Lakeland residents weigh in on restorative justice workshop
Lakeland residents and other attendees gathered to address research findings from the Community Planning Masters Studio Class (Aaron Wright/The Black Explosion).
The Lakeland community and many others came to the College Park Community Center on Thursday to discuss research plans for a community that’s been devastated by urban renewal.
The Lakeland Restorative Justice Community Engagement Session was led by the University of Maryland’s Community Planning Studio Class. The professor of this capstone course, Clara Irazábel, said that the goal of this session is to work with the community to create sustainable solutions to decades of structural racism.
“I immediately embraced the idea,” Irazábel said of the course. “I loved it particularly because of their intent of centering the project on the notion of restorative justice.”
As part of the session, the students gave a presentation for their research on Lakeland. Each student shared a different aspect of the research, ranging from the stakeholders and planning analysis to guiding themes and area of focus.
Keith Webster, a member of the Lakeland community, said that long-standing issues such as the constant flooding that takes place in Lakeland has yet to be resolved. The flooding that took place was destroying property which was already in the process of being rebuilt, he said. It was never resolved, according to Webster.
”This community was the last of the surrounding communities to actually get services when flooding and things like that took place. That was intentional,” the 70-year-old IT specialist said.
Redowan Kaushik, one of the student presenters, explained a process known as urban renewal. That is the redevelopment in a city at the expense of marginalized and long-standing residents, often through the use of eminent domain, which granted College Park the right to take private property and flip it for public use. Kaushik explained that as a result of urban renewal in Lakeland, 70% of households were bulldozed, and community infrastructure like Black’s Store, Lakeland Hall, Lakeland Elementary and other places of commerce and community gathering were also destroyed.
In addition to urban renewal, a long history of structural racism due to policies like the 1949 Housing Act, the implementation of the 1944 G.I. Bill and environmental factors served to isolate and sap generational wealth from Lakeland residents.
“We as planners need to acknowledge our communities’ desire to create and define spaces that are safe, healthy, affordable and give homeownership opportunities and access to social services. A process that has historically been unjust to your community,” Kaushik said.
A glimpse into the past of Lakeland at the College Park Community Center. (Aaron Wright/ The Black Explosion).
The College Park City Council sent a formal apology to the Lakeland community in June 2020 due to urban renewal and decades of structural racism that has impacted the majority-Black community.
After the presentation, Lakelanders completed activities to help the community planning students by providing feedback. Vivian Conway, a life coach and a community leader for the Lakeland area, says that she wants this project to have good results that cause city leaders to step up and help the locale.
“I want to hear what they offer us as a whole,” Conway said. “We have leaders but the leaders are not working for us, they’re working against us.”
Webster thought that while the information was a little overwhelming, it was still an excellent presentation.
“I really appreciate the work that is going forward here with the students,” Webster said. “There was a lot of information to follow up on.”
Students and the professor of the Community Planning Masters Studio Class. From right to left: Dr. Clara Irazábel, Maureen Madden, Danielle Abe, Caitlyn Mitchell, Redowan Kaushik, and Matthew Spaniol (Aaron Wright/ The Black Explosion).
One thing that the 70-year-old member of the Lakeland diaspora wants are reparations for the younger generation of the diaspora. These include having preference for homeownership in the community, and support from the University of Maryland through housing, tuition, or remote learning access.
Abigail Cohen, a Lakelander and junior business management major at Morgan State University, thought that a lot of the questions at the activity booths were really good. She hopes that the issue with flooding will finally be addressed.
“There have been times where our basement does get flooded, so I actually appreciated the question about the flooding areas in Lakeland,” Cohen said. “I know that was something that was supposed to be resolved in the original urban renewal plan, and it still isn’t solved.
This study was only the midterm findings of the community planning capstone course for the restorative justice project. On December 8, the student presenters plan on providing design scenarios for what restorative justice looks like, ranging from a status quo or reformist model to a revolutionary scenario.
While a reformist scenario would gently push for reform to regulations, a revolutionary scenario “radically pushes to transform the status quo into a just and sustainable Lakeland community,” according to Matthew Spaniol, another student of the community planning capstone.
As for the future of what those models may look like, the answer is up in the air. However, Cohen appreciates the newfound attention that the Lakeland community has been receiving.
“I hope that there will be effective change and giving the people who are here tonight, I feel like that will be a success,” Cohen said.