Baltimore City civil rights leaders and labor unions rallied outside the Cherry Hill Reedbird sanitation yard on Wednesday, demanding further accountability from the city’s Department of Public Works.
The rally came nearly four weeks after Ronald Silver II died of heat exhaustion while collecting city trash on a day the heat index hovered around 105 degrees. His death came weeks after a series of investigative reports from the Baltimore City Office of the Inspector General revealed “subhuman” conditions across agency facilities, especially at Reedbird, including a lack of air conditioning and accessible fluids like water and Gatorade.
“Accountability means many things, and that includes the termination and or reassignment of persons who were complicit, who had a fundamental obligation to supervise… to implement change, and were derelict in their duties,” explained Linda Batts, a retired federal employee who also worked briefly doing equity work for DPW.
Read more (and listen) at WYPR.
