But Shahid shouts on for diversity
By Alvin A. Reid Of the St. Louis American
Activist Anthony Shahid led a boisterous protest outside America’s Center on Monday based on concerns that the St. Louis Visitor’s Convention Center does not hire enough African-American workers.
In a June 12 letter to CVC President Kitty Ratcliffe, Shahid called on the CVC to “level the playing field to avoid a mass boycott of (America’s Center), which would deter would-be convention vendors, participants and contractors from doing business with the City of St. Louis.”
The protest was staged during the National Baptist Congress 102nd Congress of Christian Education, which attracted more than 35,000 visitors this week.
A source close to negotiations between Shahid and Ratcliffe said the protest stems from a pair of dissatisfied Teamsters who were not hired to work during the National Rifle Association convention in St. Louis earlier this year.
Shahid said in a correspondence to the CVC that “the workers requested my participation in helping them achieve economic parity.”
Shahid, president of the Tauheed Youth Group, claims there are 60 decorator jobs at the facility, with only one being black, and 36 union positions with one African-American employee.
Ratcliffe said the CVC does not control the staff whom conventions or shows hire to work their events.
“The decorators, Teamsters and other trades-union members who work for the shows in the Convention Center are not our employees,” she said in a statement to the American.
“Our union employees are primarily housekeepers and trades who do facility maintenance. In our continuing labor negotiations with those labor unions, we have made it clear that they, too, must make every effort to offer opportunities for employment, training and advancement for minorities of the community.”
According to Ratcliffe, the “visitor business” in St. Louis employs about 74,000 people – ranging from hotel general managers to taxicab mechanics.
“That hospitality workforce is more racially and economically diverse than most other industries,” she said.
“Those 74,000 paychecks pay rents, mortgages, grocery tabs, and tuition bills throughout the region, including in its most challenged neighborhoods.”
America’s Center itself directly employs 89 people, and the Convention & Visitors Commission’s total includes that number in its 159 employees.
“Although not a City agency, the CVC adheres to the Mayor’s Executive Order on inclusion in contracts because it is the right thing to do,” Ratcliffe said.
The CVC also has programs for workforce development in the minority community, including bringing disadvantaged youth to work for the CVC during the summer months through the Mayor’s SLATE program, and providing scholarships for minorities in travel and tourism hospitality programs. The CVC also has a Multi-Cultural Committee “to help make the experience of St. Louis as friendly as possible for visitors of all races.”
Ratcliffe said she had met personally with Shahid before Monday’s protest.
“They are not doing us right,” Shahid shouted Monday, as some convention-goers stopped briefly to watch.
About 80 people, most of them youths, stood with several white coffins. Some wore funeral badges; others had on sheets and held up fists covered in black gloves.
Several African-American passersby questioned Shahid’s language, which included many racial epithets, during the protest.
“How does it help his cause to call people names and cuss?” a woman attending the convention from Memphis asked a friend from St. Louis.
“I don’t know,” her friend said. “This is just St. Louis.”
