A group of more than 20 Harford County fairgoers, organized by age and gender, spent the afternoon in the fairgrounds pavilion at Bel Air’s 608 N. Tollgate Road devouring miniature fruit pies and juicy local watermelon. The prizes? “Bragging rights, a ribbon and free food,” said Amy O’Neil, co-chair of the Harford County Farm Fair Board of Directors, in between emceeing the events.

“Watermelon-eating contests and pie-eating contests are part of American culture,” said O’Neil, who, inspired by her July 4th childhood memories, brought the watermelon-eating contest to the fair more than 20 years ago. “We have adults competing now that I’ve watched compete since elementary school.”

Rebecca Borkowski, clad in a watermelon-eating contest T-shirt that she designed herself, has entered the competition every year for more than 20 years — and, now, her two daughters, clad in matching shirts, join her.

“Way back when, we were at the fair and I ran out of water. I thought it would be a good idea to enter the contest and share the watermelon with my [then] two-year-old daughter,” Borkowski said about the genesis point of her family’s annual showing. “After that, it just turned into every year.”

Reigning champions returned this year, including 31-year-old pie-eating contest alum Kyle Kurceba, who crushed last year’s miniature apple pie in 48 seconds. This year, at the end of the minute, his pie tin was the only one left completely empty.

“I feel full, both in my heart and in my stomach,” Kurceba said after his victory. “It was good pie, and a good contest.”

Kurceba’s win, however, didn’t go uncontested. The champion went for an unconventional strategy, first flipping over the pie to shake it loose from the metal tin before going to town. Forest Hill fairgoer Taj Weir, who won third place in the competition, had some objections.

“I’ve got to say, it seemed like he had a little more left. I think they need to get some scales involved here,” Weir said after the contest. “That was some newfangled technology, the flipping. That’s no fun. That should be illegal.”

Other eaters, like 17-year-old C. Milton Wright High School student Koryne Leilich, who competed in the pie-eating contest’s adult division and took home fourth place, were happy to participate for the first time — and to reap the benefits of competitive eating.

“I can kill a pie,” she said. “I like food, and free food is fantastic…. Free pie? I’ll take it.”

Other competitors, like watermelon-eating contest entrant and previous champion Jason Guarino, came to the fair with a more aggressive strategy — especially after not winning last year.

“This year, I’ve been practicing,” he said, with “ice cold watermelon.” He later added, “I cut my water off at 11 o’clock. I haven’t eaten or drank anything since [then], so I’m extremely thirsty.”

Not only did Guarino secure the first-place win in the men’s division, but he was shortly after awarded the championship ribbon after his speedy performance in the final, all-divisions competition.

“We went with big bites … and at the end, I just wanted to get down to that rind,” he said in a post-contest interview, as ruby-colored juice trickled down from the competition table. “That was a good quench.”

Have a news tip? Contact Jane Godiner at jgodiner@baltsun.com or on Instagram as @JaneCraves.

Aubrey Short, 14, has been showing animals with 4-H since she was 8 years old. This year she showed cattle, pigs and sheep, ultimately winning grand champion lamb, which she said was an exciting experience.

“It was amazing,” she said. “It’s like your hard work paid off … like you’ve been studying for a test and you get a 100%.”

Short describes selling her animals at the livestock sale as sad, but looks forward to the animals she’ll raise next year.

“I’m just excited for new beginnings, because I know selling them is really sad, but I know that I’m going to get new animals next year and it’s going to be worth it,” she said.

The auction begins at 2 p.m. on Saturday and is a symbol of the persistent effort the children have put in for the last 10 to 12 months, according to Mike Doran, co-chair on the fair’s Board of Directors and chairman of the livestock sale.

Doran said the livestock sale is the highlight of the fair and he hopes for a large turnout, not just to support the fair but to support the children and the fair’s efforts to help people learn more about Harford County agriculture.

