Elections matter. This is something that I have spent countless hours trying to explain to young people, poor people, angry people, disenfranchised people, black people, white people and people who are just generally disgusted with how things are in our city, state, country and world. Elections matter.
Every fourth March for the last 16 years, our city – despite having a majority African-American population and despite suffering from high rates of poverty, crime, unemployment and vacancy – has elected a mayor who has all but ignored all of the issues that those qualities would suggest are significant to our city. During each those elections, most voters – black and white – stayed home and did not participate.
Over the last 16 years, almost 80,000 more people have left the City of St. Louis, dropping us to a population of just around 315,000 people. Vacant buildings stand where families used to live. Gunshots can regularly be heard where church bells once rang.
But some neighborhoods have prospered. The current mayor made clear that his priority was investing in the central corridor. Leaders from those handful of wards have benefited from this imbalance. With the help of large public subsidies, condos went up, and new businesses and attractions opened. And never a word came from the mouths of those benefiting from a city strategy that favored the wealthy over the poor, even as statistics clearly show the strategy failing us a city.
Violent crime stats climbed. Population continued to decline on both sides of Delmar. And not a peep about the injustice or unfairness of the strategy, or even a dispassionate observation that the strategy has simply failed.
In my time as a public servant, I have often found myself standing alone. I was one of the few voices speaking out against what Paul McKee Jr. was doing to neighborhoods in North St. Louis. I was one of the few voices speaking out against Mayor Slay and Chief Dotson’s “hot spot” policing strategy. I was one of the few officials at the epicenter of the unrest following police shootings in St. Louis County and St. Louis in 2014 and 2015. When others are silent, I speak up. When others talk, I try to get things done.
We now find ourselves approaching yet another March election. Much is being made about the number of African-American candidates running. But, frankly, I don’t worry about the number of black candidates. I worry about the number of black voters.
If we have another election in which nearly 8 out of every 10 black voters stay home and do nothing, then our city will continue to suffer. If we continue to allow the wants of the few to be satisfied before the needs of the many, then our city will continue to suffer.
But if we all do our parts, if we show up like this election actually mattered (which it does), then we will finally win. Our issues will finally be heard. Our neighborhoods will finally be seen and no longer ignored. And if you elect me as your mayor, I promise to continue fighting for you and never to be silent about the issues that matter most to our city.
Antonio French, 21st Ward alderman, is a Democratic candidate for mayor in the March 7 primary election.
