A bookcase laden with hundreds of comic books rests unattended on a downtown sidewalk. Spider-Man fans might be tempted by several copies featuring their red-masked hero, before the books’ owner, William Haberlien returns. He emerges from a brooding building. The four-story structure wobbles in a downtown filled with empty storefronts. They line the streets, like tombstones. This nearly 150-year-old building has housed a hotel, a pharmacy, law offices, apartments and many other businesses. It has outlived every single one. Today it stands like an elderly widow, bidding adieu to its last tenant. Haberlien’s shop, Atomic Comics, is moving out. The iconic building known around the Western-Maryland city of Hagerstown as The Hamilton Hotel, is now empty. Its blank windows stare out like all the other vacant drooping eyes in this town.

The hotel was built in happier times. Hagerstown in the mid-1880s was a town on the rise. Founded in 1762 by Jonathan Hager, it had long been a slow growing, small city. The Civil War changed everything. During the war, the city’s strategic location at the border of North and South was of use to both sides. In 1864, a force of 1,500 Confederate Cavalry, led by Lt. Gen. Jubal Early, held Hagerstown to a ransom of $20,000 and a large amount of clothing. The city met these demands, and was left intact. Neighboring Chambersburg, PA was not so lucky. Three weeks after the ransom of Hagerstown, Early’s cavalry invaded and occupied Chambersburg. He demanded the city provide him with $500,000 or $100,000 in gold. Chambersburg supplied him neither. It was burned. Hardly a building was spared.

Fortunate to exit the war unscathed, Hagerstown stood ready to boom as a wave of industrialization swept the country. William T. Hamilton, Maryland Governor from 1880-1884, was aware that the town’s location left it ripe for growth. Returning to his native Hagerstown after a term filled with fierce clashes between himself and the State Legislature, Hamilton bankrolled many projects, both private and public, within the city. He provided crucial funds to improve Hagerstown’s water supply, its streets and its public works. In addition to building and opening the Hotel Hamilton in the mid-1880s, he was also a key investor in the opening of the Baldwin Hotel, another large building on Hagerstown’s increasingly busy Washington Street.

Though he served as one of the city’s primary groomsmen, Hamilton’s death in 1888 ensured that he would see only the beginning of Hagerstown’s rise. The town’s 1880 population of 6,600 residents would more than double by 1900. By 1920 the city’s population doubled again. Prestigious, successful and fed by six bustling railroads, Hagerstown thrived. It came to be known as “The Hub City,” a nod to its importance as the center of the Western Maryland Railway. Anchored by the Fairchild Aircraft Factory, the most prominent employer in town, Hagerstown rode out the Great Depression. For the next 50 years the Hotel Hamilton would stand as one of the iconic buildings of Hagerstown’s powerful downtown shopping district.

Haberlien wears a tired face. He has been moving his stock, consisting of thousands and thousands of comic books, for about a week. It is a warm August day. “(The city) told us to get the hell out. That’s what happened,” he says. Haberlien points to the door of what used to be his shop. There hangs the proof. The former Hotel Hamilton has been condemned.

The Hagerstown of today is a place where old-timers refer to empty storefronts by the names of businesses that failed there; two or three failed businesses ago. Time here is marked by famous local fires and factory closures. Its 40,000 residents live in a city where average home values and household incomes struggle to halve Maryland state averages. Downtown, the once vibrant heartbeat of a bouncing city, now barely twitches.

A 2 ½ story stone townhouse lies up and across the street from the Hotel Hamilton. Its masonry and carefully worked windows reek of 19th century prosperity. As they should. This building is the home of the Washington County Historical Society. It is known as The Miller House.

The foyer is grand. Antique furniture sits on the original wooden floor. Guests’ eyes spin around the carefully finessed woodwork of the ivory-painted Crown molding. The molding arches upwards in an ox-bow, framing a helix-shaped staircase. This staircase beckons widely to the second floor. But instead, Linda Irvin-Craig, The Executive Director of the WCHS, leads the way to the back of the first story.

