#BaltimoreUprising Ten Years Later: Grassroots Truths vs the Ivory Tower

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April 2025 marks the 10th anniversary of the #BaltimoreUprising, a series of protests sparked by Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore Police custody in 2015.

Baltimore has long reflected America’s racial and political anxieties, making the Uprising a frequent subject of academic analysis. In this episode, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle’s Lawrence Grandpre and Dayvon Love critique two books: Beyond Black Lives Matter by Cedric Johnson and Invisible Weapons by Marcus Board Jr.

While Johnson critiques BLM and Board affirms it, both argue that Baltimore’s working-class grassroots were misled by neoliberalism, rendering their responses to Freddie Gray ineffective. This view overlooks successful grassroots political interventions by groups like LBS, which led protests during the Uprising and continues to advance community-driven agendas. By oversimplifying Black identity as manipulation by elites—whether through neoliberalism (Johnson) or patriarchy (Board)—both books fail to capture the political and ideological complexity of Baltimore’s working-class Black communities. They also neglect to examine how academic detachment can distort analyses of Baltimore, Black life, and Black politics.

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In Search of Black Power is a Black-owned internet show and podcast. This podcast is sponsored and produced by Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS).

The internet show is published in collaboration with Black Liberation Media (BLM)