If you were divorced in 1876 and were considering re-marriage next year, do you really think that voters in the state in which you live would be the proper authority to determine whether or not it is a good idea? Well, if you add the interests of a billionaire to the equation, this is precisely what you get, at least in Missouri.

But first, think about this issue from a bird’s-eye perspective. Suppose that two people had been married years ago and divorced not too long after that. Since that time, they have often had conversations about re-marrying, but it never got very far because one was far wealthier than the other and each of them owned their own fiefdoms and were not eager to share control.

But then, a group of people who are vaguely familiar with both of them decide that they have the power to decide whether or not they should get remarried. Many of these people had never met either of them, but once somebody decided to make it financially beneficial for them, they took it upon themselves to be the arbiters and would decide about a remarriage.

In the case of the proposed reunification of St. Louis City and County, Rex Sinquefield is a very interesting civic booster in and around Missouri.  He had 18 cleft palate operations before the age of 5 and spent much of his youth in a local Catholic orphanage. He is a real rags-to-riches story, becoming an “index-fund pioneer” and has had assets over a billion dollars since 1980.

One thing that he clearly remembers from his youth was his mother complaining about having to pay a 1% earnings tax in the city of St. Louis. He seems to have not lost one bit of his anger about this particular tax that has been very helpful in funding the cash-strapped city of St. Louis.

How did this get him into the divorce business? It’s because he is creative and as crafty as a chess-master, which he happens to be. Since 2010, he has looked for ways to allow St. Louis and Kansas City jettison the earnings tax. And just recently, he found a new way to try to make that happen. His strategy involves a remarriage of the city of St. Louis with its surrounding county, thus voiding their divorce that occurred in 1876.

Through a complicated set of maneuvers, the earnings tax would be abolished in St. Louis if the re-marriage occurs. It has to do with an obscure legality whereby the St. Louis City would become a different classification of city in Missouri should there be re-unification.

So, what exactly is Sinquefield trying to do? Well, he wants voters in Missouri to vote in November 2020 on an initiative to reunify the city and county. But, what makes this odd is that the decision would be entirely in the hands of the people of Missouri. So, 6.1 million people would be making a decision about something that would have direct impact on only the 1.3 million people living in the city of St. Louis and its surrounding county.

If the ballot initiative was modified so that rather than letting the voters of Missouri determine if there will be a re-marriage, instead it authorized the two courters to decide for themselves, then this would be an excellent idea. Yes, it would not be an arranged marriage; instead, each party would have his or her freedom of choice.

If it were not so deceitful, the idea would be tantalizing. Missouri, which historically has discriminated against its two major metropolitan areas, would have a chance to empower them. Ultimately, if government is going to work in the future, the states are going to have to fade away and newly constructed metropolitan and rural authorities will be able to shape their own futures. But that is not what this is about. Nice try, Rex. Let’s hope you don’t fool too many.

The post Even in Missouri, arranged marriages should be outlawed appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Gooey butter cake, the Gateway Arch, the Cardinals, and telling jokes on Halloween. There is no doubt that all of these things remind you of the city of St. Louis, Missouri. But what if, when you thought about St. Louis, you pictured the MetroLink or a MetroBus similar to how we think of the Subway in NYC or the El in Chicago? Well, if St. Louis ever wants public transportation to be as prominent as it is in these two cities, we’ve got a lot of work to do.

Currently our Metro system spans a total of 46 miles throughout St. Louis City, St. Louis County, and St. Clair County (Illinois). Within the MetroLink specifically, ridership has declined 11% since June of 2017. Some of the possible reasons for the decline in ridership include the negative security perceptions of the community, the relocation of the Rams lessening traffic downtown, lower gas prices, and the increase in rideshare services such as Uber and Lyft. So far, Lyft has created $15 million in revenue for local drivers in their 16 months of service in STL. Recently, the company struck a deal with Chaifetz Arena at St. Louis University to create a designated area for Lyft drivers to pick up customers. Just this past August, Lyft provided around 5,000 rides for people during the PGA tour in St. Louis. Rideshare programs like this are generally more appealing to consumers mainly because of the ease at which one can summon a ride through a simple app on their cell phone.

In St. Louis, feeling safe riding a train to and from work is important if we ever want to have a successful public transit system within this city. It’s a given fact that when people feel unsafe using a specific form of transportation, they are more likely to find other methods of transport to get to and from places. According to the Belleville News Democrat (BND), in 2017 there were “1.4 violent crimes, such as homicide or robbery, per 100,000 boardings” on the MetroLink. By comparison, “8.5 people per 100,000 Illinois residents died in a motor vehicle crash” that same year. So, for all the people who believe that everyone driving their own car to and from work would be safer, that’s not necessarily true.

Currently, our MetroLink stations have no turnstiles on their platforms, which makes it easier for people to sneak onto the trains. Every now and then, there are fare inspectors who will randomly ask riders to show their time stamped ticket as proof that they paid for the ride, but this becomes more of a challenge when trains get super crowded. An additional safety concern is that there are currently no connecting train cars for police or passengers to move between while the train is moving. This means that it is harder for passengers to escape possible danger that arises as the train is in motion.

