As this country continues to experience a crisis in affordable housing and homelessness the Trump Administration’s release of its proposal to reform housing finance falls short of many of the important principles outlined by the Democratic Caucus for fair, balanced, and comprehensive housing…
President Trump is conducting his trade war with China as if it were a zero-sum game, but it's not. It's a negative-sum game. Both sides lose.
Most consumers would likely agree that consumers should get what they pay for. If a product or service fails to deliver its promises, refunds are in order. That thinking guided the Obama Administration’s decision to address false promises made to student loan borrowers.
One group, a group with the most power to compel compliance, seems almost exempt for discussion of sexual abuse of women and almost exempt from full prosecution: police officers.
“The biggest movement and shift that we’ve seen in this culture is simply because of the victims. When victims and survivors are coming to the legislative bodies and they’re telling their stories and they’re appealing, we’ve seen movement,” said U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Georgia), mother of 1…
On a 2017 segment of “On Being with Krista Tippett,” civil rights icon and mentor to many Ruby Sales recounts the moment she learned to look beyond physical devastation and ask a deeper question that, when answered, has the ability to cut to the source of brokenness and pain: Where does it hurt?
I was born on January 31, 1983 in St. Louis to a single mom. My father was away, giving his mother, Arnita Pitts, sole responsibility of making sure my siblings and I knew the importance of discipline and education.
Officials hosting the St. Louis Crime Summit for the St. Louis region on Tuesday, September 10 did not include any elected prosecutors. Despite the overwhelming message sent by St. Louis city and county voters through the election of Wesley Bell and me as top prosecutors, neither of us was i…
A community report-back on the Cure Violence assessment of St. Louis will be held 6 p.m. Thursday, September 12 at the Deaconess Center for Child Well-Being, 1000 N. Vandeventer Ave., sponsored by the Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression.
For the past 12 years, it has been my honor to serve on the St. Louis County Library District Board of Trustees with pride and diligence. I have witnessed the library grow to become the busiest public library in Missouri and be recognized locally and nationally for its innovative programming…
The El Paso and Dayton massacres brought the total of mass shootings in the U.S. since January to 253, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The archive tracks mass shootings of incidents involving at least four people being shot. My reaction to the wails of grief and desperation is we know…
Our region recently recognized the 5th year anniversary of Michael Brown’s killing and the subsequent turmoil that placed the St. Louis region at the epicenter of chaos and disorder.
Recently, Bill McClellan penned a column about me titled “The Shadow Mayor of St. Louis strikes again.” The longtime Post-Dispatch columnist was referring to an op-ed I wrote here in The St. Louis American last week.
This week, a student told one of our social workers, “I just lost my brother, and now I lost my best friend. I can’t take this … anymore.”
On Sunday, October 4, 1992, when I was 16 years old, my brother Charles was murdered around the corner from my grandparents’ house. He was visiting one of his elementary school classmates. Two young men, motivated by beef with his classmate’s elder brother, entered the home and shot everyone…
As a mother, an elected official, and a St. Louisan, I am deeply saddened by the recent deaths of several children in our community.
Like many St. Louisans, I vigorously applauded Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner's efforts and actions to develop, fund, and staff a Conviction Integrity Unit. This unit was a crucial step in a much-needed healing and restorative belief in the St. Louis criminal justice system. Its agenda en…
The community is once again in shock and mourning for the senseless murder of another innocent child, a young girl, which brought the number of victims to 12 this year alone. She had recently attended our back-to-school fair. We hardly have the time to mourn one young life lost when another …
Is it my imagination, or is President Trump's chronic and debilitating case of Obama Envy getting worse?
I was disheartened to learn of yet another death of a black child due to gun violence. Though I did not personally know eight-year-old Jurnee Thompson, who was one of the latest victims, her senseless demise touched me deeply.
Missourians deserve a level playing field when it comes to the taxes they pay. They’re rightly upset by the thought that the system is being rigged in someone else’s favor.
Over the many number of years that I have lived in North St. Louis I can't recall seeing such a rapid decline and deterioration of neighborhoods as currently exists in Baden. The area has been neglected for far too long by the city government for any type of meaningful economic development a…
For payday loan borrowers and consumer and civil rights activists, this August 19 was supposed to be the end of payday lending’s nearly inevitable debt trap.
It is time for the mayor of St. Louis to engage in collaboration and create a constructive environment that benefits the working families who deserve to be able to count on reliable delivery of city services, safer streets and improving neighborhoods.
WASHINGTON -- Uh-oh. President Trump is in such a state of panic about his dimming reelection prospects that he's getting his lies mixed up and occasionally blurting out the truth.
