War vets invade an urban village (in Baltimore)

[kpete]

By Luke Broadwater, The Baltimore Sun
December 25, 2011


Earl Johnson, who served in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, is a board member for Operation Oliver, a campaign to clean up Baltimore's run-down Oliver neighborhood. (Algernia Perna, Baltimore Sun / December 5, 2011)


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They've come to this neighborhood once synonymous with the worst of Baltimore to help it become something better. They call this mission Operation Oliver.

As the men walk, they pick up empty Seagram's gin and Bacardi rum bottles. They point to progress — refurbished homes, a painted playground — and to vacant houses and trash-filled alleys that still need work.

"A lot of the conditions from places we're deployed to, Iraq and Afghanistan, are not that much different from the conditions here in Oliver," says Blake, executive director of the 6th Branch, one of several nonprofit groups involved in Operation Oliver.

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Operation Oliver, which began in July, is a one-year commitment to the neighborhood, the veterans say. It involves cleaning up alleys, rehabilitating homes, organizing volunteers and notifying police about illegal dumping sites and drug dealing.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-hometown-baltimore-20111225,0,4000069.story

[limpyhobbler]

1. people power, awesome story

[malthaussen]

2. If we could just mobilize

... the unemployed, the homeless, and a few bucks and basic tools, we could probably clean up a bunch of neighborhoods and provide a decent place to live for our least well-off citizens. But then we'd have to figure out a way they could pay the rent.

-- Mal

[Cirque du So-What]

3. Bravo to these vets

Here's hoping their actions inspire others to rehab neighborhoods that have been deemed as beyond all hope.

[SixthSense]

4. Baltimore is an amazing city

the architecture and history in that city are layered on thick and deep - look at how pretty the buildings on the run-down street are, you can imagine how nice the parts where they are kept up properly look! If not for its plague of corruption and urban decay, it would be a shining jewel still.

[starroute]

5. This goes hand-in-hand with what some of the occupiers are starting to do

On one hand, there's a lot people can do to clean up their own neighborhoods if they believe it can make a difference.

But on the other hand, the more that people take control of their own fates and experience the self-respect that comes as a result, the more empowered they are to demand support from government for the parts they can't do themselves.

This is what community organizing is really about -- and why people like Glenn Beck are trying to demonize it. It's about getting communities to discover their own power and fight back against the forces that keep them poor, crime-ridden, and demoralized. And though that sounds simple, it's a force that could transform everything.