This year there is an uptick in entries, Doran said. At last year’s fair roughly 100 pigs were in the auction, while he anticipates almost 140 this year. Lamb entries have experienced an increase as well, but the number of cattle and steer has stayed about the same.

“It’s constant growth in 4-H and I think this fair is the reason for that,” he said.

For Upper Chesapeake Diary Princess Madison Thomas, 15, educating others about her animals is her favorite part of the fair.

“There’s so many misconceptions about the dairy industry and I just really like to teach people about how the animals have personalities,” she said. “All the animals are loved so much by every 4-Her in this barn.”

Thomas, who’s been showing animals for seven years, said everyone at the fair has a purpose to be there — their love of animals and the agriculture industry. This year, she’s showing dairy heifers, dairy calves, pigs, and for the first time, sheep.

To prepare for sale night, Thomas said everyone works to spread awareness by sending out letters and sharing information on social media.

“The money goes to our future projects, helps us grow as people and goes into our college [funds],” she said.

The money entrants make during the auction goes toward funding their college tuition or purchasing new animals; a small portion goes back into the fair to cover expenses.

Thomas says after she graduates from North Harford High School she plans to study agricultural education in college.

“I want to teach people about the community and the industry,” she said. “Selling our animals and getting that money helps us become better people and grow in the future.”

Last year, the livestock auction generated nearly $600,000 in sales and served as the biggest auction in fair history with 226 livestock entries. The highest bidder was Klein’s Family Markets, which purchased a 1,322-pound steer from 12-year-old Ella Deford for $14,524. Deford used the money to purchase livestock for this year’s auction and to put some away for her education.

Have a news tip? Contact Shaela Foster at sfoster@baltsun.com or 443-826-5894.

The lawsuit, which names the county’s former top prosecutor and Harford County sheriff’s deputies who investigated the “Memorial Day Murders,” comes after John Norman Huffington was exonerated by a judge and pardoned by former Gov. Larry Hogan, and awarded $2.9 million by the state.

Huffington, 62, said the decades he spent behind bars had cost him the ability to have a family of his own and time with his aging parents. His mother died while he was imprisoned; his father was in his 90s and suffering from Alzheimer’s when he was released.

“I don’t like this. I don’t like coming into these rooms. I don’t like coming back into the courtroom and relitigating these things,” Huffington said at a Thursday news conference in Harbor East. “But I’m doing it because I owe it to my family, I owe it to a lot of people, and we’ve got to fix it.”

The lawsuit seeks damages for deprivation of liberty without due process, malicious prosecution, false arrest and other civil rights violations. In addition to suing Harford County through its executive, Bob Cassilly, the lawsuit names the estate of his older brother, Joseph Cassilly, the county’s longtime state’s attorney who was disbarred for his conduct in Huffington’s case. The Maryland Court of Appeals, now called the Maryland Supreme Court, found that the Republican prosecutor lied about documents that undermined the credibility of an investigating FBI agent. Filed last week, the lawsuit accuses the elder Cassilly of “brazen misconduct” but says he “did not act alone,” naming other investigators who it says “fabricated and coerced knowingly false witness statements and withheld material, exculpatory evidence.”

Joseph Cassilly, who served for 36 years as Harford’s state’s attorney, died in January. He had maintained that his statements about the 1981 case were true.

“Joe cannot defend himself in this decades-old matter because he is now deceased,” Bob Cassilly said in a statement, praising his brother’s military and government service. “Harford County government, in which I currently serve as county executive, has no role in this case – the county was never the defendants’ employer; however, as Joe’s brother, and as a longtime public servant, I am proud that Harford County has always supported the professionals in law enforcement and the criminal justice system who protect innocent citizens from violent criminals.”

The county is listed as a defendant, and Huffington attorney John Marrese said that the issue of whether it’s liable “will be briefed and argued zealously.”

Joseph Cassilly “was disbarred because of what he did in John Huffington’s case. You don’t get disbarred easily, that’s not something that happens,” said Brian Eldridge, another lawyer representing Huffington. He called Cassilly’s conduct in Huffington’s case “unethical” and “reprehensible.”