While many of these concerns can be solved through the reconstruction of trains and stations, there are still safety concerns regarding policing policies throughout the system. For instance, the Metro security guards don’t share a common radio frequency with the local police departments, nor is there a common radio system shared among the three different security jurisdictions of St. Louis City, St. Louis County, and St. Clair County. If this did exist, it would make it easier to deploy officers when and where it’s necessary if a train is in motion. Other possible improvements to security include adding turnstiles, fences, or some sort of barrier, putting a guard on each platform, or having just a single access point to platforms instead of multiple entry points.

As a response to this growing uncertainty that St. Louisans have towards the MetroLink, St. Louis County officials have decided to delay the study of further expansion of the MetroLink until they have completed an evaluation of security practices used within the system. Keep in mind that the new Cortex station has been the only new station to open in the past 10 years of the MetroLink system. Going back to the security assessment, it will be carried out by an engineering company named WSP USA. This investigation of the 38 MetroLink stations in MO/IL will include looking at the lack of coordination between local municipalities across the system and reviewing the general policies of each police force. The study is expected to be completed by January 2019.

On the other side of the Mississippi in St. Clair County, they have been actively implementing new measures to increase safety on their trains. An example being that they have a deputy on every train from 5:00PM – 1:00AM in locations where higher crime has been reported. As a result of this, there has been a 7% decrease in crime on the MetroLink in this county. Both STL City and STL County need to take note and recognize that if they want to see more people taking transit, then they better step up their game and patrol more officers.

Throughout all the chaos of trying to increase public transit use, there is one group, Citizens for Modern Transit (CMT), that has been somewhat successful. The purpose of this group is to “…lead efforts for an integrated, affordable, and convenient public transportation system with light rail expansion as the critical component that will drive economic growth to improve quality of life in the St. Louis region. One of their more popular programs is called “Try and Ride” which helps first time riders become more familiar with the Metro system. So far, they have helped over 5,800 people through providing services such as personalized route information, free fare for an entire month, and registration in the Guaranteed Ride Program. This programs allows travelers to use ride-hailing services such as Lyft or Uber in case of sickness, unscheduled overtime at work, other personal emergencies, etc. CMT will provide up to $60 per ride in these instances.

Of course will always be pros and cons to public transportation, but for a city currently in the midst of a battle over public transit, privatizing our local airport may not be the best idea. Currently, there is an active push to privatize St. Louis Lambert International Airport, which falls within St. Louis City jurisdiction. The headliner for this project is Rex Sinquefield, a well-known financial contributor to political campaigns in Missouri. His nonprofit organization, Grow Missouri, helped pay for STL’s approved application sent to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This whole idea of privatizing the airport was introduced in early 2017 when Mayor Slay was still in office, and has now been passed onto Mayor Krewson by default. St. Louis City has selected members for the FLY314 Coalition of Advisors (supported by Grow MO aka Rex) whose job is to work closely with the Board of Estimate and Apportionment to look at ideas from interested investment partners. Supposedly, their job is to also inform the community and airport operations throughout this process, but unfortunately, it is being done under the radar, hidden from public view. Airport privatization needs to be approved by the FAA, Board of Aldermen, Board of Estimate and Apportionment, and a majority of the airlines at Lambert Airport in order to pass.

However, if St. Louis ever hopes to see the day where public transit is a main method of transportation, we have to use a more efficient process than the one used in the whole Loop trolley ordeal, which by the way, is still not in full service! According to the 2018 State of the St. Louis Workforce Report conducted by St. Louis Community College, one of the top five potential barriers to expanding employment is lack of transportation. Thus, if we are able to make using our public transportation system safer, easier, and generally more enjoyable, it’ll benefit our workforce, eventually improving St. Louis as a whole.

Links:
https://custapp.marketvolt.com/cv.aspx?cm=1198762691&x=51036870&cust=427641269

That Guy | Metro St. Louis

https://www.bnd.com/news/local/article210317754.html
https://www.stltoday.com/news/traffic/along-for-the-ride/st-louis-county-delays-study-of-future-metrolink-expansion/article_0637637f-f55f-50b8-b133-b2c104ff6239.html
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/metrolink-study-to-focus-on-justifying-project-showing-strong-local/article_013f1546-9cad-57fb-8fa1-c051f7363e4f.html
https://www.stltoday.com/news/traffic/along-for-the-ride/efforts-to-improve-security-on-metrolink-move-forward-but-slowly/article_1799c5c7-eacf-5ffa-939d-be41cabd6a0c.html
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/try-try-again-st-louis-county-seeks-firm-to-study/article_cffe1ad1-ad2c-5a2f-8b1d-68cd31c3e09d.html

CMT’s Try & Ride Program

System Maps

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/tough-to-gauge-risk-to-metrolink-riders/article_c3e4a153-4446-50a0-b227-f2a83b191aa5.html
https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2018/08/14/expand-metrolink-ridership-falls-as-subsidies-grow.html
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/latest-loop-trolley-opening-guesstimate-mid-autumn-at-the-latest/article_bb26b910-778d-5db3-9d83-7db2674d0398.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/top-city-officials-vote-to-begin-exploration-of-privatizing-lambert/article_14e304e2-9f86-5b11-bdd1-dfc67fc30735.html
https://www.masstransitmag.com/press_release/12429091/metro-transit-invites-region-to-celebrate-stl-car-free-day-on-september-21

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What’s better: a military-based economy or a peace-based economy?  Jason Sibert of the Peace Economy Project, says that cutting military spending and funding human needs would create a peace economy, which would work better and become more effective and prosperous.

