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justinspoliticalcorner · 3 months ago

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Umar Lee:

Before Mike Brown

Growing up in North St. Louis County, I remember a vibrant community full of churches, bars, VFW halls, Knights of Columbus, shopping malls, movie theatres, and all of the amenities working, and middle-class post-war Americans desired. To be a kid who loved sports, like me, North County offered Khoury League baseball, JFL football, little league wrestling, boxing gyms, soccer clubs, hockey clubs, basketball leagues, and much more. I played plenty of sports growing up in organized leagues (wrestling, baseball, and football); but I played more with kids in the street. When I wasn’t playing sports, I was listening to Jack Buck and Mike Shannon call Cardinals games on KMOX radio, sneaking up late at night to watch pro wrestling, reading wrestling and boxing magazines in the store because I couldn’t afford to buy them, also reading the St. Louis-based The Sporting News to keep track of stats, admiring the photos and articles in Sports Illustrated, of course reading the sports section in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch daily, and watching whatever sports were aired TV on the weekend for households without cable, topped off by sports news coverage from the likes of Jay Randolph, Ron Jacober, and Art Holliday on Channel 5.

Yet, while all of this was going on, which has left me with a life of fond memories, the North County, and my personal story, isn’t complete without looking at other events. The sports sections of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch discussed Whiteyball, our loss of Big Red football, almost losing the Blues to Canada, and the Steamers; but the news and businesses pages were far bleaker. St. Louis had then, and has now, one of the highest rates of violent crime in America, political dysfunction and corruption, and countless municipal fiefdoms. These pages also contained news of factory closings and job losses. Like Michigan, Pennsylvania, northeast Ohio, and other parts of the Rust Belt; working-class St. Louisans were reeling from job losses. North County was built up and populated by factory workers and those in the building trades, the small houses were built for guys like my dad who left high school and walked right onto an assembly line, and when those factories close, and the builders stop building, the economic conditions that underpin the health of families and communities erode. When Combustion Engineering in North St. Louis laid off my dad, uncle, and other relatives in the 80s, it hit like a micro version of the Great Depression. The saving grace would come years later when my dad joined my grandpa at GM, which had moved from North City to St. Charles County, skipping North County in the process, and my uncle getting rewarded for his service loading dead and wounded American bodies into helicopters in Vietnam by getting hired at the federal records center in Overland.

Beneath the changing economic conditions was the issue that defines St. Louis, and in particular, North County. Race. North County was largely farmland before World War II with a sprinkling of small towns mixed in. Old Town Florissant and Sacred Heart Parish in an example of historic North County which was a community of French and German Catholics who later welcomed and embraced Irish and Italian Catholics. Like south St. Louis City, places like Ferguson and Florissant, bonded together at church, in labor unions, and in neighborhoods. The problem is that these tended to be nearly exclusively white, and as the Black population of North City spilled into North County in large numbers beginning in the 1970s, this began to create tension. As a reference point, my dad graduated from Riverview Gardens in 1970 when the first Black student enrolled, today the school is virtually 100% Black. After splitting with my dad, my mother, who lived in North City and North County with us as small kids, took my biracial younger half-siblings to be raised in the Shaw and Dutchtown neighborhoods of South City, because she deemed the Riverview Gardens schools to be too white and racist. I stayed in Black Jack and then Florissant along with my older sisters, dad, stepmom, and grandparents.

As economic conditions became unstable in North County, white families began moving out to St. Charles County, and Black families began settling in areas that had previously been all-white, the existing white establishment relied on police departments, most of them either all-white or close to it, to act as a buffer zone. This frequently was manifested in traffic stops with places like Jennings being the worst. White residents of North County feared crime rates would soon mirror those in north city, and these fears were only heightened after high-profile crimes such as the 1982 kidnapping and murders of Gary and Donna Decker in Bellefontaine Neighbors, the stabbing death of McCluer North student and football player Dan Mckeon (brother of two professional soccer players) at a 1987 party in Florissant, the rape and murders of the Kerry sisters in 1991 at the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, and the rape and murder of freshman student Christine Smetzer by a fellow student in a McCluer North bathroom in 1995.