“We want to hold him accountable, even in his passing,” Eldridge said.

Huffington was twice convicted of the killings of Diane Becker, 21, who was beaten and stabbed to death on May 25, 1981, in her recreational vehicle in Abingdon, and Joseph Hudson, her boyfriend, who was fatally shot and discovered on a secluded path a few miles away.

Investigators had said that the pair were killed over cocaine and cash. Prosecutors had relied on now-discredited testimony that hairs found at the murder scene matched Huffington, who was 18 at the time of the killings. He was sentenced to death after being convicted the second time, but that sentence was overturned, and Huffington was resentenced to two life terms. He was freed in 2013, sentenced again to time served, and Hogan granted him a full innocence pardon in the final days of the Republican governor’s administration.

Prosecutors had tried Huffington and his friend, Deno Kanaras, separately for the murders. A jury convicted Kanaras of felony murder in Becker’s death, and he ultimately served 27 years of his life sentence before being released in 2008.

The lawsuit filed last week alleges that prosecutors relied heavily on Kanaras as a key witness in Huffington’s case, granting him and his family “extraordinary latitude” and using him “to fabricate a patently false and ever-evolving story implicating” Huffington. The Kanaras family was well-known in the community and owned a restaurant frequented by Harford County law enforcement, the lawsuit says. Huffington’s lawyers said that Kanaras testified “effectively that he was held hostage by John while John committed the murders,” and that prosecutors had concealed blood test results that cast doubt on his testimony.

Much of the prosecution’s case also relied on hair testing by FBI agent Michael P. Malone, whose analysis turned out to be wrong. A 1997 Department of Justice probe further found Malone had a history of testifying falsely, conducting inaccurate analysis of hair samples and making claims that exceeded the scope of scientific testing. The Justice Department informed Cassilly in 1999 that the agent had testified falsely in Huffington’s case, but Cassilly “buried” the letter and did not provide that information to Huffington’s lawyers, Marrese said.

“There needs to be a reckoning for this man’s life being denied and completely derailed,” said Antonio M. Romanucci, one of Huffington’s lawyers. “The people and the agencies that were involved must be held to account for the harms and losses that they caused John.”

Because of Huffington’s lengthy prison term, he received one of the largest awards under Maryland’s Walter Lomax Act, which regulates financial compensation for people who were wrongfully convicted in the state.

Using the civil courts gives Huffington’s team the ability to question any living witnesses and obtain documents “that perhaps John still hasn’t seen,” Marrese said.

“We’ll be able to hopefully answer questions that investigators either didn’t want to answer, didn’t think to answer, or they knew the answer and didn’t document it,” he said. “There’s both the opportunity to recover money, and there’s the opportunity to investigate this further and continue to prove John’s name is innocent.”

Huffington, who has since published a book on his case, worked as Living Classrooms’ director of workforce development after his release and has since become an advocate for exonerating people from wrongful convictions.

“I can’t help but acknowledge 32 lost years, but what I refuse is to have 32 wasted years,” Huffington said on Thursday. He said that “one of the proudest things” he’s been able to do is teach a wrongful conviction awareness and avoidance class to police recruits in Illinois.

“It’s a little bit ironic to be in a room with a hundred police cadets, but they want to hear, and they kind of look at you like, ‘How did this happen?’ Well, it happens, and that’s the problem,” he said.

Have a news tip? Contact Dan Belson at dbelson@baltsun.com, on X as @DanBelson_ or on Signal as @danbels.62.

The two parishes had been working together since 2020, including sharing a pastor, and talks about the merger began in 2023.

The newly merged parish will continue to be called St. Francis de Sales, “because of its historical value to our community,” according to its website.

Church leaders cited “a significant decline in the attendance, ministries and finances at Prince of Peace over the past few years.” Prince of Peace was formed in 1977.