A shooting rampage in El Paso, Texas on August 3 took the lives of 22 people and seriously injured more than two dozen others. Reportedly, the alleged shooter wanted to kill as many Mexicans as he could. Armed with safety glasses, ear coverings and an assault-style rifle, the shooter entered…
As a former Ferguson Council member, I attended most of the quarterly status hearings on the consent decree with the Department of Justice (DOJ) from the start. I clearly remember several hearings in which Judge Catherine Perry, the DOJ and the monitor said Ferguson seems to be working in go…
It is not just his stoking of white supremacist sentiment that makes Donald Trump such a dangerously unfit president. It's also the corruption, the weakness, the ignorance, the incompetence and the stunning lack of empathy – all of which we just saw on grotesque display.
The erratic Trump administration has had just one consistent policy principle, one guiding North Star: punitive and often sadistic treatment of nonwhite immigrants.
As a former Ferguson Council member, I attended most of the quarterly status hearings on the consent decree with the Department of Justice (DOJ) from the start. I clearly remember several hearings in which Judge Catherine Perry, the DOJ and the monitor said Ferguson seems to be working in go…
On August 9, 2014 lives were changed forever. From the loss of life from Michael Brown to the multitudes of lives that were affected in the St. Louis region and around the world, Ferguson (and Civil Rights) would never be viewed in the same light. In the months and years that followed, we al…
Earlier this year, I began the hashtag #FergusonFiveYearsLater to honor the upcoming anniversary of the Ferguson Uprising and to acknowledge the fact that five years later so much has changed and so much has stayed the same.
If the United States was the country we pretend it to be, there would be no angst over the 2020 Presidential Election, because if the United States was that country, Donald Trump wouldn’t be president, because as the cliché goes, “we’re better than that.” The reality is Donald Trump is the p…
Like a diamond formed by the weight of the Earth, I feel an immense pressure to perform as a student, a son, a father, a husband-to-be, and a young black man. The pressure of these roles could make or break a man and reveal to the world his true character – especially during the most despera…
I recently viewed the site at 4521 Natural Bridge, now a vacant lot that was once Archway Recording Studio and the residence of the late Oliver Sain. I was saddened and depressed. St. Louis and the world lost a place that created and housed music and fine art.
Every moment Secretary John R. Ashcroft fails to do his job by not issuing language for the citizen’s veto of Missouri’s abortion ban is a direct insult to Missourians’ constitutional rights. Secretary Ashcroft is playing a dangerous game with Missouri voters by denying the people their righ…
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party may not have pulled the triggers, but they still bear some responsibility for the weekend's atrocities. The only way to keep military-style weapons of war out of the clutches of would-be mass killers is to take away McConnell's …
Public transit goes well beyond the ride. It provides accessibility to jobs, education and healthcare. It promotes social equality. It positions the region for growth. It promises economic return.
The St. Louis County NAACP calls on President Donald Trump to immediately stop his racist, xenophobic attacks on four United States congresswomen in particular and immigrants in general. His words have been dangerous, inflammatory, and beneath the dignity of the occupant of the Oval Office. …
With over 200 years of a constitutionally framed democracy, America is now facing a test that will surely determine not only its destiny, but the destiny of the entire free world.
As a black man, I felt significant pressure to succeed from my culture but lacked the support, tools and resources needed to help guide me on the road to achievement I so desperately wanted to reach.
The honeymoon has officially ended for East St. Louis Mayor Robert Eastern III. After winning the thankless job by a landslide, the harder task of sailing the leaky ship of city government has finally set in.
When the racist chant began on July night – "Send her back! Send her back!" – President Trump paused to let the white-supremacist anger he had stoked wash over him. George Wallace would have been so proud.
In “I Am Not Your Negro,” the Oscar-nominated documentary by filmmaker Raoul Peck about the work of the late James Baldwin, Baldwin makes the this observation: “What white people have to do is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place, beca…
It’s a rainy Wednesday afternoon, and the thunder, lightning and downpour are no match for the steady hum of sewing machines and cacophony of conversations filling the room at the Sankofa Cultural and Art Wellness Village.
One of my favorite works of Professor Wole Soyinka’s is “Telephone Conversation,” a poem written more than 50 years ago while he was a student in London. “Telephone conversation” is a hilarious take on a very serious subject of racism encountered by African students from prospective landlord…
It's true I’m leaving the city.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi believes opening an impeachment inquiry into President Trump's misdeeds would be risky. She needs to realize that not doing so is beginning to look riskier.
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