BALTIMORE (BBN) UPDATE on February 25, 2022 with Marvin L. “Doc” Cheatham news conference at Under Armour Brand House for “food desert equity — Civil rights icon Marvin L. “Doc” Cheatham campaign to bring a food market to the economically depressed neighborhood of Easterwood/Sandtown in West Baltimore has united a coalition of business, academic and simple citizens to concretely tackle the shameful “food desert” crisis by confronting head-on the issue of equity in arguably the nation’s most segregated city.
[Baltimore civil rights activist Marvin L. “Doc” Cheatham filmed by Capitol Intelligence/BBN using CI Glass at new conference during the Equity and Food Desert rally to protest exclusion from Opportunity Tax credits of Port Covington granted to Under Armour founder and executive chairman Kevin Plank with Zulieka Baysmore, 2022 Candidate for Maryland House of Delegates District 40 and Baltimore GOP Central Committee Member Christopher Anderson at Under Armour Brand House at 700 S. President Street in Baltimore, Maryland on Feb, 25, 2022]
Doc Cheatham held a city-wide rally on February 25 highlighting Under Armour founder and executive chairman, Kevin Plank, more than $1bn in city, state, and federal tax credit windfall for his Port Covington real estate while deprived neighborhoods such as Easterwood/Sandtown are inexplicably excluded from lucrative Opportunity Zone classification established under the Trump administration.
“…we consider this as an equivalent to ‘Robinhood in Reverse.’ Our high poverty majority Black population, which Easterwood/Sandtown is, has been Opportunity Zone discriminated against, disregarded and ignored,” ‘Doc’ Cheatham, Sr., CEO. of the Matthew Henson Community Development Corporation states, adding. “We are asking President Kevin Plank to support O.Z. designation for 21217 Easterwood/Sandtown to assist our efforts to bring back a food market that we lost seven years ago, a market we have had since World War II.”
“Doc’ Cheatham and fellow community activists say they are only asking that Kevin Plank join forces with them to addressing the growing disparity in Baltimore and rectify Maryland Governor Larry Hogan using a “digital mapping error” to create an Opportunity Zone status in Port Covington meant for “economically distressed communities” in East and West Baltimore.
Port Covington, which was originally designated by Governor Larry Hogan to become Jeff Bezos’s 2nd headquarters, will now become Under Armour’s new global headquarters and a campus for dynamic international and domestic tech companies. The economic success of Port Covington, where Goldman Sachs has already co-invested over $300m, runs counter to the very negative opinions of Baltimore’s economic future by the city’s great native son, Carlyle co-founder and chairman, David Rubenstein.
“Doc” Cheatham has already brought together The Harbor Bank founder and CEO Joseph Haskins; JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs CEOs Jamie Dimon and David Solomon; Morgan State University President David M. Wilson; Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg Public Health’s Prof. Joel Gittelsohn; and the non-for-profit Good Foods Market group of Kris Garin’s Riparian Capital Group real estate development concern to build a supermarket at an already designated plot at 1500 Marvin Doc Cheatham Way (1500 McKean Avenue).
[JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, Carlyle co-founder David Rubenstein and Lancaster, PA-based Fulton Bank Chairman and CEO E. Phillip Wenger speak to Capitol Intelligence/BBN using CI Glass on bringing investment to solve Baltimore food desert crisis in neighborhoods such as Sandtown/Easterwood, Cherry Hill and East Baltimore.]
[The term food desert — originally coined in the 2015 seminal study by Johns Hopkins University’s Dr. Robert S. Lawrence MD— are those neighborhoods where the distance to a supermarket is more than ¼ mile; the median household income is at or below 185% of the Federal Poverty Level; over 30% have no available vehicle and local food stores rank subpar vis-a-vis the average Healthy Food Availability Index (HFAI) score.]
In fact, “Doc” Cheatham’s positive rally in front of Dutch financial conglomerate TransAmerica (Aegon) had led to Amsterdam-based food giant, Ahold, to have its US unit Giant place $50 million into a Harbor Bank managed money market account and Cheatham’s became the first community development association to seek funding from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) sponsored “Shark Tank Fund.”
Speaking to a report at the timely Equity summit hosted by US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Morgan State University President David M. Wilson, Doc said he had talks with “some of the most entitled” executives of major US grocery chains before convincing Germany’s giant Lidl supermarket chain to open a grocery store at the Northwood Commons shopping next to HBCU.
Lidl, along with its German counterpart Aldi, have been targeting Black American communities that lack quality affordable food storesas a means to win market share against established US rivals such as Safeway, Kroger and Giant.
Lidl is a $68bn hyper discount grocery chain based in Baden-Württemberg, Germany and owned by Dieter Schwarz and his family foundation.
However, “Doc” Cheatham told the Afro-American that he will not limit himself with rally but plans to file a class action challenging the lack of Opportunity Zone classification based on Civil Rights Act of 1866, 42 U.S.C. § 1981 (“Section 1981”), which gives “all persons” the same right to “make and enforce contracts” as “is enjoyed by white citizens.”
Not only will the East Baltimore community around the campus have a functioning supermarket in coming months but a new bank branch by Lancaster, PA-based Fulton Bank and a minority owned McDonald’s franchise, the 20th McDonald’s owned by Baltimore’s Danitra Bell.
In fact, the Afro-American spoke to Fulton Bank Chairman and CEO E. Philip Wegner while he was personally overseeing construction work on the bank branch. Wegner said the bank was to open bank branches in neighborhoods where people live as opposed to “being just another bank in downtown.”
“Doc” Cheatham, who told students during a lecture at Morgan State University marking Black history month, that he was born with the Civil Rights movement in his blood as his aunt, Louise Kerr Hines , brought the landmark civil rights discrimination [and supported by Afro-American Newspaper founder Carl T. Murphy] case against Baltimore library, Enoch Pratt Free Library, for denying her the right to take a librarian training solely based on her race.
The successful 14th Amendment case, creating the “Kerr Principle”, pre-dated the famous Supreme Court “Brown vs Board of Education” banning segregation in American public schools — ultimately leading Enoch Pratt librarian Carla Hayden becoming the first African American and woman to be appointed as the Librarian of the Library of Congress in 2016.
The February 25th rally for Kevin Plank to join in common cause for equitable distribution of tax incentives to all of Baltimore’s underserved community may be the last great civil rights action of “Doc’ Cheatham who was one of the four organizers with Rev. Ben Chavis of the Million Man March, the former Baltimore head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN).
Mr. Cheatham is requiring all Maryland gubernatorial candidates such as Under Armour board member Wes Moore, Maryland Comptroller Pete Franchot, former Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III and GOP candidate, Kelly Schulz, to take a stand against discriminatory Opportunity Zone classifications by helping Baltimore neighborhoods of Easterwood/Sandtown, East Baltimore and Cherry Hill get the food stores that they have been denied due to Baltimore’s long history of Jim Crow and segregation.
“Doc’ Cheatham February 25th rally may also get Under Armour founder, Kevin Plank, to remember the biblical scripture of “whom much is given, much is required.” As always, “Doc” Cheatham is not taking any prisoners.
By PK Semler in Baltimore, Maryland, edited by Nigel Wright in Los Angeles. For more information, please email pks@capitolintelgroup.com