The merger prompted the relocation of The Sharing Table, a food pantry supported by 13 local churches that has been hosted by Prince of Peace for 22 years. The Sharing Table will reopen Aug. 2 at The American Legion on Edgewood Road at Willoughby Beach.

The pantry launched a GoFundMe campaign in hopes of raising $42,000, noting the Legion building “cannot meet all our cooking and storage needs, and much of our equipment — like the convection oven, refrigerator, freezer, and storage — is property of the church and will remain behind.”

Sharing Table President Wendy Weyant said in an email: “We are immensely grateful to the Prince of Peace community for hosting The Sharing Table for 22 years. Though our relocation was obviously an unexpected logistical and financial hurdle, we’ve been blessed by support from our GoFundMe page and other community assistance.”

Sam Meros, who now works for Aberdeen’s St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, was among the musicians at the final Mass in the Prince of Peace building. Now 20 years old, he started playing piano and the organ at Prince of Peace when he was 14.

Meros described Prince of Peace as “a community-based church” that was willing to give him a chance as a young musician.

“That church was the start of my music career, and not many places would take me,” said Meros, an Edgewood High graduate. “Saying goodbye to people was not easy. It was just the community and the love that I got.”

The last Mass in the building was “very emotional, but very uplifting. It was very sad. But, that will be a memory.”

This is the latest church merger for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, which is shutting down more than half of its worship sites with the “Seek the City to Come” initiative announced last year. Five of the shuttered church buildings, all in Baltimore City, were put up for sale in May, including some that were landmarks for generations, such as The Shrine of the Little Flower on Belair Road.

The Prince of Peace building was “secured after June 30, 2025, and will be monitored weekly for an invasion or property issues,” the pastorate said on its website. “The utilities will be reduced to maintain the integrity of the property.”

Have a news tip? Contact Bryna Zumer at bzumer@baltsun.com, or on X as @brynazumer . 

A boy in Florida posted several Russian Roulette videos of himself on Snapchat, spinning a revolver’s chamber, aiming the gun at his head and pulling the trigger. One day, he was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head. His phone was nearby.

Those are among the claims made in hundreds of lawsuits filed by individuals, school districts and state officials against social media companies, alleging they purposely addicted children and teens to their platforms, allowed dangerous content and even messages from predators to reach them and created a mental health crisis of rising rates of suicide, depression and anxiety.

A suit by Harford County’s Board of Education will be among the first to go to trial when the cases, which have been consolidated into a sprawling proceeding in federal court in Northern California, begin rolling out as expected next year. School systems have claimed that they’re owed as much as tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in compensatory damages and even more in abatement costs for years of handling the harm caused by social media companies.

Harford Schools was chosen as one of six “bellwether” cases that will test the claims made in the multi-district litigation, or MDL. It’s an important role, attorneys say, to see how arguments on each side play to a jury, and perhaps prompt the social media companies to settle rather than go through trials.

“You want to be heard first,” said Rob Jenner, a Baltimore-based attorney who is not involved in the social media cases but has co-led other mass tort actions. “You’re representative of the others.”

Baltimore attorney Matt Legg, who represents Harford and some 80 other school districts in the litigation, said while he can’t speak to why the judge chose the six jurisdictions, the bellwethers are meant to reflect the diversity of the plaintiff group, which includes districts large and small, urban and rural and from every part of the country.

“It’s a cross-cutting issue,” said Legg, an attorney with Brockstedt Mandalas Federico. “School districts across the country have had incredible damages as a result of students becoming addicted to these platforms.”

In a more than 300-page complaint, school districts argue that companies including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Roblox, Discord, Snapchat and their parent companies have “intentionally induced young people to use their platforms compulsively,” borrowing techniques from “makers of slot machines and tobacco products.

“Because children’s and adolescents’ brains are not fully developed … they are uniquely susceptible to addictive features in digital products and highly vulnerable to the resulting harm,” the suit claimed. “‘Likes’ have replaced the intimacy of adolescent friendships. Mindless scrolling has displaced the creativity of art, play, and sport.”