Sibert, a Navy veteran and the recently hired executive director of the St. Louis Peace Economy Project, has an extensive background in journalism and reporting, from sports to news. Whether writing for the Java Journal or the Progressive Populist, he reported on topics and issues he is passionate about. He is the only paid employee of the Peace Economy Project.

Since its founding in 1977 by Sister Mary Ann McGivern, the Peace Economy Project has raised questions about how much money our country spends on the military and whether those funds could be better used to support middle- and lower-class people. Basically, what it comes down to is more spending on human needs and less on guns, nuclear weapons, and F-35s. A simple question this project asks is: What should we spend money on – guns or butter?

From the Cold War to the present, the Peace Economy Project has addressed many issues: It has criticized the military-industrial complex and advocated for for healthcare, education and infrastructure reform. Not affiliated with a political party, the organization will criticize any president of any party, says Sibert.

An unchecked military-industrial complex brings many hazards, says Sibert. Overspending on the military causes the rest of the economy to suffer. Other countries allocate more money to development, and that attracts high-tech companies. Overspending on the military has also resulted in cuts to education. In addition, noting that 40 percent of US workers earn less than $15 per hour, the Peace Economy Project has become involved in the Show-Me $15 initiative aimed at raising the minimum wage in St. Louis.

“We rot internally when we spend everything on the military,” says Sibert.

Legislative and policy changes are important in the quest for a peace economy, says Sibert. So, in addition to advocating for ideas, his organization is often out on the streets collecting signatures, and then visiting legislators to show them what their constituents want.

Critics of the Peace Economy Project contend that the military is the only decent thing about America. But Sibert argues that the United States can spend less money on military, while still having an effective and beneficial foreign policy. Sibert notes that Switzerland has a smaller military, which is cheaper, but is in need of natural resources, and that other countries depend on trade. Sibert’s idea of a better world economy would be to see more cooperation between power nations, such as Russia, China, the European Union, and the United States, as well as more cooperation in the United Nations.

“We all live in the same world,” says Sibert, “which explains why we need an economy that focuses on  human needs and peace for everyone.”

The Peace Economy Project collaborates with several other organizations, including the St. Louis Chapter of the United Nations Association, Veterans for Peace, and Jobs With Justice. Support for the Peace Economy Project comes from membership dues and individual donors.

Sibert hopes that more citizens will become aware of the need to change from a military-based economy to a more stable, peace-based economy. To do that, we need to become more educated, by reading and watching the news, paying attention to the world, and knowing the political pushes and pulls of it.

“The State Department and its diplomats are as important as the generals,” he says. “Problems need to be solved diplomatically instead of lethally.”

The post Guns or butter? Butter, says Peace Economy Project appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Local history may be about to repeat itself in suburban St. Louis, as another well-established African-American neighborhood faces extinction by buyout, demolition and commercial development. This time, it’s an area of the inner-ring suburb called University City. That municipality’s city council is proposing a $70-million tax-increment-financing plan [TIF] to entice a developer to transform a 50-acre area via a $170 million project. Currently occupying the redevelopment area is an diverse array of successful, locally owned, small businesses—including Japanese, Jamaican, Vietnamese and Korean restaurants, and other enterprises. Behind the shops are neighborhoods of small, 1950s-vintage homes, many of which are owner-occupied by people of diverse ethnicity.

St. Louis has seen this movie before. In the 1950’s, an African-American residential enclave fell victim to an ambitious plan for the suburban City of Clayton, which transformed itself from a quiet County seat into a virtual second downtown for the St. Louis area. In the 1980’s, the City of Kinloch—founded in 1948 as Missouri’s first incorporated African-American city—lost a vast chunk of its territory, and later, most of its population, to the expansion of St. Louis’ airport. In the late 1990’s, another mostly African-American area, known as Hadley Township, was largely demolished and reincarnated as a Wal-Mart development. More recently, most of the remainder of Hadley Township disappeared as well, to be replaced by a Menard’s hardware super center. Nearby, the traditionally black neighborhood called Evans Place vaporized when a developer paved it over for the Brentwood Promenade, anchored by Target, Trader Joe’s, Bed Bath & Beyond and other big boxes. And, about five miles away, is a development known as Kirkwood Commons, which clear- cut a huge swath of an historically significant African-American neighborhood called Meacham Park.

