We are the ones ... there is no one else
Our national leaders are ill-equipped to deal with the crises we are in and the crises in our future. But we are. Because we have each other.
One week ago, tornadoes tore through St. Louis, Missouri … the city I called home for 20 years.
Homes less than a mile from where my children grew up and went to school had their roofs ripped off. Five people were killed. As disaster and tragedy always does, economic and racial inequities that the powerful try to hide were laid bare.
I want to amplify two voices who have written eloquently about the aftermath.
The first is Brittany Ferrell Young, former Ferguson activist, current nurse and filmmaker, who posted this on social media:
An EF3 tornado struck St. Louis last Friday, carving a 20-mile path of devastation. Homes and destroyed and five lives were lost. Tornado sirens never went off—a failure that may have made the difference between life and death. In the aftermath, the newly elected mayor publicly blamed the previous administration, then appeared on television in tears—tears that felt more performative than sincere to many still reeling from the loss.
Now, five families are left to grieve loved ones who should still be with them.
The second is Kris Kleindienst, owner of Left Bank Books, whom I talked about in this post “Sometimes Being You is the Revolution”
Hurricane Katrina is my ground zero for federal response to a natural disaster.
Images of people navigating flooded neighborhoods on pieces of debris. Anderson Cooper standing in floodwater looking bewildered at why there was no evidence of FEMA when his crew could clearly manage. These images are seared in my memory.
Today marks one week since the tornado devastated a huge swath of St. Louis.
It took FEMA one week to figure out that there were 15,000 people stranded in the Dome in New Orleans without food or water. (Apparently they didn't watch CNN)
If I have this correctly, FEMA has just arrived in STL. To assess our needs.
(apparently they are not on Facebook)
Once they make a determination of our needs, they will assign us an official status.
Then they will wait for our governor to ask for assistance.
And then our usurper in chief will toy with allowing that assistance.
According to Congressman Wesley Bell, that is.
So we are behind even the FEMA timeline that was well documented as a failure years ago in New Orleans.
I don't think this system was designed by women.
Huge shout out to Kayla M Reed, Actionstl.org/tornado, World Central Kitchen, and so many more, for the fantastic grass roots response to the immediate basic and obvious needs of the people.
St. Louis has showed up and showed out for its people in what should be a no-brainer at any level of government.
Even folks in more affluent areas who have lost windows, roofs, cars, power, have been generous with their support for those with little to no means.
We are nothing if not resilient.
My thoughts simultaneously turn to the long challenge of rebuilding northside communities that have already suffered decades of systematic disinvestment.
Because decisions made now will affect what that rebuilding looks like. Who it is for and who actually benefits. (trigger warning: developers whose only stake is profit)
Before the tornado, I was reading a PhD thesis about The St. Louis Model Cities Agency of the late 60s early 70s. It was a part of Pres. Johnson's program to address the racist policies in the country's urban areas as a response to the Civil Rights movement. It emphasized that residents should have significant control in what urban renewal projects looked like in their neighborhoods.
St. Louis, says this thesis, had the one of the best, most resident-led proposals in the country. It was detailed and doable.It was the result of brilliant and dedicated community organizing.
It would have significantly addressed poverty and racism, blight, and disinvestment. It was both visionary and realizable within the scope of what the Federal Model Cities Act offered. Even Cervantes supported it.
It could have marked a sea change in our city's downward spiral.
Nixon derailed and defunded it, and took away any semblence of resident participation. What was left were remnants of envisioned projects. Direction for redevelopment was ceded to white developers with no vision save profits.
I see a direct thruline from this to the situation of Bob Clarke and Paul Mckee and others sitting on vast swaths of neighborhoods that got taken by local agencies over time and handed out to developers to be redeveloped as a convention center and businesses and retail that would serve tourists and wealthier folk.
While Black St. Louis got crumbs. Redlining continued. Basic taxpayer services selectively deployed. Residents' health declining in the wake of toxic waste left behind by industrial development that abandoned the area.
We have a great opportunity in the aftermath of this week's tragedy to envision and empower the people to rebuild St. Louis . There is precedent and possibility in the example of the St. Louis Model City's unrealized example.
The model for real community empowerment exists. It is fiscally sound and morally correct.
Power to the people. Nothing about us without us.
These are not merely slogans but roadmaps to a way to truly realize our city's greatest resource: its people. ALL of its people. And those people are currently fighting to access basic needs right now. They are doing so heroically. They are intelligent and strong. They ARE St. Louis.
They should be in the room and at the table when the reconstruction begins. Not only handing out tarps. It would be an unconscionable waste of talent and drive not to take advantage of the folks who make St. Louis great.
I put this out here to our elected officials who, while they have laudably rolled up their shirt sleeves and seen to immediate services, are also tasked with this long term challenge. It is my hope they will see this opportunity to do something radically right.
But first, why isn't FEMA showing up w trailers and services?
This is the future. Our government — which has never been “liberty and justice for ALL” has functionally eliminated "provide for the general welfare" from the constitution (which should have us thinking about a tax revolt, btw ... more on that later).
That said ... the future is what it has always been ... the power is the people. The power is community coming together. In St. Louis, that looks like Kayla M Reed, Action St. Louis ... and a former mayor in Tishaura O. Jones who is rolling up her sleeves and doing more (as she did in office) than the elected mayor.
On August 9, 1956 -- 58 years to the day before Michael Brown was murdered in the streets of Ferguson by the police - 40,000 women and children presented themselves in bodily protest against the “dompass” (a government-issued document required by all adult Black South Africans over the age of 16) in the capital of apartheid.
On August 9, 1978, June Jordan, an activist, poet, writer, and teacher, as well as a prominent figure in the civil rights, feminist, antiwar, and LGBTQ movements of the twentieth century, presented this poem at the United Nations:
Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands
by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land
into new dust that
rising like a marvelous pollen will be
fertile
even as the first woman whispering
imagination to the trees around her made
for righteous fruit
from such deliberate defense of life
as no other still
will claim inferior to any other safety
in the world
The whispers too they
intimate to the inmost ear of every spirit
now aroused they
carousing in ferocious affirmation
of all peaceable and loving amplitude
sound a certainly unbounded heat
from a baptismal smoke where yes
there will be fire
And the babies cease alarm as mothers
raising arms
and heart high as the stars so far unseen
nevertheless hurl into the universe
a moving force
irreversible as light years
traveling to the open
eye
And who will join this standing up
and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea
we are the ones we have been waiting for
(Read this great article about June Jordan in the series “Famous Bisexuals”)
We have heard these words on the lips of politicians looking for our votes … and although I still believe in political organizing and am grateful for those who are committed to working through the system (which is why I’m leaning hard to elect Deja Foxx to Congress in Arizona) … I am no longer depending on the government to help and instead will be gratefully surprised if they do.
This isn’t about Democrat or Republican … this is about a system that is so broken that it is nearly impossible for people who actually care about the people to survive much less thrive … ask Cori Bush, ask Tishaura Jones.
And … I am not afraid. I am energized.
Our national leaders are ill-equipped to deal with the crises we are in and the crises in our future.
But we are.
Because we have each other.
Brittany, Alex Templeton, Kayla Reed and others taught me the mantra:
Family. Solidarity. Love.
We have each other.
We will lean into each other.
We will love each other.
We will never abandon each other.
We will not let any government or institution prevent us from doing what we know is best for each other.
And together, we will heal.
Together, we will win.
Donate to Action St. Louis tornado response by clicking here -