Here, the ceiling drops from 12 feet to 10 feet, the imported wallpaper is gone, and an aristocratic feel is replaced by a functional one. “This is the living section of the home,” says Irvin-Craig. “The front was originally designed for business by the first owner, William Price, an attorney, to impress his clients with his successful pursuits.”

Price had the home built in 1825. Dr. Victor D. Miller Jr. purchased the property in 1911. He added an office suite to the east side of the building. Irvin-Craig leads the way upstairs. Here lies the kitchen. It is haunting in its exact historical interpretation. Handspun baskets, butter churns and straight-backed wooden chairs are all centered around an old wooden table. It does not feel like an exhibit, but instead a break before the ghosts return to take another meal.

The only anachronism is the EXIT sign hanging above a doorway. This doorway leads to rooms cased with the pottery of John Bell Jr. He founded a pottery business on W. Washington Street in 1804. The glazed earthware of his bowls and jars shine still, two centuries after their creation. In another room, an ironstone dinner plate dominates its display. During the Antietam Campaign, Confederate General Robert E. Lee took one of his suppers on this plate. Now it is filled with Minies musket balls and four union belt buckles. They were recovered in the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam.

“We put a lot of work into presenting a local educational experience here,” Irvin-Craig says. “Yet few from Hagerstown come to see this treasure. Schools will more likely put students on a bus to DC than take them on a field trip in their hometown.”

Irvin-Craig grew up in Washington County, and has lived in Hagerstown most of her life. She rattles off the names of the stores that used to be downtown as if they are old friends. “I remember an encounter my mother had with Mamie Eisenhower at McCrorey’s. (Eisenhower) was there shopping. She’d come down from Camp David,” says Irvin-Craig. “Those stores were bustling all the time. And Friday nights everything was open downtown. The lights were on and people were shopping. And it wasn’t just around the holidays. It was all the time.”

What happened then, to this downtown? Where did it all go? When did it start to fail? “I suppose that would start in the 1950’s. There was little regard at that time for structures that were of historical value. Not clearly understanding, ‘once they’re gone you can’t recapture them,’ significant buildings were torn down,” Irvin-Craig says. “And, of course, commercial retail businesses started moving outside the community. Local governments welcomed the fact that malls were being established around the city as opposed to in the city.”

1974 was the year the bottom truly fell out in downtown Hagerstown. That February, the beautiful Maryland Theater was heavily damaged by a fire. The Theater would not re-open until 1978. Just a month after that blaze, a seven-alarm-fire destroyed one of downtown’s most popular department stores, J.J. Newberry’s. Inconceivably, a third fire would burn in August. McCrory’s, the store frequented by a first lady, was gutted by the blaze. Two weeks later came the heaviest blow of a terrible year. On August 15, the Valley Mall opened. Downtown Hagerstown has never recovered.

While Irvin-Craig doubts that Hagerstown will ever again hold the commanding shopping district it once did, she believes downtown can be successful again. “There is ample opportunity here for small specialty shops, with the right kind of encouragement from the community to patronize them,” she says. At the end of the tour she pulls out a guest log. People from every end of both coasts have visited the Miller House within the last few months. Not many folks from Washington County have. “The people that come here from all over the country, love this place, they can’t say enough good things about it,” says Irvin-Craig. “And I’m not just talking about the Miller House;they think our downtown architecture is beautiful.”

It’s a sunny summer Sunday afternoon at the Hagerstown fairgrounds. The 69-acre compound spreads open and green. People are walking their dogs. Children swing from swings and play on playgrounds. On one of the fairground’s dozens of soccer fields an adult league soccer match is being played. Its players slip and sweat much more than they score. On the sidelines, taking a break from the game sits Steph Alphee, 23, a Long Island native who moved to Hagerstown six months ago.

Alphee says that she researched the area thoroughly before moving to Hagerstown. Having spent nearly her whole life in an urban environment, Alphee was hopeful and assured about meeting people here. “There’s a mall, a local college, on paper looking at Hagerstown I was like ‘this should be okay,” Alphee says. “Then I moved out here and I realized that the Hagerstown that is on paper is a thing of the past.”