So, it comes as no surprise that yet another African-American neighborhood is now up for grabs. Supporters of the development—primarily members of University City’s City Council— say it will bring a “pot of money” to University City’s coffers, which can be used, in turn, to help homeowners in other deteriorating neighborhoods improve their properties, and upgrade infrastructure. Opponents object to the destruction of established, affordable neighborhoods, the demolition of locally owned businesses, and the notion of anchoring the project with a big-box store—presumably Costco—in a city  with a decades-old track record of failing big box stores. “You don’t build up a city by tearing it down,” they say in their anti-TIF literature.

University City officials want the project completed by sometime in 2020. Getting there could be problematic. A public meeting held this evening drew an overflow crowd of about 500 University City residents and business owners. After less than 20 minutes of presentations by city officials, members of the audience—already annoyed by an inadequate sound system and an overcrowded venue—began shouting out questions and criticisms. Before the meeting began, at least 50 people put their names on a speaker’s list. [Full disclosure: I left the meeting when audience members began to break protocol with angry comments. Clearly, the rest of the meeting was almost sure to be loud and contentious.] It was.

So, while the TIF commission came into the public meeting leaning toward support of the project, getting fully to “yes” is probably going to be a rocky road.

Whether this development proposal succeeds or not, the underlying question remains: Why do these projects seem to occur so frequently in African-American neighborhoods? It’s not coincidence. A 2014 report, entitled “For the Sake of All,“ laid out, in great detail, the governmental policies, discriminatory mortgage-lending practices, and real-estate-industry behaviors that intentionally created racial segregation patterns in the St. Louis area over many years. Undoubtedly, those machinations factored in to the concentration of African-Americans into certain areas in the region and to the devaluation that has attracted commercial re-developers through the years.

A 2018 update to the first report, entitled “Dismantling the Divide,” proposes strategies that could help reverse the entrenched patterns of racial segregation that plague the St. Louis region. And today, in an op-ed published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jason Purnell, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and project director for “Dismantling the Divide,” called the University City TIF proposal—if done thoughtfully and innovatively— an opportunity for positive change:

This proposed development holds the chance for University City leaders to distinguish themselves as innovators regarding racial equity, inclusion and fair housing. Before granting a TIF, they could require the developer to sign off on a community benefits agreement with the residents and other neighborhood stakeholders. This sound policy decision would require [the developer] Novus to meet with these groups and negotiate requirements for the development, which could include the creation of appropriate affordable housing and retail spaces so existing businesses and residents can continue to call the area home.

In the 1960s and 1970s, University City distinguished itself as a bulwark against “block-busting” and white flight. Residents formed the Freedom of Residence Committee that “pressed for fair housing and inclusion of African-Americans in University City so they weren’t steered out of the local real estate market, and whites weren’t steered away from integrating neighborhoods,” writes Purnell.

Can U. City revive its reputation as an innovator in addressing the racial divide?  The answer to that question may well lie in how it deals  with the proposed TIF project.

The post Death by TIF: Another African-American neighborhood faces extinction appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In St. Louis, bad behavior by police responding to protests about…previous bad police behavior—has sparked another form of protest: the publicly published protest letter.

Actually, there are two letters: One, from the ACLU, admonishes the St. Louis City Police Department to use restraint when confronting protesters. Another, from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, demands that all charges be dropped in the case of the improper arrest, during a street protest, of a fully credentialed reporter who was covering the event.

Here are excerpts from each of the letters:

ACLU

On Friday, the ACLU of Missouri sent each of your offices a letter. We implored you to remind law enforcement to allow the community to continue to express its outrage, pain and grief by protecting their First Amendment right to protest.

They didn’t.

We know there were sporadic moments of violence and vandalism – these are not covered by the Constitutional right to protest. However, outside of these moments, officers broke their vow to protect the public by engaging in illegal activities and actions that violated policies of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department and agreed-upon rules of engagement made during 2014 protests.

The letter notes that ACLU of Missouri trains legal observers to monitor demonstrations for violations of civil liberties and Constitutional rights. It then lists some of what the legal observers saw police officers doing, including:

• Attacking people indiscriminately with gratuitous use of pepper spray, pepper balls, rubber bullets, and tear gas when no apparent illegal activity had occurred.

• Excessively using of force, including violent arrests that caused injuries.

  Deploying chemicals, such as tear gas and pepper spray, without warning.

• Deploying tear gas on routes where people were leaving.

• Arresting people with questionable probable cause.

• Illegally searching bags and other possessions.

• Not wearing name tags and not identifying themselves.

• Blocking access to public spaces without apparent cause of officer safety, ongoing investigation, or public safety hazard.

• Forcefully blocking recordings of police conduct in public spaces at safe and reasonable distances.

• Selectively enforcing access to public spaces.

• Entering safe spaces against policy and with questionable probable cause.

• Using intimidating displays of force, explicitly contrary to agreement prior to release of verdict.

Calling these behaviors “unacceptable,” the ACLU urges city officials to require police officers to follow proper procedures, including:

• To not use chemical weapons, such as pepper spray and tear gas, without following the proper protocols to ensure the protection of constitutional rights.

• Officers’ nametags should be visible at all times for police accountability.

• To wear their body cameras and have them turned on at all times.

