A bill currently in front of the St. Louis Board of Alderman could prohibit people from giving out bottled water to the homeless in extreme heat and distributing blankets in the bitter cold, the Rev. Larry Rice said at a press conference on Wednesday, July 6 at his shelter, the New Life Evangelistic Center, 1411 Locust St.
If passed, Alderman Jack Coatar’s Board Bill 66 would make do-gooders pay for a vendor’s license if they want to help the homeless.
“We’ve saved many people’s lives by passing out blankets in the winter,” Rice said.
Board Bill 66 proposes to add “dispensing and distributing” to the activities that require a vending license on any public sidewalk, street, park or roadway in St. Louis. It would also limit vending to the hours between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m.
Coatar is currently on vacation and did not respond to The American’s email.
The bill says nothing about feeding the homeless, but Rice and other individuals who help the homeless downtown said they can read between the lines.
“This is targeted against the homeless, clearly,” said Laura Shields, a volunteer with St. Louis Homeless Winter Outreach. “If a person’s on the street, and I have two sandwiches and they want one, why wouldn’t I give them one? It’s decency and common sense. And I will continue to do that.”
She said if it heats up, she will be passing out the bottled water in her trunk. Several leaders – including St. Louis Police Commissioner Sam Dotson recently – have said they are against individuals and religious groups feeding the homeless on the street because it “enables” homelessness.
Sheila Irby, who is currently staying at the center, said that’s not the case. She moved here from Virginia a month ago because she is trying to start over, she said. There, she had a good job as a freelancer in the computer field, but her contract ended and she couldn’t land another gig.
“That’s when the money stopped coming,” she said. “I’m really not trying to stay homeless.”
She chose to stay with Rice because she loves the Christian environment.
“We need those shelters to stay open,” she said.
Rosemary Porter is a volunteer at Rice’s center and is currently living there. She said she is in between jobs and needed a temporary helping hand.
“I don’t think it’s right to charge anybody or harass anyone from helping people,” she said. “If you give someone a sandwich, it’s not going to make them dependent on those sandwiches. Sometimes you just need it to go on.”
Rice said the center’s winter patrols have been helping people survive the cold for 40 years.
“Now the downtown aldermen and downtown St. Louis want to make criminals out of everyone who wants to do good,” he said. “I call it the ‘Anti-Good Samaritan Bill,’ and I’ll have to be arrested again.”
He pointed to the two police cars that are parked every day in the middle of the green space between the downtown library and Soldiers Memorial.
“St. Louis is supposed to be a city that cares,” he said. “It’s just going to give St. Louis another black eye.”
Ballad of a ‘thin’ man
Remember the jeremiad that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch waged against then-County Executive Charlie Dooley based on sourcing no stronger than “swirling whispers” of corruption? To replace Dooley – who insists to this day he was never interviewed by any investigative authority regarding corruption – the Post foisted then-Councilman Steve Stenger on us. In the Post’s endorsement of Stenger over Dooley, its editorial board admitted that Stenger’s public record was “thin,” an admission that they really had no reason to expect good – or ill – from the attorney and accountant from South County.
Well, Stenger’s public record is thickening. And the whispers are more than whispers. And they are more than swirling. And the sources are not anonymous.
“County Executive Steve Stenger’s campaign has received $130,000 from the developers of the old Northwest Plaza site where Stenger wants to move some county offices, including the St. Louis County Election Board, that would result in a contract with St. Louis County said to be worth $40 million to $50 million for the developers,” local gadfly Tom Sullivan noted.
“News stories have put the campaign contributions at lesser amounts as only more current contributions were included or contributions from all the developer corporations were not included. An editorial in the Post-Dispatch puts the amount at $75,000.”
The Post has indeed turned on its “thin” man. Even Tony Messenger, who served on the editorial board that sold Stenger to the public, wrote a scathing column about Stenger’s campaign contributors, David and Robert Glarner, landing this windfall.
The contributions to Stenger’s campaign committee, Citizens for Steve Stenger, were made by Givco LLC and Mallard LLC, both organized by the Glarner brothers, Sullivan noted.
Sullivan first raised questions at a County Council meeting last year about the first contribution of $25,000 from Givco LLC to Stenger’s campaign. The contribution was made on July 31, 2015 though the limited liability corporation was just formed a few weeks earlier on July 13. “Efforts were made to cover up who the contribution was from,” Sullivan claimed. “The address for the corporation is a post office box, and the agent for the corporation is a third-party service, so it wasn’t known who was behind the contribution – and Stenger refused to say.”
When Messenger wrote his column, Stenger disclosed who the contributors were. He said the Glarners were “friends of his.”
“When Mr. Stenger was running for county executive he made a big to do about some county contracts in the Dooley administration,” Sullivan told the St. Louis County Council, which is going along with Stenger on this deal. “The FBI was even called in for a contract with the police lab – but no one said it could be costing millions of dollars more. The same cannot be said of the proposed lease at the Crossings at Northwest Plaza. Maybe the FBI should take a look at it also.”
Kander: No. 3 with bullet
Roll Call named Jason Kander, currently serving as Missouri secretary of state, one of the three strongest U.S. Senate challengers this election cycle. He has his eyes set on incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Roy Blunt’s job. “The young Army veteran is the favorite candidate of many Washington Democrats, who credit his strong work ethic and natural political talent with forcing an otherwise uncompetitive race into play,” Roll Call noted. “Kander has already been elected statewide, and he’s moderate enough to contest a Republican-favored seat. He’s also proven a stronger fundraiser after outraising Blunt in the first quarter of this year.”
Confederates and Republicans
It was not widely reported that the U.S. House Republicans used the hubbub of Democratic members of Congress staging a sit-in over gun control to plant the Confederate flag back in federal veterans’ cemeteries.
A measure to restrict the display of the Confederate battle flag in national cemeteries approved by the House in May was pulled from the chamber’s final compromise spending bill.
U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman‘s (D-Calif.) amendment, adopted as part of the House’s version of the 2017 VA spending bill, would have prohibited the large-scale display of the Confederate battle flag in cemeteries run by the Veterans Administration, such as flying the banner over mass graves. It would still have allowed families to still place small flags on individual graves on two days of the year: Memorial Day and Confederate Memorial Day.
U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay (D-Missouri) blasted the GOP for dropping Huffman’s Confederate flag amendment during conference negotiations with the Senate at the same time that U.S. Rep. John Lewis was spearheading the House floor sit-in.
“While my House Democratic colleagues and I were engaged in a historic sit-in to protect the lives of innocent Americans by preventing individuals on the no-fly list from buying guns, and demanding a renewal of the assault weapons ban, House Republicans – in the middle of the night, without debate – revived a symbol of hatred, treason and racial violence that does not belong in a VA cemetery or any other place of honor.”
FIRE and black cops host town hall
F.I.R.E. and the Ethical Society Of Police will host a town hall/community meeting about the issues that plague the St. Louis fire and police departments, including diversity, and what can be done to correct them. “Everyone is welcome,” organizers said. “Come out and be a part of the discussion and solutions. The Town Hall/Community Meeting will be held 6 p.m. Thursday, July 7 at New Northside Conference Center, 5939 Goodfellow.