In addition to working for the Washington County 4-H program, Alphee volunteers with the local branch of Americore Vista, a nationwide anti-poverty organization. Her focus within Americore is on after-school activities that keep kids interested in learning, while also keeping them out of trouble. She believes Hagerstown is brimming with untapped potential. “Walking in Downtown Hagerstown and seeing all the empty storefronts is one of the weirdest things I’ve ever experienced, Alphee says. “ There are all these really cool buildings and really cool storefronts that should be part of a great downtown, but it’s empty. I can’t wrap my mind around that.”

Neighbors look left and right. Someone bought a new car. Someone sold theirs. The Miller’s need to mow their lawn and the Jones’ got a new dog. On and on it goes. Cities do the same. Hagerstown glances east and west. Its residents find something to concern themselves in both directions.

25 miles east of Hagerstown stands Frederick. Frederick, the city that was always overlooked, has improbably and seemingly overnight, become trendy and successful. It is now the second-largest city in Maryland. According to the US Census Bureau, the town’s 67,000 residents enjoy a median yearly-household-income of $65,328. Hagerstown’s is little more than half of that. Frederick is home to a fun nightlife and busy local shops. The city does not look like slowing down. “Why can’t we do what Frederick is doing?” is a very popular phrase in Hagerstown. It did not used to be.

70 miles to the west of Hagerstown sits a city mired in decline, Cumberland. There, defunct factories and mills hang like over-sized rags from the bones of a shriveled city. Once the second-largest town in Maryland, Cumberland’s population of 20,000 is the lowest the city has seen since 1900. That number is still falling. It’s a sad place, lone voices echo down empty streets.

While Hagerstown might lie closer to Frederick geographically, it is trending much closer to Cumberland economically. There have been attempts to revitalize Hagerstown. They have failed. Cities can die. Hagerstown may or may not be dying, but it is clearly very sick. Worse, many people living in and around Hagerstown do not seem to notice.

“It just seems like even if you bring in these business savvy people to try and build up the downtown area, the people don’t seem interested,” said Alphee. “It’s like they are all too apathetic to care and really make something of their town.” “A lot of naysayers,” said Irvin-Craig, when asked what Hagerstown’s biggest problem is. “People who have already decided that it can’t be saved or people shouldn’t even put forth the effort. I just don’t accept that.”

Underneath its shadows and cobwebs, there are places in Hagerstown that grab your heart; City Hall’s graceful, peering clock tower, the calendar-perfect plantation-style mansions on Locust Street, the cobblestone paths historically paced by civil-war soldiers, Maryland Governors and American Presidents. Wreathed in decay, this city is wrapped in abstract beauty. It can be a slow reveal, but the power of the town’s old soul and stone is stunning. It is this power that has given birth to a remarkable new movement, a movement that has put something like hope in this city.

It is a warm Saturday night in August. Downtown’s normally vacant streets glitter with light. Formerly empty storefronts are filled with the comings and goings of busy shops. A band covers the Stones. People are dancing. Families are everywhere. For the first time in a long time, Hagerstown feels alive.

The culprit behind this uprising is a recently formed community organization called “The Downtown Movement.” The Downtown Movement was formed by a group of local women. Many grew up here, left, then came back. They remember their parents and grandparents talking about what this place used to be, with its shops and its life. Most of these women are mothers of young children. They want downtown to be a place for their kids, filled with first dates, local shops and smiling faces.

“We just wanted to see the downtown revived. It’s such a beautiful downtown,” says Rori Daughtridge, one of the group’s founders. “If you just walk around and look up you see that it has so much potential and just watching these empty storefronts was heartbreaking.”

The key component of tonight’s event is its pop-up shops; area businesses setting up for the weekend in some of the vacant storefronts downtown. The Downtown Movement organized the whole affair, contacting local businesses and landlords, matching them together, and working through dozens of rejections and unreturned phone calls. They created this weekend out of nothing.