• Not use force against protesters absent a real and immediate threat of physical harm to others.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The protest letter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch comes in response to the arrest of Mike Faulk, a reporter who was clearly displaying his credentials, during a roundup of demonstrators in the City of St. Louis.

The Post-Dispatch condemned the “inappropriate and highly disturbing” arrest of one of its journalists on Sunday during a mass arrest by St. Louis police officers, and demanded that the city drop charges against him.

The letter, written by attorney Joseph E. Martineau, of the Lewis Rice law firm, said officers should have released Faulk immediately after recognizing he was covering a story, and allowed him to keep working.

Instead, he was arrested with “unneeded and inappropriate force” that caused injury to both legs, his back and wrist. Faulk was “forcefully pushed to the ground by police officers and a police officer’s boot was placed on his head.” After his wrists were bound with zip ties, a police officer “deliberately sprayed him in the face with pepper spray, mace or some other stinging substance.” At some point, an officer reviewed the contents of Faulk’s phone.

Inside the jail, the letter said, jail personnel denied Faulk’s repeated requests for medical attention. The city counselor’s office charged Faulk with failure to disperse, and he was released on $50 bail. He returned to the newsroom limping, knees bloodied and pepper spray still on his skin.

The city’s failure to establish a protocol to recognize and respect the rights of journalists gathering news was “a grave mistake,” the letter said.

In a comment published in the Post-Dispatch as the letter was making its way to city officials, the newspaper’s editor, Gilbert Bailon said:

St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalists and other credentialed news media provide critical information to the public. When St. Louis police arrested Mike, after he fully identified himself while covering the protests, they violated basic tenets of our democracy. Additionally, the physical abuse he suffered during the arrest is abhorrent and must be investigated. The Post-Dispatch is calling for our city leaders to immediately implement policies that will prevent journalists from being arrested without cause.

So, is the pen [aka keyboard] actually mightier than the sword [aka pepper spray, Mace, plastic wrist ties]? Let’s hope so. Otherwise, our democracy is in deep peril.

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If you were looking for a hackneyed and inelegant metaphor for privilege and inequality, the building I work in would be an excellent choice. It’s a tower above a dilapidated shopping mall, and while there is constant construction, it’s always work on the offices in the tower. The shopping mall will probably never reopen. The bottom wilts, and the people at the top can safely comment on the noise the construction makes. It’s the only part of it that touches their lives.

I went in to work on September 15^th, 2017, around 7:30. By the time the coffee kicked in and I was fully sentient, it was 9:00 or so. Around this time we were called to the office center for a brief meeting about the Stokely ruling. “We’re not going to talk about this very long,” said a manager, “because that wouldn’t be office-appropriate. If you want to know more, Google it.” The manager laid out several options for us: Stay and work, go work from home, or just go home. Management was worried about the ensuing violence from protestors after the ruling. They seemed to think St. Louis would explode in the same way the major cities did in the 1960’s, or LA in the 1990’s. Protestors would ostensibly block highways, and roving gangs of brigands would rob us of our property, and perhaps our lives.

I opted to stay, thinking that the trouble was overstated. I dimly perceived various conversations about the ruling around me, as I frequently keep my headphones in at work.

“I’m going home, cause I’m white, and they might come after me. And if someone tries to hurt my wife, I’ll go to jail. And it’ll be a fair ruling.” I found this one difficult to parse. I can understand the desire to protect one’s family. I can’t understand bragging to a coworker about the pain you’d inflict on someone who would attack your family. And I can’t get inside the worldview that considers whiteness to be a persecuted identity. I should note that this quote came from an otherwise very kind and thoughtful person.

Later, I heard people watching the riots unfold on TV in another room. The media, of course, quickly focused on a burning car. My coworkers laughed and offered suggestions on what the protestors would do “if they were smart”. “Why would the protestors do that? It’s irrational,” they said of the car. I’m sure it was, but I don’t expect people willed with righteous anger at the murder of one of their fellow citizens to be the most rational and understated arguers. Just as I had trouble processing the person threatening violence against imaginary people who might hurt their family, they had trouble understanding why people might burn cars. Why don’t they just protest peacefully? I suspect the idea of systemic problems of racism or state did not enter their minds.

Sometimes I wonder if we could convince law-and-order types that police repression here has the same character as similar violence in Iran, or Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, or Russia, that they might come to their senses. These are, for me, fleeting considerations. I’m reasonably sure they wouldn’t change many minds.

I was second-to-last to leave, with the last right behind me. I drove home and did not see a single person blocking highways or acting illegally on the way. I took a nap when I got back. I didn’t join in the protests, though I was sympathetic, and plenty of my friends did. Lately I’m having trouble believing that my individual presence at demonstrations means much. I am not particularly proud of this.

According to friends who did go, a thousand or more people protested peacefully, and a handful did not. The narrative in the reactionary media, however, seemed to be that of savages bursting through ordinary society. Mob rule.

The police, on the other hand, used pepper spray and gas grenades and the other tools of repression against peaceful protestors. They trampled an old lady, captured in a disturbing video. According to the Riverfront Times, the end of that day saw 11 injured officers and 32 arrests. Doubtless the arrests have increased in the couple days since.