Harford school board president Aaron S. Poynton said that despite coming from what he calls “the tech space,” he has come to see its “dark side.”

“There’s a massive addictiveness to how these algorithms work,” said Poynton, founder and CEO of Omnipoynt Solutions, a technology management consulting company. “This is a vulnerable population. Their brains are being re-wired. They can’t make reasoned decisions with judgment and wisdom that adults can make.”

Many Maryland school districts have joined the litigation, including Baltimore City and County as well as Anne Arundel, Howard, Montgomery, Prince George’s and Frederick counties.

Baltimore City’s suit was one in a 12-district pool that underwent intensive discovery and depositions of school officials before the final six bellwethers were chosen. In addition to Harford, the test cases include districts in Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, New Jersey and South Carolina.

Despite not being included in the initial wave, Joshua Civin, the city schools’ chief legal counsel, said officials “are going to monitor this first phase very closely” and look forward to making their case when the time comes.

Like other districts, the city has a new policy that bans the use cellphones and other devices during the entire school day that goes into effect this fall. But physically removing the devices from students’ hands is only part of the solution, Civin said.

“It’s important that we have a multi-faceted approach,” Civin said. “We need social medial companies to step up as well.”

‘The fuel’ igniting student conflicts

Schools have long wrestled with the fallout from students’ increasing reliance on social media.

“Oh my goodness, it’s become the most frequent thing I deal with,” said Rhonda Richetta, principal of City Springs Elementary/Middle School in East Baltimore.

Beefs will develop over something someone said to or about someone in a chat or message, she said, and suddenly entire groups are mad at each other.

“They’re braver on social media,” said Richetta, who is in her 19th year of leading the charter school. “There’s something about not being face to face with someone, you’ll say anything.”

She said she worries about how social media has made kids self-conscious about their looks, and they’ll take pictures or make videos repeatedly until they’re satisfied with how they come off.

“They see so much on social media, there’s such a focus on physical appearance,” Richetta said, particularly for girls. They’ll turn on their camera every 10 seconds and look at themselves and fix their hair constantly.”

Other school staff say they’ve contended with kids who are sleep-deprived from late-night scrolling and distracted during class by some ongoing drama or thread that they’re following — what Stacy Place Tosé, the city district’s chief of schools, calls “this cycle of constantly checking.”

Tosé said there’s a financial cost as well. Schools have had to hire additional social workers and counselors, add training for teachers and other staff and otherwise contend with the anxiety, depression, sleeplessness and even increased violence that can erupt from social media addiction.

“It becomes the igniter, the fuel that makes situations harder to resolve,” she said. “Social media has exacerbated a lot of things that have gone on with our young people.”

According to a defense brief in the court files, Baltimore City is claiming up to $91 million in compensatory damages and up to $2.9 billion in abatement costs. The district’s entire budget for fiscal year 2026 is $1.87 billion. Civin said the damage estimates reflect costs accrued over a period of time that dates back to 2017.

Harford County, which has about 38,100 students, about half as many as Baltimore City, is claiming up to $41.4 million in damages and up to $1.2 billion in abatement, according to the brief.

“Schools’ limited resources are pitted against Defendants’ virtually unlimited resources in that fight,” the districts’ complaint said. “This is not a fair fight, and despite considerable effort, schools are losing the battle.”

Looking to board the Big Tech ‘money train?’

The social media litigation is similar to the thousands of suits brought by jurisdictions against opioid manufacturers and distributors that ultimately led to tens of billions of dollars in settlements.

“School districts see the money train coming through town,” said Clay Calvert, a non-resident senior fellow with the conservative think tank, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. “Here you have the major tech companies. They’re seen as loaded and flush with cash.”

Calvert, a professor emeritus of the University of Florida law and journalism schools, said the schools may face a “tougher sell” arguing that social media is addictive than the plaintiffs in the opioid cases did.

“It’s a behavioral addiction, like a gambling addiction, not a drug,” he said.