Daughtridge is standing on the crowded sidewalk after handing one of her two young boys to his grandmother. Her group did not exist three months ago. Her eyes are tired, but she wears a smile that stubbornly refuses to leave her lips. This is a success beyond anything she could have imagined.“We just hope that we continue to grow on this,” Daughtridge says. “Go down Washington Street, go down Franklin Street, and our hope is that some people stay. Even if it’s just a couple shops.”

The 19 pop-ups hum with customers. They are all locally owned. Here are coffee shops and creameries, kitchen remodelers and local artists, wineries and boutiques. The entire town seems to be out tonight. Its older residents are beaming, this is what their city used to be. The younger residents walk with wide-eyes, they never knew Hagerstown could look like this. The storefronts look nice with stores in them.

In one of the pop-up shops on Washington Street sits Lisa Bartell and Cally Apicella. These women own separate businesses, but work together to promote their shops. “Cally approached me about sharing a space together,” says Bartell. “Our personalities mesh together and we get along very well. It just works.”

Bartell says that ten years ago she looked at bringing her previous business downtown, but eventually decided that the city was not then ready for growth. Recently, she believes things have changed. “It’s really different now. I can just feel it,” says Bartell. “There are more people on board.”

The importance of this event is staggering. The Downtown Movement has kick started an active conversation within Hagerstown. To see it swell from the very beginning is to be part of an honest-to-God organic movement. During the weekend of their first event, the Downtown Movement’s Facebook page is flooded with thousands of likes. The front page of the city paper features an excited headline. Over the coming weeks and months other events in town, like the music festival Porchfest, will report increased attendance from previous years. Something is happening in Hagerstown.

It is Monday morning. The pop-up weekend ended last night. A drive on route 40 will take you through the heart of Hagerstown. You will pass a Sheetz that is closing, and a bike shop that already is. Like a dream, the pop-ups melted away sometime between night and day. The scope of what the Downtown Movement must do, feels much wider than it did 12 hours ago.Empty storefronts dominate the town again.

A couple blocks over from streets formerly filled with pop-ups, an old barbershop stands shaky. It shares the street with other tired buildings. Three of them wear the same paperwork as the Hamilton. The old barber stands alone in the shop he has owned for 20 years. The room is stuffed with five chairs. Its ceiling sports a sloping crack, like the underside of a canyon. The foot-wide dent meanders from the far wall to the middle of the ceiling. “I’ve begged my landlord to fix that,” he says looking up. “But she’s in New York or somewhere up there. I never hear from her unless it’s about money I owe her.He’s sweeping the hair that he cut today. “I know one day I’ll show up and this place will be crashed and gone. I’m ready for that.”

Some of the highest hurdles harrying hopes of a revitalized downtown are its apathetic landlords. Many of Hagerstown’s buildings look to be in various states of disrepair. Rori Daughtridge has acknowledged that one of her group’s toughest tasks is to get landlords interested and active again. “We hope that the landlords see how great it could be,” she said. “Maybe they will decide to work with the businesses.”

The city says that it does not keep track of the number of condemned structures within its limits. Whatever that number, it should be higher than it is. Atomic Comics operated without heat and plumbing for several years before finally being inspected. The city’s director of Community and Economic Development, John Lestitian roundly criticized the Hotel Hamilton’s owners, Ares Investment Group LLC and UGO Property Management, in an interview with the Herald Mail. “For an owner to have that type of a setup, I find it sad. It’s one of those things where the city wants to see the building’s owner be a good corporate citizen and do the responsible thing, finish their project, supply the building systems so tenants can have heat, can have water, can have a restroom,” said Lestitian in his April 2013 interview with the Herald Mail . “I don’t think that’s asking anything, I mean that’s bare basics. And I find it sad that these particular owners have failed to do that.”

A neutral might argue that the building owners of Hagerstown were always going to be as lax as the city allowed them to be. And the city has been quite lax. That leaning barbershop is one of many buildings that should be wearing paperwork.