My friends and I went out for drinks that night. The streets were a little emptier, but we saw no protestors or vandals. I went home around midnight. My friends stayed out even later, and the only thing they noticed out of the ordinary is that the bars weren’t very crowded. My guess is that, like my coworker above, people were afraid of gangs of non-Caucasian bandits roaming the streets.

The city did not explode, though there were sparks and conflagrations here and there. But the specter of mass conflict frightens the complacent such that they would prefer police repression to justice.

When I returned from what felt like a lengthy weekend, the office was largely back to normal. The only comments I heard relating to Stokely and the protests were some hurried inquiries about some coworkers’ friends who were cops. Were they ok? Did someone hurl a brick at them? Just about no concern for the protestors. But that’s the advantage of the tower, I suppose: Surrounded by security, wealth, prosperity, girded by the violence of the state apparatus, we can see injustice happening at a distance. And we can safely ignore or denounce it at our will.

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This week we have another heart-warming story from our St. Louis Community. A man named Jake Austin runs a special service, a Shower the People truck, that offers free showers and other hygiene services to homeless people in the St. Louis area. We’re often reminded of how the homeless and other poor people need food, and what an excellent job so many of the food pantries do. We recognize that if a person has shelter, they have overcome some of the barriers to homelessness, but far from all.

There are still people who are literally living on the streets and what they face is incomprehensible, especially in the wealthiest country in the world. To eat and to find clothing, some actually engage in dumpster diving. But what then?

That’s where Austin and his cohorts come in. In a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story on “Shower the People,” Austin said, “Hot water and soap are wildly underrated in the world. You don’t realize what it means to you until you don’t have it.”

That resonated with Austin, who bought a truck he found on Craigslist for $5,000 and started Shower to the People.

Tangibly, the truck is equipped with two shower stalls and moves to different neighborhoods. Intangibly, it’s equipped with a ray of hope for many of the region’s homeless.

When it began operations a year ago, it offered showers two days a week. Now it’s four, with plans for more growth, Austin said. “We don’t have clients, we have friends and neighbors, and I’m excited about our growth.”

This is another “feel good” story for St. Louis. Fortunately, we’re fed a steady diet of them because we have Channel 5 (NBC affiliate) “on our side” [that’s their slogan] and Channel 4 (CBS affiliate) “never stops watching out for you” [their slogan]. With those two agents as our allies, we should have an army of charitable people and organizations that ensure that we never have people in our community who are hungry, homeless, or so left out in the cold that they have not showered in two months.

It was not a television station that broke the story of the “Shower the People” to us. It was St. Louis’ flagship daily newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. And they certainly care about us. No words could provide a greater call to action than Joseph Pulitzer’s platform, written on April 10, 1907.

I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

Joseph Pulitzer clearly got it. He talks about broad societal change to ensure that justice takes the lead over charity. He sees the well-being of citizens as a major concern of government and that responsible government must provide a safety net to protect all in need.

Perhaps it was inevitable as time went on the Post-Dispatch would have to trim its sails a bit to appeal to readers who were not nearly as progressive in thought or action as Pulitzer. At the time that he wrote his platform, there were nearly a dozen daily newspapers in St. Louis, so the Post-Dispatch could securely cater to the progressive niche.

As the Post worked to broaden its appeal, it had to seek out advertisers that were not comfortable with words like “never lack sympathy with the poor” or “always remain devoted to the public welfare.”

The TV stations crow about the great service they do for our community and the newspaper does indeed find time to provide some in-depth coverage to real acts of charity. But what is lost is how far we are from the words of Pulitzer’s platform.

A just society with a responsible government would never have need for a shower truck, much less homeless shelters or food banks. The society would recognize what is in Article I of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience3 and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

It is appropriate that we now cheer for Jake Austin and others who bring us the “Shower the People” truck. It is also appropriate that we cry that we are as far from justice as we are in 2017. No amount of “being on the side” of our charities will make up for a commitment to a solid government social and economic safety net. Whenever we cheer for the charity, let’s remember the omission of justice. And whenever the television station or newspaper tells us of the charity, let them remind us of the injustice that gave cause to the charity.

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A new report by Livability.com calls St. Louis the Number 1 city for liberals. And while as a St. Louis resident and a liberal myself, I like hearing that and would love to believe it, it’s probably not true. [Sigh.] How many times do I have to say this: A Number 1 ranking for St. Louis –in almost any category—is usually the result of statistical malpractice.

The new ranking would be a refreshing change from the much more negative rankings St. Louis typically gets: Similar reports have ranked St. Louis as Number 1 in per capita murders. But that’s an undeserved reputation as well.

Here’s why. The people who do these rankings often don’t understand the political/administrative structure of the St. Louis area. For consistency, they usually create their rankings based on statistics within city limits of the various areas they’re reporting on. Their oft-quoted statistics appear to be correct for what they measure. [Per capita gun violence and murder is very high in “St. Louis.” And “St. Louis” has elected its current Democratic mayor four times, and voted overwhelmingly for President Obama twice.] Unfortunately, the “St. Louis” that they are measuring yields results that are distorted.