Plaintiffs may benefit from the current climate in which tech companies are viewed much in the same way as Big Pharma or Big Agriculture, Calvert said.

“Today, let’s face it, many people don’t like Big Tech,” he said.

And indeed, two years ago, much as his predecessors warned about the dangers of tobacco, obesity and gun violence, then Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a public health advisory about the risks social media pose to “the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.” Murthy was appointed to the post first by President Obama and subsequently by President Biden.

Saying up to 95% of teens are on a social media platform, with a third reporting they use them “almost constantly,” the advisory raises concerns about how this affects their developing brains.

“This is a period when risk-taking behaviors reach their peak, when well-being experiences the greatest fluctuations … when identities and sense of self-worth are forming [and] brain development is especially susceptible to social pressures, peer opinions, and peer comparison,” the advisory said.

Studies have shown social media use is associated with symptoms of depression, poor body image and eating disorders, and exposes young people to bullying, harassment and explicit content, according to the advisory.

Social media companies may counter with arguments that other factors have led to children and adolescents suffering mental heath problems — such as the extended time that many of them spend away from friends when schools closed for the coronavirus pandemic.

Social media companies will also argue that they’ve improved safety in the years since some of the cases were filed.

Keeping predators, dangerous content at bay

Roblox, the giant video game platform where an estimated 40% of users are under 13, has added new safety features, including age estimation technology and a way for parents to monitor children’s activity.  The company, a defendant in the MDL, had been under fire after reports of adults being arrested for abducting or abusing children they’d first contacted via the platform.

Recently, TikTok banned the #SkinnyTok hashtag after European regulators investigated the platform’s content promoting excessive weight loss.

CBS News reported this month that it created a TikTok account for a hypothetical 15-year-old girl and found that, after it viewed videos about weight loss and cosmetic surgery, similar content appeared in its “For You” recommendations.

“We know parents are worried about their teens having unsafe or inappropriate experiences online, and that’s why we’ve significantly changed the Instagram experience for tens of millions of teens,” a spokeswoman for Meta, owner of Instagram and Facebook, said in an emailed statement to The Sun.

Introduced in September, the teen accounts automatically limit contacts and content for those under 16, unless parents permit a change to those settings. Parents can also have control over how teens use Instagram, and can limit the amount of time or period of the day that they’re on the platform, according to Meta. Additionally, the tech company said, Instagram is using AI to detect teens who may have lied about their age when creating an account, monitoring the kind of language they use, the age of their followers and whether, for example, someone has wished them a Happy 15th birthday.

Social media companies have made some improvements, but they are “baby steps in the right direction,” said Matthew Bergman, a Seattle-based attorney who represents more than 1,000 individuals who have claimed harm from social media.

He is heartened that many school districts have banned cellphones during the school day.

“I think it’s a very important part of the process,” Bergman said. “But it doesn’t absolve social media companies of their responsibilities.”

It is unclear when trials might begin in the MDL, although discussion at a recent case management conference suggested it might be next summer. U.S District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers has not yet said what order she’ll hear the bellwether cases. Harford Schools and other jurisdictions have agreed to have their trials in the Northern California district.

At the July 18 conference, lawyers discussed how much time they would need for motions and  witnesses as Gonzales Rogers warned “these aren’t the only cases on my trial calendar.” She noted two other major tech cases before her, an anti-trust action against Apple and Elon Musk v. Sam Altman, pitting the Tesla and X chief against the OpenAI head.

With the high stakes involved, and the numerous lawyers representing both sides, the proceedings are already into their third year, with anyone’s guess of how much longer they may span or how contentious they will become.

Perhaps in acknowledgment of that, Gonzales Rogers said in an order last year that in at least one other MDL, the court had mandated lawyers to have dinner together before each case management conference.

“Reportedly, this helped foster better relations among counsel,” the judge’s order said. “This Court will not require the parties to do so, but nonetheless suggests that such informal interactions do serve a positive purpose.”