On Washington Street a bright storefront shines. Its large transparent window nearly spans the entirety of the building. Inside this window, on the display case, sit portraits of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. Past the display case is a busy studio, filled with signs and chairs and posters. The window itself is covered in a painted sketch. The painting features a lively city, climbing and propped by the words “Pop Up Shop.” This sketch is the symbol of the Downtown Movement. Here at 60 W. Washington Street lies the group’s headquarters. Rori Daughtridge and fellow Downtown Movement founder Jackie Beach-Walker sit behind a laminate folding table. It serves temporarily as the group’s desk. The two women met in 8th grade. Both attended the nearby Smithsburg High School. Daughtridge is a 4th generation Hagerstownian who, through the stories of her parents and grandparents knows what the city used to be, and how it is slipping away.

“There was a big urban sprawl thing. A lot of people got excited about chain restaurants and Targets and Wallmarts and things like that, but I think they are really realizing that you don’t meet your neighbor there,” says Daughtridge. “ I think that’s what the last pop-up shop proved to everyone. ‘Wow I love seeing my neighbor on the street and I don’t get this anywhere else.’”

“There’s definitely a trend going back to small businesses and shopping local,” says Beach-Walker. “People understand that putting their money in the local economy helps their neighbors and their friends and their families.” Together the two women unveil their hope for what the Downtown Movement will become; an organization with less and less pop-up shops to fill after every event.

“That’s a huge undertaking, obviously. And that’s something that is going to take a long time, for people to actually stick their necks out and come down here,” says Beach-Walker. “But I think it would be better to have it happen as a movement. One shop coming down here and opening up, that’s difficult. But if people came down here together, I could really see it happening.” “Our promise as a group, the promise we hope to keep, is that if people are willing to take that risk with us, we are going to do as much as we possibly can to promote it,”Daughtridge says.

They are aware that Hagerstown suffers from larger problems than vacant storefronts. “The other important goal is working with the community. People who live down here, who don’t have a voice,” says Beach-Walker. “That’s another big part of

what we want to do.”

It is another Summer Sunday afternoon at the Hagerstown Fairgrounds. Fred Williams, a 20-year-resident of Hagerstown, stands next to a young man in a wheelchair. The young man is legally blind and has a developmental disability. He speaks a stuttering cooing language all his own. The young man sounds happy. Williams is in his mid-fifties. He works for the Arc. It is currently the United States’ largest community-based-organization serving people with developmental disabilities.

Williams says that the young man enjoys attending the park’s soccer matches, because he likes to hear the chatter amongst the players. Williams also says that the young man enjoys coming here to feel the sun on his face. During the week, Williams will escort as many as five developmentally disabled people for the Arc. He says his job is not for everyone. “There are very, very humorous moments. Very touching moments, very stressful moments,” Williams says. “It takes a lot of patience to do this kind of work, but I find it very rewarding most of the time.”

Williams is a friendly, soft spoken man. But when asked about the changes he has seen in this town, his review is quick and devastating. “I hate Hagerstown, living here. I liked it when I moved here 20 years ago. It was a different city,” Williams says. “It has changed so much in 20 years. It’s really gone downhill, so bad. In fact we are looking to move out of here as soon as possible.”

Williams’ opinion is not an isolated one. Downtown Movement or not, many of Hagerstown’s longtime residents have little hope for the town as it lies. The most polite expression of this idea was expressed by Linda Irvin-Craig. “The ideal for Hagerstown would be to get people living downtown again,” Irvin-Craig said. “It doesn’t have to be rich people, but people with some disposable income.”

“Hagerstown is a mecca for destitute people. For people in need. That can be a good thing, but it’s become over burdened with trying to handle everything that is going on,” said a 25-year resident of the city who preferred to remain unnamed. “Between teenage pregnancy, there are gangs moving into the area, the drugs have gotten way out of hand, where I live at the property values have gone into the toilet.”

