Planners of ‘Occupy Baltimore’ view screen listing committee options at organizing session Monday in Charles Village. (VoB Photo/Alan Z. Forman)

PARTICIPANTS  PLAN TO CAMP OUT  OVERNIGHT
IN McKELDIN SQUARE, PRATT STREET AT LIGHT

‘Approved media’ only to be allowed to film

BANKS GOT BAILED OUT, WE GOT SOLD OUT
— Mantra of the occupiers

UPDATE (Tues. Oct. 4 @ 9:45 p.m.):  PEACEFUL HARBOR PROTEST DRAWS FEW PROTESTERS.  Critical mass reaches estimated 50 by evening, far cry from more than 800 that promised to attend in Facebook signups.

SEE ALSO, INTERVIEWS WITH PROTESTERS FILMED AT McKELDIN SQUARE TUESDAY OCT. 4 BY BALTIMORE PHOTOGRAPHER BILL HUGHES  (click here)

Hand-lettered ‘Occupy Baltimore’ signs at Light St., Inner Harbor, looking south from Pratt St., Thurs. Oct. 6. (VoB Photo/Bill Hughes)

By Alan Z. Forman

When “Occupy Baltimore” banned a Baltimore Sun reporter from its planning session Sunday night it wasn’t because a majority of participants wanted her to leave, “it was the minority,” a facilitator for the anti-Wall Street demonstration that has spread south to Charm City told Voice of Baltimore Monday evening.

Utilizing a consensus-based decision making process, the group has held planning sessions the past two nights at a church in Charles Village to organize a sit-in protest set to begin tomorrow in McKeldin Square at Pratt and Light Sts. in the Inner Harbor.

Scheduled to run from noon-5 p.m., “the protest could continue indefinitely,” one of the prospective demonstrators, Umar Farooq, told VoB in an interview at the second planning session.

As many as 800 have signed up on the group’s Facebook page, some indicating their intention to camp out overnight.

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Maryland U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski was inducted Saturday into National Women's Hall of Fame in Upstate N.Y.

SENIOR  U.S. SENATOR  HONORED  SATURDAY
AT SITE  OF  HISTORIC SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT
THAT BEGAN IN UPSTATE NEW YORK IN 1848

Baltimore-bred  jazz  singer  Billie  Holiday
and Clinton Cabinet Secy. Donna Shalala
honored along with 8 others, five dead

By Alan Z. Forman

Maryland’s senior U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, the longest-serving female senator in American history, was today inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Seneca Falls N.Y., along with 10 other inductees that included Baltimore’s famed 1930s and 40s-era jazz singer Billie Holiday.

Also honored was former Clinton Administration Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala, 70, who served in the cabinet for the entire eight years of the Bill Clinton presidency from 1993-2001; and Coretta Scott King, who died in 2006 and was the wife of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Born in 1936 in Baltimore, Mikulski, 75, was the first woman in the Democratic Party to serve in both houses of Congress and the first female U.S. senator to hold a seat in the upper house without having first succeeded a husband previously elected to the post.

Initially elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976 after having twice won election to the Baltimore City Council in 1971 and 1975, Mikulski was elevated by Maryland voters to the Senate a decade later, assuming office in January 1987, where she began serving an unprecedented fifth term early this year.

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‘The establishment... they ignore us,’ 2010 Green Party candidate for gov. of Md. tells SRO audience this week in Baltimore. (VoB Photo/Bill Hughes)

‘RESIST WAR-MAKING,’  DESTRUCTION,
EX-GREEN PARTY NOMINEE DECLARES

Allwine lost bid for Md. State House
in 2010  to O’Malley,  finished 3rd

The Green Party’s candidate for governor of Maryland in 2010 called for a “new culture of resistance in this country” at a town hall meeting held this week at Baltimore’s Cathedral of the Incarnation.

Maria Allwine, who lost her bid for governor last year to incumbent Martin O’Malley, finishing a distant third behind losing Republican candidate and former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., encouraged a standing-room-only audience at the Episcopal cathedral on West University Parkway adjacent to Johns Hopkins University to “resist the war-making, the destruction” that she says is being wrongfully carried on by the U.S. Government.

“The establishment” doesn’t listen and “they ignore us,” Allwine charged, asking audience members to show up “in force” for a planned October 6 demonstration at Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C.

“We must resist what is going on in this country,” she said. “The most destructive country in the world, and it’s us….

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WJZ-TV screen capture of Charles Bowman, whose alleged killer is on trial this week in Baltimore City Circuit Court for the April 2010 shooting at a Chi- nese food carryout on Greenmount Ave. in Waverly. On Tues. a juror in the trial charged harassment.

JUROR  IN  MURDER TRIAL
CHARGES HARASSMENT
FROM OTHER JURORS

Judge  delivers  ‘Allen  charge’
in open court after complaint

UPDATE (Wed. Sept. 28):  HUNTER FOUND GUILTY OF FIRST-DEGREE MURDER IN SHOOTING DEATH OF VIETNAM VET CHARLES BOWMAN

Sentencing set for Nov. 23

A juror in the murder trial of the man charged with killing a 72-year-old Afro-American newspaper security guard in April 2010 complained today that other jurors were being hostile toward her, court observer Stephen J. Gewirtz reported Monday to Voice of Baltimore.

The incident caused Associate Circuit Court Judge Lawrence P. Fletcher-Hill to call the jury back into the courtroom, Gewirtz said, where he read them “Allen charge” instructions generally given to jurors when they are deadlocked, wherein the judge exhorts the jury to try harder to decide on a verdict.

Included are the directions that “if a substantial majority of your number are in favor of a conviction, those of you who disagree should reconsider whether your doubt is a reasonable one since it appears to make no effective impression upon the minds of the others.

“On the other hand, if a majority or even a lesser number of you are in favor of an acquittal, the rest of you should ask yourselves again, and most thoughtfully, whether you should accept the weight and sufficiency of evidence which fails to convince your fellow jurors beyond a reasonable doubt.”

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VoB wants to know: Who's gonna get axed in the mayor's ofc.?

BOARD  OF  ESTIMATES
APPROVES $120K FOR
‘EXECUTIVE SEARCH’

Mayor’s office mum on details
of vetting  for top appointees

UPDATE (Sept. 27):  MAYOR ANNOUNCES RETIREMENT OF CITY FINANCE DIRECTOR EDWARD J. GALLAGHER.  In an email sent out early Tuesday Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake announced that “a national search for Mr. Gallagher’s replacement will commence immediately.” Gallagher has served under six Baltimore mayors, beginning his career here as the city’s budget director during the administration of Mayor William Donald Schaefer in 1983 following government service in New York and Iowa.

The city Board of Estimates this week approved an additional $60,000 for an “executive search” for the mayor’s office but declined to reveal specifics of the proposal, leading to speculation that one or more top-level mayoral assistants may be on the chopping block.

The board previously had authorized $60K for the same purpose, doubling the total expenditure approved for vetting prospective Baltimore mayoral appointees to $120,000.

It is not unusual following an election, for top officials of government to replace existing high-level assistants, and the September 13 reelection of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is apparently no exception.

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