police action we witnessed yesterday) display such restraint as a part of their day-to-day bearing that it’s hard to account for those police officers (of whom there are more than many of us would like to admit) do not show such restraint.

We will all, no doubt, live with tension until a report about Freddie Gray’s death is released (and charges, etc. as the facts direct). The various questions, emotions, competing priorities and biases all tied up in this case make it complex and even the wisest of leaders would be foolish to predict public reaction. But I believe Baltimore is ready to move forward…but that moving forward can’t just be a moving forward of repression, oppression and empty peace, but one that changes the systems that create the tension, injustices and limited opportunities to begin with.

Maybe we can start by getting the kids home safely today.