What people don’t understand is that those per capita numbers apply only to the City of St. Louis – an area of just 66 square miles. The reporting areas for other cities are much larger: Kansas City—319 square miles; Memphis—315 square miles; Chicago—234 square miles.

Why is St. Louis City so small? Because St. Louis City seceded from St. Louis County in 1876, in “The Great Divorce.” To make the comparison with other areas equitable, you would have to include adjacent St. Louis County, which covers 532 square miles. So, at least for St. Louis, comparing cities’ liberalness or murder rates based on characteristics within city limits is apples-to-oranges.

Basing the liberalism ranking on the larger St. Louis area would likely result in a lower ranking. [In the study, St. Louis ranked above Berkeley, CA!] St. Louis County is not nearly as “liberal” as the City of St. Louis, based on who County residents elect and re-elect to Congress and to the state legislature—mostly Republicans. Admittedly, St. Louis County often can be counted on help Democrats running statewide.. But St. Louis County is not a sure thing as an oasis for liberals, There’s a big, conservative guns-and-religion streak in the more exurban areas of the County. I live in St. Louis County, and I’m bracing myself for the sight of a boatload of Trump signs in the next few weeks before the election. You won’t see that in Berkeley.

Similarly, the per capita murder rate would probably compute lower if it were measured using the wider geographical area. For most of these rankings, the larger, more comparable St. Louis City/County area would probably yield results that are much more reflective of the actual situation in what people think of as “St. Louis.”

The only thing that St. Louis actually ranks #1 for is having its rankings repeatedly exaggerated by skewed statistics.

The post St. Louis is the Number 1 city for liberals? Probably not. appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Does the image of an armored truck, outfitted with 360-degree surveillance cameras and secured by body-camera-toting security guards, parked on the lot of a bar in downtown St. Louis, fill you with civic pride?

If so, welcome to militarized St. Louis. This is the city that sported a tank in its Gay Pride parade. Now we are being asked to host a “gun truck” — an idea that was hatched by a former St. Louis County police chief, who apparently equates public safety with armed citizenry.

Despite repeated pleas from St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson not to bring guns downtown, apparently some suburb-dwellers are either so afraid of the city, or so attached to their firearms, or both, that they are unwilling to attend a baseball game without packing heat. Thus, the gun truck idea was born. For just $10 (or $15, if you pay by credit card), the truck will baby-sit your Beretta while you enjoy a few beers at the ballpark.

There are so many disturbing things about this idea that it’s hard to know where to start.

First, the idea that you need to be armed at all times is just another attempt to make it seem normal to carry a weapon wherever you go. We can thank the National Rifle Association and the gun industry for this; as our national fear and paranoia increase, so do their profits.

Second, it is really unfortunate that so many people are trying to portray downtown St. Louis as unsafe. Much of this stems from the tragic shooting of Christopher Sanna, who was shot in 2015 after he and his girlfriend left Busch Stadium. Following this horrific event, security in the city was beefed up before and after sporting events. Much credit for clear-eyed thinking goes to Sanna himself, who was quoted in this newspaper in October 2015, saying: “We have to be able to come up with something other than everyone carrying a gun.”

Sound public policy and good business decisions are seldom made as a result of a few isolated incidents. What does happen after these incidents are efforts to make us all afraid. The result is something as ludicrous as a gun truck. Never underestimate the ability of fear to make us do stupid things. Never doubt the greed of some entrepreneurs to make money off our fears.

“Don’t take your guns to town, son

Leave your guns at home, Bill

Don’t take your guns to town.”

Maybe we should start to mind our mothers.

[Editor’s note: This post was originally published on July 13, 2016 in the Op-Ed section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  It is reprinted with permission of the author.]

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What happens when a landfill fire meets a radioactive waste dump?  St. Louis, Missouri, may be the first metropolitan area to find out.

In North St. Louis County, near the St. Louis Airport, and a mile from Pattonville High School, the Westlake Landfill is on fire. It’s not a flaming, above-ground fire, but something more insidious and potentially more dangerous: a smoldering underground fire caused by years of decomposing garbage, the methane gas it produces, and the oxygen that has seeped in.

Close by – some say within 300 feet—is another [previously hidden] burial ground, where high-grade uranium leftovers were dumped during the 1970s.

The smoldering fire is spreading. The boundaries of the radioactively contaminated soil are not clearly delineated. The timing of the merger of the two entities is anybody’s guess. And having never encountered this situation before, no one really knows what the result would be.

A mushroom cloud is not going to happen; and there probably won’t be an explosion. But many speculate that the situation is akin to a slow-motion dirty bomb [without the boom], poised to spread some very nasty stuff into the environment.

Environmentalists say that this situation is unique and unprecedented in the U.S. Neighbors, “radio-activists,” fire officials, EPA regulators, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, and Republic Services–which operates the landfill-—agree that something must be done. But no one knows precisely what that something is, or who should be responsible for doing it.

Here’s my [unscientific, unofficial, and possibly factually flawed] understanding of the situation:

How did this happen?