Have a news tip? Contact Jean Marbella at jmarbella@baltsun.com, 410-332-6060, or @jeanmarbella.bsky.social.

The meeting marked a shift in momentum residents say they’ve experienced recently as Edgewood residents push for incorporation.

Steve Johnson said as a state legislator his job isn’t to make decisions for the community but create pathways for residents to be able to make choices on their own. This aligns with his and Andre Johnson’s push for a bill to alter what current state law outlines for incorporation.

To become incorporated, an area of at least 300 residents must get 20-25% of its population to sign a petition supporting the effort, according to the Maryland Municipal League. Once that is met, the petition goes to an organizing committee that works to create a town charter to be sent to the Harford County Council. From there, the council has the final say on whether the incorporation process advances to a countywide referendum vote.

The financial and economic effects of incorporation were key topics of concern Monday from residents in attendance. Robert told residents development of the town would be a lengthy process.

“We want to make it clear that as not being a municipality, we are missing out on a lot of funding that we could put back into our communities,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be everyone start up with a new city, that doesn’t happen, life doesn’t happen that way, it’s going to take time. This is a process and this is why we’re having a conversation with everyone to give that education piece …”

Noah Gentry, 22, of Edgewood, said he’s lived in the same house all his life and has always wondered why Edgewood isn’t incorporated. He said he feels the area has been ignored on the county level for a while.

Theresa Kuhns, chief executive officer of the Maryland Municipal League, also attended and pointed to redevelopment as a positive of incorporation.

“It is really a community effort of what you want this area to be for the future,” she said. “There’s a lot of opportunity involved.”

Zoning is key, Steve Johnson said, in bringing in commercial growth and development. Once the town sets zoning preferences, he said, that serves as a blueprint to solicit businesses to the community.

Writing letters of support to the General Assembly and speaking to the media are some steps Steve Johnson said residents could do to keep momentum before the next legislative session begins in January.

“If you wait until the bill does or does not come to the floor, it’s over at the very beginning,” he said. “When the bill goes to the committee and gets assigned to a subcommittee, that’s when you start really working on the legislature.”

Residents’ voices, Andre Johnson said, will be crucial to put pressure on other elected officials who will ultimately make a decision on the proposed bill.

“It’s up to us as a community [now] to say ‘no, we’re not going to take that anymore’ and now we can have control of our own destiny,” he said.

Have a news tip? Contact Shaela Foster at sfoster@baltsun.com or 443-826-5894.

Fifty-five people signed up to speak at Monday night’s school board meeting after the local chapter of Together We Will — a national group supporting grassroots progressive activism — in particular urged residents to voice their opposition to the book ban.

The board plans to set up an informational and listening session in light of the protests, said board President Aaron Poynton, who was also reelected to his position by a 9-1 vote at Monday’s meeting.

“Flamer” is a 2020 semi-autobiographical graphic novel by Mike Curato, who drew on his experience growing up gay and Filipino-American, as he told the independent National Catholic Reporter. The book delves into a teen boy’s summer at a scout camp in 1995 before heading to a Catholic high school and struggling with his sexuality, among other topics.

Harford’s school board voted June 26 to remove the book, overturning the school system’s approval of “Flamer” for middle-school and high-school libraries. It’s the board’s first such move after the school system launched a Library Materials Reconsideration committee last spring.

The county’s chapter of Together We Will said: “Hate has come to Harford County. … This is an example of not listening to the professionals, and substituting personal bias or discomfort in place of professional expertise to the detriment and harm to students who are feeling isolated and bullied, for whom this book may be a lifeline.”

Poynton defended the ban in a lengthy statement in which he listed the book’s sexually explicit expletives and acknowledged the varying opinions about the book’s removal.

“This was the first formal appeal under the newly finalized book review procedure — a process nearly two years in the making, developed with input from staff, board members, and members of the public. The decision we made will likely set precedent for future challenges, and we recognize the importance of clarity,” Poynton wrote in the statement.

