☕ Morning fam,
Sorry about yesterday fam. I got a call shortly after my first post. That call turned into a 3+ hour build session. I put out the call and the OGs of St. Louis Hip Hop are responding, these are our sons, daughters, nieces, nephews and lil cousins. Their lives matter. They are not collateral damage.
Nobody is looking out for our young people. No mentoring. No real or longterm investment, Gardner won’t even prosecute their murderers. Just more of the same ole throw money at nonprofits to fund some bs program with most of the money going to overhead and salaries, the program ending when the money runs out. The only diff now is that more black nonprofits are getting in on the grift.
How many times have we seen this? Nonprofits like the Deaconess, the Urban League, BFL, OBS and Hands Up made out like fat cats during Ferguson. No metrics, no bar, no standards. And no accountability. Every “solution” involves funding a nonprofit. This is still happening today with Cure Violence and declaring mission accomplished. Except it’s not.
This call was not the first. There is a leadership void in the region. St. Louis politics is so dysfunctional nothing gets done. Everything is a battle, some things outright war. And no, this isn’t Dem vs Republican or even black vs white as they want you to believe.
This all one party, the Democratic Party. After decades of broken promises and de-investment in black people, communities and businesses, nobody trusts their rhetoric. Nobody is giving them the benefit of the doubt, least of all the mayor who squandered trust when she initially vetoed money going to North St. Louis while supporting the Loop Trolley, downplayed crime and said homicides were down despite media reports showing the same manipulation of the number of homicides we’ve seen from pervious administrations.
And finally, for diluting black political power by embracing Afghanies and Ukrainians at a time the city is no longer majority black and blacks are fleeing in droves. No plan to stop the exodus of black people fleeing the city in droves while welcoming/funding their replacements. And their own.
