Protest

Tracy Jones pounded a pair of sneakers against the wall of an Interstate 83 ramp, shaking off months of caked-on dirt. She tossed aside a long-sleeve shirt that had been chewed by a rat and packed up her few belongings Friday as a team of city workers razed the homeless encampment where she had lived with more than a dozen others. Jones and her husband, Charlie, finally were going home. "There's no feeling in the world like it," he said. The couple moved into a sparsely furnished rowhouse on Dumbarton Avenue, where they hope to rebuild their lives and be reunited with their four children, who were removed from their care.

Joe Flacco signs a contract bringing him over $20 million a year. Did I miss the announcement from the Occupy Baltimore people as to when they are going to protest ("Flacco's record pay day," March 2)? If ever there was a "1-percenter" in Maryland, it has to be Joe. Come on guys, set up a protest camp at M&T Stadium, picket Joe's house. Let's hear from you. Dave Daughters, Gambrills Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

Homeless advocates and a city councilwoman sharply criticized Monday a Rawlings-Blake administration plan to remove an encampment of about a dozen homeless people this week from under the Interstate 83 overpass in central Baltimore. But administration officials defended the move as a safety measure, designed to protect homeless men and women from a camp they say is overrun by drugs, alcohol and violence. "I'm concerned about the safety of the individuals in the encampment," Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said Monday.

Movie tickets at the Northwood Theatre cost just 90 cents back in 1963. But for some, the price of admission was considerably higher. It took years of picketing and nights in jail for hundreds of African-American college students and their supporters before the theater in the Hillen neighborhood of Baltimore dropped its whites-only policy. Fifty years ago this week, the matinee of the Disney movie "In Search of the Castaways" played to the Northwood's first-ever integrated audience.

As "tractorcade" protests go, the demonstration of farmers and farm vehicles in Annapolis on Tuesday morning was a modest affair with a handful of old-fashioned tractors and some equally well-worn grievances. The timetable may have been a little off, too, since the protesters' collective ire was directed at a law that the General Assembly passed last year. Nevertheless, the group of farmers assembled at the State House to support legislation that would repeal the Sustainable Growth and Agricultural Preservation Act of 2012 - or, as most people know it, Gov. Martin O'Malley's septics bill.

Food and retail workers at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport protested working conditions on Wednesday and attempted to deliver a proposed "Bill of Rights," to AirMall USA, BWI's concessions manager. Unite Here, a labor union that represents hospitality workers in Baltimore and elsewhere and is working to organize the airport concessions workers, said the private management company has benefited from higher passenger traffic while workers struggle with low wages and lack of health care access.

Farmers and others upset over state-imposed restrictions on septic-based rural development staged a "tractorcade" Tuesday past the State House in Annapolis. The protest comes on the day the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee is scheduled to hear a bill, SB391 , which would repeal the Sustainable Growth and Agricultural Preservation Act of 2012 . The law, introduced by Gov. Martin O'Malley and passed last year over rural lawmakers' objections, restricts large-scale housing development that would rely on septic systems.

Holding cut-outs of activist Kim Trueheart's face, protesters objected at Wednesday morning's Board of Estimates meeting to her ban from City Hall. "I was with Kim Trueheart a week ago when she was arrested trying to attend this very meeting," fellow activist Mike McGuire said. "As anyone who has been around City Hall knows, Kim is quite a fixture. With her banning from City Hall, and her subsequent arrest, she couldn't be here. We wanted to make sure she was present at least in spirit.

Hacker group Anonymous claimed to have taken over the website of the U.S. Sentencing Commission in protest of attempts by federal officials to prosecute open-data campaigner Aaron Swartz. Swartz killed himself earlier this month. And in a YouTube video Anonymous said he did so because he was faced with "an impossible choice" after federal prosecutors charged him in connection with copying academic journal articles from an online repository. The video was reportedly posted on the website of the sentencing commission, but as of Saturday morning the site appeared to be offline.

No. 13 Lake Clifton boys basketball trailed by one to No. 10 Edmondson with 42 seconds left at the 17th Annual Basketball Academy at Morgan State on Friday night. But a series of fouls, including two technical, resulted in the Lakers walking off the court and losing to No. 10 Edmondson, 66-59. The Red Storm (12-3) led 60-59 when Myrek Fowlkes got fouled. He made the first of two foul shots when a technical, unsportsmanlike conduct, was called on a Lake Clifton player. Lakers coach Herman "Tree" Harried continued to argue the first technical and got another one, a direct in addition to the indirect.