John Rennie Short Summary

Publisher, author, and renowned public speaker, John Rennie Short is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. Professor John Rennie Short is passionate about urban issues, environmental concerns, globalization, political geography, and the history of cartography. He has visited many cities and has given lectures all over the world to many diverse groups of people.
Dr. Kate Drabinski is lecturer at University of Maryland where she teaches Introduction to Gender and Women’s Studies, Introduction to Critical Sexuality Studies, Studies in Feminist Activism, Unruly Bodies, and Sexuality and Queer Theory. She is passionate about transgender studies, critical pedagogy, public history, and theories of activism.
Michael Sierra-Arevalo received his B.A. in sociology and psychology (high honors) from the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include urban sociology, race and ethnicity, gangs, social network analysis, violence prevention, and policy implications of gang violence.

Due to the fact that all three publishers are passionate about some sort of urban “history”, it would only make sense that they would have and express such strong opinions towards Baltimore and the racism that not only the city receives, but the African Americans receive, as well.

In the beginning of the article, they begin to state “three background factors” (n. pag) that should be considered when trying to decipher the causes of an event. The first factor being “the recent momentum of the police brutality narrative” (n. pag). By this, they mean that the amount of police brutality has dramatically increased within the past few

years.
The second factor being “the lack of trust between police and minority black populations” (n. pag). By saying this, the authors are trying to say that instead of helping, police are killing African Americans, causing African Americans to not trust police and this could be why African Americans are targets for police.
The third being “the stifled economic opportunities and limited social mobility of many inner-city residents” (n. pag). This means that the lower you are on the socioeconomic status, the less likely you are to be able to get out of poverty, thus causing, more than likely, for you to be involved with the police one way or another.
The authors claim that they believe “A law-and-order debate should focus on reducing violence against low-income minority residents who are the primary victims of violent crime in Baltimore and across the nation.” (n.pag) They think that the police are too harsh on the poor people that do crimes and should focus on making the streets safer for the other citizens rather than harming and killing the citizens doing the crimes on the streets.
“They see people willfully destroying their communities and attacking police officers. What they do not see is powerless, unheard victims of centuries of racism, segregation, and inequality.” (n.pag) That is a powerful sentence when talking about this topic. Most people, mainly the media, tend to focus on what the citizens are doing and not why they are doing their particular actions.