Meanwhile, Black families arriving in north county for better schools, safer communities, and more amenities, after generations of legalized housing segregation in St. Louis City and County, often faced the brunt force of aggressive north county policing. Instead of harassing criminals and reducing crime, police departments in north county were often harassing students and law-abiding citizens coming home from work, church, or a night out. Before body cameras and smart phones these police interactions often included profane and racially abusive language and frequently beatings. This created a climate of distrust and anger in the Black community in North County. Crime was going up, but police were harassing law-abiding citizens instead of stopping criminals, and Black residents were also disproportionately victims of crimes that received far less media attention. As the racial composition of North County municipalities changed to majority-Black, voter turnout remained higher among longtime and typically older white residents. This meant that the numerous city halls and police departments in places like Ferguson remained nearly all-white even as whites became a minority in those communities.

In 2014, North County was a powder keg waiting to erupt. All it needed was a spark. That’s why I began writing about north county in my Evening-Whirl column and for the Huffington Post. No one was talking about North County and it was ready to explode. Local media focused on stories about bike lanes, hipster neighborhoods, and business as usual. Months before August 9th, I told Paul Fehler, of the Pruitt-Igoe Myth and political fame, that if there was a riot and civil unrest in St. Louis it would be in North County. A week before August 9th, with future mayoral candidate Cara Spencer watching, I had a heated argument with legislative aide Michael Powers at The Royale because he said I talked about problems in North County too much. Everything in the County is fine, I was told, all focus must be on the city.

Then it happened. Mike Brown Jr., a recent graduate of Normandy High School, walked to an immigrant-owned and ran store with a friend (most such stores in the Black communities of St. Louis are owned by Palestinian Muslims), there was an altercation, but nothing out of the ordinary for a St. Louis hood store, and as he walked through the apartments and onto Canfield at the edge of Ferguson, he met up with Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. The encounter was fatal and almost certainly avoidable. Ferguson immediately handled the situation in a reckless and insensitive manner. Allowing the dead body of Mike Brown to lay in the streets for hours, and bringing out police dogs to intimidate family members, neighbors, friends, and those brought out by social media posts and discussions on Black radio. What happened that day, we’ll probably never know the entire truth. What we do know is what happened on August 9th of 2014 permanently changed St. Louis and America.

My Time in Ferguson

People have to remember that what became known as the Ferguson Uprising was not something that was instigated by academics, leftist political organizations and organizers, out of town celebrity activists, intersectional dogmatists, or people with college degrees. The anger at the death of Mike Brown came from the neighborhood. A neighborhood ranging from lower middle-class to generational poverty. People struggling and hustling just to stay above water. The community came out August 9th, but the uprising began August 10th and that was a day when an older generation of pastors, community leaders, and politicians were largely pushed aside, by a younger generation seeking an immediate redress to their grievances. It was leaderless and often without direction. Purely organic and there was a beautiful sense of community in the early days. Elders such as Anthony Bell attempted to provide direction (Bell setting up voter registration tables); but the situation was too fluid and beyond the capabilities of individual organizers.

[...]

From the beginning, I sought to use whatever platform I had to highlight the history of North County and attempt to tell a story of how we arrived at this moment. Having said that, like everyone else, I was caught up in the drama and passion of the Ferguson moment. I made videos, wrote some articles, cowrote a few pieces with Sarah Kendzior, and appeared on many local, national, and international news outlets (Al Jazeera links aren’t working). I was also arrested twice in Ferguson, threatened with arrest many more times, received numerous and graphic death threats, sparred with police supporters, lost my cool, provoked, was provoked, and finally lost my job and shortly thereafter my apartment (and in the middle of all of this, my grandma died and I was in a messy relationship). If you look at photos I didn't have grey hair before Ferguson. A few months later I was buying Just For Men.

