Posted at 5:22 a.m.
The Save Middle East Action Committee (SMEAC) has announced it will be disbanding after nearly a decade of working to represent the voices of residents during neighborhood redevelopment. SMEAC has been active in the neighborhood that houses the Hopkins Medical Campus, an area that is being redeveloped by the East Baltimore Development Initiative (EBDI). Its board members include Hopkins President Ronald Daniels. The mission of SMEAC has been to ensure that the voices of community members were heard in the redevelopment process.
"After eight years of representing this community, fighting for social justice to ensure accurate equal representation of all residents, the Save Middle East Action Committee . . . will close its doors forever effective immediately," SMEAC stated in a letter to the community obtained by The News-Letter.
Members of the SMEAC board did not respond to requests for comment before press time.Some were surprised by SMEAC's decision to disband. EBDI interim president Chris Shea said he had not yet received official word of SMEAC closing.
"If it does close, that would be a surprise. As far as we knew, SMEAC was a viable organization," Shea wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter. Shock over the closing was echoed by Scott Spencer, Manager of Baltimore Relations at the Annie E. Casey Foundations, which has been a major source of funding for both SMEAC and EBDI.
"I was surprised," he said. Kflu Kflu, who worked as a community organizer for SMEAC, stressed that the organization was truly grass-roots while it was active.
"SMEAC is revolutionary in the sense that in the largest urban renewal project in America, residents without any kind of organizing experience just banded together and formed SMEAC and inserted themselves into the [redevelopment] process," he said. Kflu felt that SMEAC played a vital role in getting EBDI to listen to community members.
"The development was [initially] a top-down project. The community didn't find out find out about it until it was decided and [EBDI] basically held these fake charades to get community input but they didn't really want to have the community be part of the process," he said.
Kflu was especially proud of the "House for a House" program that SMEAC successfully pressured EBDI to adopt.
"The House for a House was not something they wanted to do but one of SMEAC's main tenets is the 'right of return' for relocated residents... We don't want to create EBDI's so called 'New East Side' and have Middle East residents not be able to be part of it," he said.
Kflu explained that SMEAC fought to make sure residents were able to get new affordable housing with their relocation benefits. Through meeting and rallies, SMEAC eventually convinced EBDI to agree to the program.
"I've been organizing for a long time and I've never seen anything comparable to that type of victory," he said.
Shea agreed that SMEAC had a positive effect on the development process."As one of many voices making sure that the residents' interests had priority, SMEAC has had a positive impact. It has been a partnership that has made this project better," he wrote.
Spencer also felt that SMEAC had made significant achievements.
"From a redefined relocation plan to a better method of demolition that actually takes resident protections in mind to the House for a House program to insuring that certain residents were afforded housing opportunities first-for example the senior housing-to more effective and transparent communications, the list goes on and on. They've done a lot to insure that residents were placed at the center of the project," he said.
Kflu did not feel that the lack of a formal advocacy group would mean residents would no longer be involved in the redevelopment process.
"The whole point is that EBDI went in and thought they could change this neighborhood and make it what their vision is without community input. That changed. Now they know they can't do anything without community input in the process," SMEAC said.
Shea maintained that even with SMEAC gone, EBDI will continue to listen to the voices of residents.
"I don't expect that to affect our relations with the community. The community is a primary partner in this effort, so we have always had a great deal of contact with individual residents, with the community as a whole and with the interests that SMEAC represented. Even with SMEAC gone, expect those relations to stay strong. We're committed to making sure of it," he wrote.
He said that they would continue to talk to people who were members of SMEAC.
"Only the organization would be gone," he wrote.
Kflu pointed out that even with SMEAC disbanded, the agreements they advocated for EBDI to adopt would remain intact.
"A lot of these agreements are codified. They're written. EBDI can't go back on them," he said.
Kflu also said that community members would still be able to use other means to communicate their concerns with SMEAC out of the picture.
"They... have the housing relocation meetings where there are some real active members [of the community] that go to it that know the process and hold them accountable. So it is difficult for them to get around it," he said.
Mike Rogers, a junior at Hopkins who has volunteered for SMEAC for the past few years said that he valued the experiences he had working with the organization.
"I deeply admire the work that SMEAC has done organizing in the Middle East Baltimore neighborhood and advocating on behalf of its residents, and consider what I have learned from SMEAC's members to be the most significant part of my education so far," he wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
Rogers considered himself fortunate for the opportunity to work with the organization.
"SMEAC has worked for nearly a decade to ensure that the voices of Middle East Baltimore residents are not only heard, but listened to, in the context of an urban redevelopment project that has displaced individuals and families from their homes and community. As students, I think that we have a great deal to learn from SMEAC's many achievements fighting for social justice for the people it represents."
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