Five years ago this week, I stood with Dr. Nilesh Kalyanaraman at our Office of Emergency Management to announce that Anne Arundel County had its first confirmed case of COVID-19.
We had all seen the images from China, Italy, and New York City, and we knew that life would be changing in ways that none of us wanted.
This March feels similar. Life is changing in ways that none of us want, and like five years ago, economic projections are in free fall as we build our budget.
Now that the assault from Washington has targeted not only our government institutions, but also the businesses that are the backbone of our nation’s economy, we can better understand the nature of what we are up against. It is an attack on our country, and it is deliberate.
The question that many are asking is: Do people care, and are they brave enough to speak up when the new federal leadership, from the Department of Justice to the Department of Defense, is promising retaliation against those who disagree with the administration’s agenda?
I am confident that people do care and that they will speak up more and more in the coming months.
There are the 750 people who signed up early for our March 20 Hiring Event for displaced federal workers at O’Malley Senior Center, and the over 60,000 households and individuals in our county whose careers are in public service at the federal level. Registration for the hiring event is full, so the next one will be at a larger venue.
There are the 35 farmers in our county who are under contract for reimbursement from federal programs for money that they spend to install best management practices to protect our waterways from sediment.
There are the Anne Arundel County families whose assets, the assets that would allow them to live comfortably in retirement, have dropped in value, and will continue to drop if the administration continues to escalate its global trade war.
There are the families who rely on Medicaid, SNAP, Medicare, Social Security, and all of the other safety net programs that Elon Musk and Project 2025 promise to dismantle on behalf of the foreign world leaders they seem to work for.
All of these people’s livelihoods are at stake in the assault that we face just five years after COVID’s arrival, so I’m confident that people will mobilize. They will mobilize because they will be personally impacted.
But something bigger happened five years ago when we mobilized as a community to slow the spread of the virus that was killing our neighbors. People did heroic things. They worked exhausting hours in dangerous places - like hospitals. They distributed food to displaced workers. They reached out to isolated seniors.
Even politicians in Washington stepped up from both political parties, with the $2.2 trillion CARES Act signed by President Trump in 2020.
I have accepted the reality that the final twenty months of my time in office will be crisis management, just as the second and third years were. We will make decisions when faced with nothing but bad choices, because we have to.
But I am absolutely confident that we will witness the same kind of heroism, and the same selfless mobilization that brought us through COVID.
On Tuesday night, I was at a Baltimore Metropolitan Council event, and heard from a presenter named Jody Sowell, the CEO of Missouri Historical Society, about a thing called Community Attachment. He talked about telling local history, welcoming activities, and celebrations. It felt like a lifeline.
On Saturday morning, I marched at a well-attended peace rally in Meade Village, just days after Derrick McDonald and Mack Galloway lost their lives to gun violence. It felt like a lifeline.
On Saturday evening, I joined 250 clean water advocates for the 2025 Arundel Rivers On The Half Shell event at Camp Letts on the Rhode River. It felt like a lifeline.
On Sunday, I marched down West Street and Main Street in Annapolis with a silly green decoration on my head, and a group of fun-loving staff from my office, as seventy-five thousand people gathered along the route to celebrate St. Patrick. It felt like a lifeline.
Last week, I read a book called “Hometown Heroes” to a room full of small children and their mothers at the Annapolis Family Support Center for Read Across America Day. It felt like a lifeline.
The lifeline is the Community Connection that gives our lives meaning, and it’s everywhere, especially when times get tough - and we mobilize.
Until next week.