Hagerstown is an easy place to give up on. Everyone leaves. Or they stay and talk about leaving. Most people, when asked, said they believe the city is failing because it is home to too many poor folks. They do not say it like that though. They say that we need to cut down on our public housing (which is 13% of the city’s housing according to the Hagerstown Housing Authority), or get people with disposable income here, or have people owning homes downtown again. Then they ask that their names not be used with that quote.

It is easy to blame the poor people of Hagerstown for the city’s problems. It is a simple, guilt-free answer; their fault. But it is an answer that does not explain why nobody buys local anymore. Why most restaurants don’t make it past two years here. Why this city is so disjointed. It does not explain how everybody can see the potential of this place except for the people that live here. A city is an amalgamation of its residents. Everyone bears the same responsibility for downtown’s decline. Those wonderful pop up nights do not have to be one-offs. There is enough in this city, the way it is right now, to bounce with life again. It will only happen if we lose our prejudices and fear of each other.

Jonathan Street runs across downtown Hagerstown. Its inhabitants are predominately African-American. This is the block that well-to-do parents tell their children to stay away from. It is surrounded by poverty, crime and police. Many of the people that believe Hagerstown cannot be revitalized, point towards this street as the example of all that is wrong with the city.

Perhaps the gravest repercussion of a dead downtown is the loss of the community’s forum. It is easy to dehumanize people when you see them only on the news. The following interviews took place on Jonathan Street. They occurred on weekend nights, anywhere from 11pm-2am. They are a feeble attempt to treat a wound that can only be staunched by a busy downtown; a downtown where conversations are filled with compromise and cooperation.

The young woman’s pregnant stomach stretches her t-shirt. “Hagerstown is one of those towns where you used to be able to succeed, and get away from your problems,” she says. “But now it’s a trap.” Will she be here in five years? “Oh God, I hope not.”

It is midnight on Jonathan Street. Charlene Ross, 54, stands on the sidewalk. She slurs and stutters a bit as she talks. Her voice is gravelly like an old blues singer’s. Ross glances nervously across the street. Two men with backpacks stand on the opposite corner. Ross is talking about Hagerstown’s crime.

“It’s bad, but it’s not Baltimore,” she says. “We can fix it. But it’s gotta be us.” Her voice drops quickly. “It’s there. I mean it’s right there,” she says, barely above a whisper. Across the street dapped high-fives are exchanged with two newcomers wearing backpacks. After, everyone scatters into the night.

It’s another late night on Jonathan Street. A nervous man in his mid-twenties cuts our interview after almost answering the first question. His ride is here. He hops in the backseat of a car. Next to the driver sits another passenger. Out the cracked window comes a mumbled conversation. The driver’s door opens. “You want a story huh? I can give you a story,” says the driver.

He is standing now. He is of medium height. He has a muscular build. The man’s voice rises in tone, volume and delivery as he spits, “I can tell you how you get stuck in this motherfucker. If you don’t get out when you are young you get stuck up on crack, PCP. You get skinny, worked up. Aint nobody got their life together. You got two choices do drugs or get the fuck out of here.” Towards the end of the rant he is screaming. Rage courses through his body. His fists are clenched. Breathing deeply, he pauses. “Tell them anonymous said that.”

At 5 pm on Sept. 24 two cars, a minivan and a sedan, exchange gunfire while driving next to each other on Jonathon and Bethel Streets. On the 100 block of Wayside Avenue, the driver of the mini-van takes too hard a turn. His vehicle strikes a steel safety barrier. Its three occupants flee on foot. No one is arrested. No one is hurt. Police recover two guns near the scene of the crash.

Two nights later, Jonathon Street is buzzing. The police, who were always present, now hover over the entire neighborhood. Like a tide, cop cars float up the one-way street. They go again and again. Some stay hidden, parked in the shadows. Two officers patrol on foot. One of the cops is out of his blinking car, talking to two men who stand next to his driver side door.

“I just don’t believe they were dumb enough to drop their guns like that,” says one of the men. Smells like some bullshit.” The cop smirks. “Oh no,” he says. “We definitely found those guns.”

