Iced in

Snow and sleet paralyzed the city, but Baltimore still turned out in force to protest ICE detention conditions—plus, a kind Banner feature on our work.

DEAR EXPOSUER—What a week.

Last Sunday, much of the East Coast was hit by a snow storm that left the Baltimore region in particular covered in inches of snow — and ice. It didn’t help that while the snow let up, three additional inches of sleet fell, which froze overnight and left us in a slippery, frigid mess.

I had intended to make it out to take some photos of the city covered in snow. The wall of ice holding my car in place said otherwise. Thus, I suited up and walked North Avenue Sunday night, photographing Druid Heights and Penn North as plows worked to control the increasingly icy streets.

On the way back, I caught a neighbor out racing her dog, Nine, on the ice sheet that covered McCulloh Street. They would get a running start and then slide into a snow bank, where Nine voraciously devoured the snow.

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Yesterday, Baltimore rallied against a different kind of ICE, this time at the Fallon Federal Building downtown. Roughly a thousand protestors showed up to protest abhorrent conditions in the ICE holding facility there, as well as news that Homeland Security had bought a warehouse in Hagerstown, Md. for the purpose of holding up to 1,500 detainees — a story that our team at Project Salt Box broke, and that quickly got picked up by local news outlets like Baltimore Banner and the Baltimore Beat, as well as national papers like the Washington Post and Bloomberg.

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Speaking of the Banner, Sara Ruberg wrote a very kind feature on our efforts. Check it out here — and if that link doesn’t work, here’s an archived version.

To prepare for this article, Sara asked us for any photos we might have of us in action. Considering “action” generally entails yours truly in pajamas huddled behind my laptop in the dark, I decided to pose in front of the News-Letter Office (ha) on the JHU Homewood campus — which was really just an excuse to swing by Doppio for pizza.

I’m tired now, good night.