In the wake of Bilal “BJ” Abdullah’s execution at the hands of the Baltimore Police Department, organizers with the Baltimore People’s Power Assembly spoke with members of the community who knew BJ and had spent their entire lives in the neighborhood where the cops executed Bilal. PPA Organizer Joy B grew up just around the corner from the Upton metro station, where the deadly police shooting occurred.
Abdullah was 36 years old and well-known in the community due to his profession as an “Arabber,” or fruit and vegetable vendor. The Black neighborhoods of Northwest Baltimore are infamous for being food deserts, with little access to fresh produce due to the lack of supermarkets in Sandtown-Winchester, Upton, and Reservoir Hill. Arrabers like BJ are some of these communities’ only thread to fresh produce.
Commonly known in the neighborhood as “the fruit man,” BJ was well-liked in the community directly around the metro station where he was killed. The Upton neighborhood has long suffered from neo-Jim Crow policies like redlining, white flight, and racist police terror. The people who live in the neighborhood understand this reality. They know that instead of corruption, poverty, and police murder, this country’s resources should be invested in health care, education, and jobs.
Issues in the community
Joy B. and Lev Koufax spoke to two street vendors and community leaders in Upton at length about the issues in the community, including the police killing of BJ. One of the men we spoke to was named Twin, the other Archie. Both are lifelong Baltimoreans and were on the block when the cops fired 38 shots, killing BJ.
Both men lamented the death of BJ as part of a bigger problem of complete disinvestment in the community, except for a foreign occupier police department. Mr. Archie spoke to the need for large-scale investment in the neighborhood’s historic Avenue Market. The market served as the commercial and social hub of a thriving Black community from the late 19th to the mid-20th Century. Due to capitalist disinvestment in Black business and social programs, the conditions in the neighborhood have deteriorated into poverty, crime, and widespread drug addiction.
Mr. Archie commented on this, saying, “Now that the Avenue has seen a winding down in investment, it’s not an entrepreneurial strip. It’s a drug strip. It’s what I call a Skidrow strip. Yes, back in the day, the Avenue was the Avenue. … but now there is like a dark cloud on the Avenue. Whatever is here within walking distance is all we can utilize because a lot of people don’t have the luxury of transportation.”
Mr. Archie emphasized that if the community is going to get back on its feet, then the market needs to be reconstructed and renovated, and the profits from that new market should be invested back into the Black community. Mr. Archie expanded on this, wondering why money paid in taxes isn’t invested back to the people:
“When you have so much money allocated in the government’s [budget], what are you doing with it?” He went on, “I’m looking to the ones that are spiritual witnesses in high places, who have the money and the allocations to change this mess!”
Capitalist greed
As seen with the killing of BJ, the capitalist’s response to the social problems that its own greed created is not compassion, or health care, or social investment – its response is pure brutal, racist apartheid. Instead of the required change and investment that Mr. Archie is talking about, the city and state governments confront social problems in the Black community with the end of a gun.
Mr. Twin knew BJ personally and also spoke to the issues highlighted by Mr. Archie. He spoke more specifically about the consistent racist conduct of the Baltimore police over the years and how this conduct always targets the Black community:
“[The cops] come through here any kind of way they want. Do what they want. They don’t do that downtown, down in the Harbor, Fells Point, or Canton. Those neighborhoods have the resources we don’t have.”
The neighborhoods Mr. Twin references as being the places where the police don’t treat the community poorly – Harbor East, Fells Point, and Canton – are all predominantly white and wealthy.
Mr. Twin also echoed Mr. Archie’s disgust at the lack of community engagement and investment from the government that employs brutal racist police instead of medical care, education, grocery stores, and union jobs. Mr. Twin specifically said, speaking about several Baltimore police and government officials, “They need to come through here! They need to see what is happening every day!”
Under this country’s capitalist system, the business-backed elected officials do not have the interests of the people at heart. As Mr. Twin is saying, this is why they refuse to really be in the communities that they supposedly represent. Instead of genuine engagement, the Black community is met with the murder of its beloved community figures, just like Bilal “BJ” Abdullah.
BJ Abdullah wasn’t a monster or a fiend. He was a person. He was a family man. He was a man of generosity, devotion, and faith. BJ’s humanity, and the humanity of all those under the gun of racist police terror – shouldn’t have to be stated, but in a system that constantly dehumanizes the Black community – it must be.
#JusticeForBJ #BlackLivesMatter #EndPoliceTerror
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