He also countered claims the ban was done in secret, because, he said, the new procedures were developed over the course of a year and invited public comment.

“This was among the most transparent procedures developments (Harford County Public Schools) has conducted,” Poynton said, explaining all appeals to the school board are made in closed session in order to protect the petitioner’s privacy.

Poynton extended the public comment period at Monday’s meeting from 30 minutes to 45 minutes. He also said in his online statement the board hopes to revise book review procedures to allow for more nuance, lamenting that the board was forced “into a binary decision: Either keep the book in middle and high school libraries or to remove it.”

Many who spoke at Monday’s meeting urged the board to reconsider the removal.

Kurt Doan, president of Upper Chesapeake Bay Pride Foundation, said: “For many LGBTQIA+ students, ‘Flamer’ is a lifeline, showing that they’re not alone in their struggles with identity, bullying, and self-acceptance. This validation is critical for their mental health and sense of belonging. … ‘Flamer’ directly addresses themes of suicidal ideation, bullying and finding hope.”

He also told the board members who voted for the ban: “If parents don’t want their kids to read this book, there’s an established process, and you know that.”

Several librarians from Aberdeen and North Harford high schools spoke against the ban and the Harford County NAACP released a statement referencing the 2024 Maryland Freedom to Read Act, “which prohibits the removal or exclusion of school library materials solely on the basis of an author’s background or partisan, ideological, or religious disapproval.”

“At the core of the FRA is the idea that a small subset of people should not be able to dictate what books are made available in the school library to an entire community. Yet this is what just happened, and it happened over the thoughtful review of fellow citizens charged with evaluating challenged material,” the NAACP statement said.

Other speakers who said they were with Together We Will said the school board’s reasoning took parts of the book out of context, and said “Flamer” isn’t endorsing vulgar phrases but uses them to show a character’s “true colors.”

“If a student had made similar claims [as the school board] in their book report, a teacher would be well justified in giving them a low grade for sloppy analysis,” one speaker said. “The board should reverse this ban before it embarrasses itself further.”

Another said he read the book and “it is actually less bad than I was expecting,” adding books he read as a young person, such as “Catch-22” and “1984,” were more mature in their themes.

Groups such as the local branch of the conservative national group Moms for Liberty praised the board’s decision.

“Thank you to the HCPS Board of Education for protecting kids. Our school libraries should be safe and welcoming spaces for all students,” the local Moms for Liberty chapter wrote on social media.

Several speakers at Monday’s meeting likewise supported removing “Flamer” and some said they don’t consider it a ban.

“Your reasoning suggests that many more books must be aggressively purged from our libraries. ‘Flamer’ was definitely not the only book that was not age-appropriate and not the book that certainly would have been rated ‘R’ as a movie,” one woman said during the public hearing. “The children deserve to keep their innocence and get an excellent education.”

A man who said he supported Moms for Liberty said: “Why do we want books that endorse foul language and sexuality?… [The New Testament book of] Ephesians tells us not to participate in the darkness but to expose it.”

Have a news tip? Contact Bryna Zumer at bzumer@baltsun.com, or on X as @brynazumer .

The investigation, which began March 18, focused on a series of burglaries targeting American Design and Build on Gateway Drive. Suspects stole about $16,000 worth of copper wire from a storage building, a secure storage compound, and a company work van, according to police.

Det. Sgt. Henry Marchesani led the investigation, employing surveillance technology, digital forensics, and access to law enforcement databases to identify and track the suspects. The investigation revealed the suspects’ involvement in more than 20 crime scenes across at least five states, in cooperation with 17 other police departments, according to the Bel Air Police Department.

On July 1, Dominique Jeffery Johnson and Myah Michelle Portia Parker, both of Washington, D.C., were indicted by a Harford County grand jury on charges related to the burglaries. As of Monday, Johnson was in custody in Virginia, and Parker was being held at the Harford County Detention Center.

Have a news tip? Contact Lexi Harpster at akharpster@sbgtv.com.