I found a way to piss off police supporters and get under their skin, as did guys like Bassem Masri. In my estimation, the reasons for that are twofold. Firstly, we both grew-up in north county, so many of the people responsible for targeting and doxxing us were those we either grew-up with or went to school with. I saw lifelong friendships created in the Ferguson-Florissant School District end over Facebook posts during the Ferguson Unrest. This was mostly along racial lines. Secondly, unlike most activists, or those you see on Ivy League campuses today, we didn't talk and sound like spoiled brats, smart alecky rich kids who'd have to go to therapy for decades after one physical altercation. We'd been in plenty of fistfights, street brawls, and I'd been shot at and stabbed. Twitter trolls, insults, and radio talkshow hosts like Mark Reardon and Bob Romanik weren't gonna hurt my feelings.

[...]

Trump and The 2020 Sham

For the sake of time, and if anyone is still here, I'll fast forward to 2020. I've already previously stated, and Sarah Kendzior noted this in her book discussing St. Louis, that I believe Ferguson is partially responsible for electing Donald Trump as president. As in 1968, when Richard Nixon promised law and order, I knew conditions were ripe for a populist right-wing politician promising to restore law and order. No one saw COVID-19 coming, the shutdowns, the summer of massive protests after the murder of George Floyd, and the crazy presidential election. Four years later, I think we're still all trying to make sense of it.

While I fully embraced vaccines, and I'm happy I'm vaxxed, and I supported shutdowns at the time, I think it's pretty clear they did more harm than good. Most harmed were our children- particularly poor and working-class kids, who fell behind due to the virtual learning sham, and never caught up. I was at the Dallas campaign event where Biden was endorsed by multiple presidential candidates, thus virtually sealing the nomination. The South Side Ballroom was so packed, that I could barely move or breath, and couldn't get in a position to take a good photo, despite being relatively close to Biden. The next week it was too dangerous to publicly campaign, Biden stayed at home, and we elected an elderly man who was not up to the job but has generally been good in office both for American workers and our international allies. Mainstream media, so eager to defeat Trump, played along. Oh, the viable Democratic alternative was another elderly gentleman who honeymooned in the Soviet Union. It was not a year of good choices, but Biden was the best in my estimation.

[...]

The Aftermath: Where We Stand

Where are we today? A decade later, are we in a better place? North County is still in a state of serious decline and seems to be getting worse each year, North City is doing even worse, the population of both St. Louis City and County is declining, and many are opting for more prosperous communities, most notably Texas and Georgia suburbs (both reddish states). Violent crime spiked for a period, the decline in traffic enforcement has made driving and walking our streets far less safe and often deadly, and area police have essentially stopped policing. They don't want to be stars in a viral video or become a hashtag. For many cops, if they couldn't do things the old school way, they aren’t gonna do it at all. This has made our communities more dangerous, less livable for the most vulnerable, and places few people want to live in. This is a negative consequence from the lack of a strategic plan after Ferguson and failures on both the parts of law-enforcement and the community to hear one another.

The good news is that St. Louis now has better prosecutors (Wesley Bell and Gabe Gore) who are committed to public safety, holding those accountable who harm our community, and enacting diversion programs and other positive post-Ferguson reforms. St. Louis has a mayor in Tishaura Jones who wasn't created in a lab by white progressives; but is a genuine leader, reared and educated locally. Without Ferguson, I'm doubtful Mayor Jones would've been elected, nor a new generation of leaders such as Adam Layne and Marty Murray.

So, it must be recognized, that while there have been some unintended negative consequences from Ferguson, there are also positive developments. These aren't just political. What inspires me isn't politics. I'm inspired by faith leaders in our community who took the Ferguson moment and began having serious conversations with their congregations. Fathers and mothers who began having difficult conversations at home with their sons and daughters. Teachers who began listening to their students. Old classmates who reached out to one another to have a beer and talk across the racial divide. Our increased racially diverse families and suburbs who are defying our political discourse on both sides as progressives have adopted a rigid and dogmatic Race Science and MAGA is doubling down on Nativism and Majoritarian racial grievances. By our faithful and intact immigrant families providing needed life to a region desperately in need.

@Umar Lee wrote a solid perspective on the 10-year anniversary of the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson and North County from a North County POV. #Ferguson

Read the full story at Umar Lee's Substack.

#Ferguson #Ferguson Uprising #Ferguson Protests #Ferguson Missouri #Mike Brown #Darren Wilson #Murder of Mike Brown #St. Louis County Missouri #Missouri #Black Lives Matter #Umar Lee

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