It all started in 1942, when the US decided to try to develop an atomic bomb. A St. Louis chemical company—Mallinckrodt—won the contract to process the uranium needed for the bomb. The source material came from a mine in what was then the Belgian Congo. It was uranium of a radioactive strength unmatched anywhere else. But the enrichment process left tons of highly radioactive waste, and Mallinckrodt had to find a way of getting rid of it. At first, they dumped it downtown, where their main processing plant was. In 1946, Mallinckrodt started dumping it on a 21-acre property just north of the St. Louis Airport. [It’s known as SLAPS.]

In the 1960s, a different company bought the waste ore from the airport site and transported it [sometimes in open trucks] to a nearby storage site. [The Latty Avenue site.]  There was a lot to move: 74,000 tons of Belgian Congo soil, containing approximately 13 tons of uranium; 32,000 tons of Colorado soil containing about 48 tons of uranium; and another 7 tons of uranium from somewhere else.

Finally, in the 1970s, another 47,000 tons of soil mixed with radioactive waste wound up in the nearby West Lake Landfill. At the time, there were no safety regulations for landfills regarding this kind of waste. One activist recently told me that, at the time the landfill operators did ot know that the radioactive waste had been mixed with topsoil. “So, they used those enormous piles of dirt to cover and level out garbage daily,” she said. “Sadly, that radioactive waste now lies nearly on the surface of the landfill, which is why it more easily becomes airborne in the form of dust.”

That toxic stew decomposed and bubbled for years, but almost no one knew that it contained radioactive waste. Then, in 2013, Republic Services reported that an underground area of the landfill was smoldering. That development made some people begin to take notice.

A few years earlier, a group of women who had attended a nearby North County high-school began realizing that many of their classmates—and members of their families– had been diagnosed with various cancers. It seemed like too many of them. They remembered that, as children, many of them had played in nearby Coldwater Creek—a tributary of the Missouri River—which some industrial companies had used as a dumping ground over the years. They also recalled roaming around the open fields and railroad tracks near St. Louis Airport. After looking into it more closely, they were shocked to discover that their neighborhood was ground zero for radioactive waste dumping.

In the early 1990s, the Environmental Protection Agency made SLAPS and Latty Ave into Superfund sites. The cleanup at those sites is nearing completion, under the direction of a federal sub-agency called FUSRAP.  [Of course, it’s hard to know when you’re really finished:  The boundaries of the radioactive areas are squishy, because wind, rain and flooding tend to move soil around.]

But Westlake remains a problem. Several groups of activists have been persistent and outspoken in pushing for a resolution to the problems in the area. [Some call themselves “radio-activists.”] But they’re trying to navigate a dizzying matrix of agencies with conflicting jurisdictions and agendas: EPA, Missouri Department of Natural Resources, local politicians, the Bridgeton Fire Department, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—to name a few. Some have proven helpful, but many seem to be in denial. [At one community meeting, an EPA official is recorded on video saying, “We have no evidence that the radioactive waste is near the fire.”]

In 2008, EPA proposed sealing off one of the waste areas with a 5-foot cap. Very little happened to that plan, but just this week [April 18, 2016] at another community meeting, EPA revived the idea. It received a chilly reception from  many residents and activists, who have been pushing for years for removal, rather than further burial, of the contaminated waste. Westlake Landfill activists also are leading an  a effort to secure a voluntary buyout of properties within a one-mile radius of the landfill.

Even the “good guys” can be difficult: the U.S. Centers for Disease Control [CDC] has been reluctant to accept the notion that there are cancer clusters in the area. A separate group of activists–“Coldwater Creek – Just the Facts” — is focused on a federal health assessment aimed at determining if there is a link between the elevated cancer rates in the area and radioactive contamination.

In the meantime, most residents of St. Louis City and County are only marginally aware of what’s going on “up there” in the North County area. Even people who now live—or formerly did—near the dump sites may not realize what they may have been exposed to. And when they receive a diagnosis of an unusual cancer, their doctors may say, “This is so rare. You are one in a million.”  The radio-activists beg to differ: “You actually are one of millions,” they counter.

I recently took a tour of “radioactive St. Louis,” guided by a very knowledgeable activist from the Missouri Coalition for the Environment. We went to Latty Ave., to SLAPS and to Westlake, where we ran into a “Just Moms” founder who was making her daily rounds of the site. She was taking pictures of the latest efforts to contain the fire, tamp down the stench, and keep a lid on the situation—literally: The whole landfill is covered with a green tarp, over which is vast web of hoses and exhaust pipes, plus valves, and air-quality meters, and surrounded by a very tall chain-link fence. Iconic yellow “radioactive” signs are everywhere. It’s something you really wouldn’t want in your neighborhood.

And it’s scary. What will happen next is not within the realm of accurate prediction, said our guide. We may not even know when whatever is going to happen actually happens. Maybe it already has. And it’s possible that the consequences may not manifest themselves for years.

One thing is certain, though: The world should be watching.

The post STL landfill fire nears collision with radioactive waste: What’s next? appeared first on Occasional Planet.