Down the block, a thin whiff of toke. Four men in their twenties and thirties sit on a stoop next to a matronly woman. “I was locked up 13 years,” says one of the men. “It’s not easy staying out once you’ve been in. You got nowhere to go but back where you started, with all the same people at the same place. Ain’t no jobs. It’s hard man.”

The two cops on foot approach. The bud is long gone. It’s smell isn’t. They ask what drugs I am selling. I tell them I am writing a story.

The matronly woman that the block universally refers to as mama, reminisces about the changes she has seen in her fifty-plus years here. “Used to be nobody had to lock their doors at night. Now, that’s not the way it is,” she says. “You’ve got people not from here, bringing in different lifestyles, the Bloods and the Crips are here now. I remember when they weren’t.” She credits the Memorial Recreation Center and its longtime director, the now deceased Ruth Ann Monroe, for keeping her busy and out of trouble when she was growing up. She has similar words of praise for the work of Miss Sue Ellen at Hagerstown’s Second Christian Church. “I would have never been out at this hour,” she says, nodding towards a group of several dozen high-school-aged kids, milling around across the street. “Back in my day, I had shit to do, and when the lights came on I was inside.” She worries that there are now less after-school programs for the young people of this neighborhood. “All we got now is Memorial Rec. (now renamed the Robert W. Johnson Community Center) and the Boys and Girls Club,” she says. “There used to be a lot more than that.”

What is the biggest problem she sees in Hagerstown? “No jobs, and the gangs from out of town bringing their lifestyles here,” she says. She sits, silent for a second. Her black face, lined with intelligent eyes and a few wrinkles, ages suddenly with anger and sadness. “We’ve gotta stop these gangs. Don’t bring your lifestyle into our town. My niece, Wynette Hunter, was killed by one of them,” she says. “Same shooting paralyzed Luke Cooper.”

According to the Herald Mail this shooting occurred on June 29, 1992. A group of Hagerstown residents, tired of what they perceived as outsiders in their neighborhood, marched to Sumans Avenue from the Martin Luther King Center. The Herald Mail says the marchers confronted Jeffrey Rea Bastine. He was 19-years-old.

Bastine disappeared into a house, only to reappear with a loaded 9mm handgun. He fired several times into the crowd. Wynette Hunter was wounded in the head. She suffered permanent brain damage, and died several years later. Luke Cooper was walking home from the boxing gym when he was wounded. At the time he was a pro fighter with a record of 4-2. As an amateur, he had twice won the National Golden Gloves competition. The shooting left his legs paralyzed and his career dead.

“He was a hell of a boxer. He really could have been something,” says the woman. She shakes her head and looks at the ground.

The people of Jonathon Street want safer streets and better job opportunities. They also want to live in apartments that are maintained by landlords. They want their landlords to be held accountable by the city. They want to be represented on the city council, which is currently all white. They want you to patronize their shops and businesses. They want Hagerstown to be a place you do not have to flee from. I know this, because they told me this in nearly every one of the dozens of interviews I conducted on that street. These are many of the things that the Downtown Movement wants, many of the things that the city council and the shop owners and the landlords and the churches and the homeless shelters and the public housing authorities want. It is hard to gain traction in a place used to losing ground. Maybe Hagerstown’s best days are behind it, but if all these groups and people want the same things, then its worst days should be too.

In some parts of downtown you can smell the dreams that rot, fertilized with the drugs and the poverty. It feels like you have to ask somebody, whether it be police or gangs, for permission to finish every step. Hassled and harassed, this cycle spins on and on. Its horrifying weight cannot be shrugged.

“What can we do to fix this?” I ask. A man with weary eyes and slumped shoulders smiles sadly at my idealism. Just a minute before he had been screaming with clenched fists about the two choices people have in this town. “If you can fix it, you tell me,” he says. “Please tell me. It aint ever gonna be fixed. It’s been like that for years and it’s always going to be like that.” I hope that he says this because he has never seen anyone try.

The Downtown Movement’s second pop-up event will span this coming weekend. Nov. 21-23.