by D Watkins | Oct 30, 2025 | Article, baltimore, Prison Industrial Complex, prison reform, Prisons and Policing, Reprint, The Cultural Front
This story originally appeared in Baltimore Beat on Oct. 28, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
Poet, actor, and playwright Liza Jessie Peterson is bringing her one-woman play “The Peculiar Patriot” to Baltimore Center Stage. The Philly native believes it’s the right place and the right time for this story.
“There’s an energy here that just feels familiar, like home,” Peterson said. “I love bringing this piece here because I know that it’s a Black Mecca. The play speaks to our people in a real way. I’m excited to see how Baltimore is going to receive it.”
“The Peculiar Patriot” taps into the deep humanity that exists within the confines of mass incarceration. In it, Peterson portrays Betsy Laquanda Ross, who regularly visits her incarcerated best friend Joanne. The play takes place over a series of wild conversations between the women. Ross keeps her friend updated about what’s happening in the neighborhood, her own life, and in the outside world. The play is inspired by the 20 years Peterson spent working with teens at New York’s notorious Rikers Island.
Liza Jessie Peterson Credit: Devin Allen.
At Rikers, Peterson served as a poetry and GED teacher, program counselor, and re-entry specialist. Her time at Rikers not only taught her about the evils of the prison industrial complex, and the great capacity all people have for change — but it served as a creative catalyst. Out of it came a memoir, “All Day,” which Peterson published in 2017. She also wrote monologues that later evolved into this play.Peterson originally intended to debut the play off-Broadway, but like many Black artists who dare to aim mirrors at
by Kori Skillman | Oct 9, 2025 | Article, baltimore, ICE, immigration, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Racial Justice, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Baltimore Beat on Oct. 07, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
Highlandtown sidewalks tell a much different story today than they did a year ago. Shops that once bustled with conversation sit emptier; families who once roamed the streets have now retreated. The day-to-day has become filled with fear under President Donald Trump’s mass deportation push, sending shockwaves through the largely Spanish-speaking neighborhood.
Both noncitizen, long-time U.S. residents L and E (whose full names Baltimore Beat is not using for their safety) are family members who are two sides of the same coin: L was already forced to leave the country; E feels imprisoned in his fear. Every glance from strangers, every passing security officer a reminder of the attention their brown skin draws.
Their parallel lives reflect a community sentiment, where daily rhythms are interrupted by immigration enforcement vans and streets become more desolate with every deportation.
Lucia Islas, a case manager at the Southeast CDC, works with a client at their office in East Baltimore on September 30. Credit: J. M. Giordano.
While L’s fight ended when she was forced to leave the country, E’s continues toward an unknown. L has walked her final moments in the United States, holding the hands of her two young children, and E could not walk beside her. In this moment in history, to get too close would be a risk to his own freedom. His life the last seven months has been characterized by living in the shadows. His heart is still heavy that he could not comfort his loved one in the way he wanted to.
L, 32, came to the
