Smokescreen: How St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones has Been Shielded by Activists Amid Jail Controversy
Part I
Part I of ‘Smokescreen: How St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones Has Been Shielded by Activists Amidst Jail Controversy’ discusses Mayor Jones’s recent dismissal of the increasingly unpopular City Justice Center (CJC) jail commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah as politically expedient decision to lend legitimacy to her ahead of bid for re-election in 2025. The author discusses how from the very beginning of her term, Mayor Jones, with the support of jail reform activists, have strategically moved to quell the self-emancipating activity of detainees at the CJC with false and broken promises of jail reform while matters continue to deteriorate with very little criticism being aimed at the mayor. Broader context to Mayor Jones’s election to office as an attempt at reconversion of St. Louis following the Ferguson rebellion where many residents in both St. Louis city and county were in search of a new beginning, but were deceived by the slogan of Black Lives Matter that was ultimately used to advance the false idea of electing more Black politicians would offer redress of the affliction that ordinary people, like detainees in the jails and their families, were in search of. It is clear from the increasing body count at the CJC and Mayor Jones’s evasion of responsibility for these deaths, what Black Lives don’t matter to her administration.
The era of Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah at the helm of the St. Louis City jail also known, ironically, as the City Justice Center (CJC), has come to an end. Despite this, the person who appointed her, Mayor Tishaura Jones, continues to manage to avoid any calls for her resignation or any serious blowback. Far more than we realize, what continues to be at stake, is not merely the failing attempt to bring justice to St. Louis jails. But the tottering reconversion of St. Louis, as personified by Mayor Jones, back to legitimacy since the Ferguson Rebellion. How could such a ruling class project not remain unsteady while paid and fake activists, still raising the banner “Black Lives Matter,” keep running interference for the government led by people of color above society who conquer and kill our people in city jails?
It was announced by an emissary of Mayor Jones, that Clemons-Abdullah’s “employment was separated effective immediately” on Saturday, December 21, 2024. In response to Clemons-Abdullah’s removal being made public, some have begun to breathe a sigh of relief as if all the troubles at the jail, originated with the former jail commissioner, and are now behind us. Given the tumultuous nature of her nearly three-year tenure, she should catch flak. While she is no sympathetic figure, many of Clemons-Abdullah’s critics, which include activists who have coalesced around Mayor Jones’ government, elected officials, both local and national (Cori Bush), and members of Mayor Jones’ Detention Facility Oversight Board (DFOB), have repeatedly called for her ouster regarding the ongoing barbarism at the jail. Peculiarly, very little derision has been directed toward Mayor Jones. Isn’t the absence of a public outcry for Mayor Jones’ resignation, since Clemons-Adullah was her appointee, answered directly to, and was repeatedly affirmed by Mayor Jones, strange? Was not every evasion, misstep, and stifling of transparency at the jail by Clemons-Abdullah done on the watch of, and with at least indirect approval of, Mayor Jones who has never come forward to take any responsibility for the perennial issues at the jail? If Clemons-Abdullah must go, Mayor Tishaura Jones should go with her. Anything less than Mayor Jones’ resignation would allow her to claim a false victory and evade accountability for the failures at the jail which she promised to fix during her campaign for mayor.
The throwing of Clemons-Abdullah under the bus, and activists’ failure to confront Mayor Jones regarding jail issues, is a smokescreen designed to shield the mayor from any responsibility for the mayhem at the CJC. Clemons-Abdullah’s firing is nothing more than a politically expedient maneuver that aids Mayor Jones in salvaging her political legitimacy as she faces re-election in 2025. More importantly, in the aftermath of the apex of “Black Lives Matter” rhetoric, a proper reconsideration of the “Clemons-Abdullah affair” allows us to discover how fake activists for the government do their work. We can see how coalitions are built to defend the political lives of African Americans above society, such as Mayor Jones, while the lives of those who toil, and are dispossessed, are discarded.
How Did We Get Here? We’re Not Supposed to be Here.
In 2021, while running for mayor, then City Treasurer Tishaura Jones ran on a platform to “decarcerate St. Louis” and was very vocal regarding unrest at the jail that occurred at the tail-end of former Mayor Lyda Krewson’s tenure. What she meant by “decarcerate” is not clear. Like many politicians after the George Floyd rebellions that swept across the country, Mayor Jones toyed with the ideas of “decarceration” and “defunding”. However, the last time I checked, the mayor of any city is the highest-ranking official of the municipalities’ police state. A part of that role is overseeing the conquering and incarceration of those accused of crimes, even before they have been proven guilty by the state. These are the types of rhetorical games that liberals and progressives play hoping that everyone is asleep. But the ordinary people of St. Louis are not asleep, and they see through the smoke and mirrors of Mayor Jones’ rhetoric, compared to her track record.
Prior to taking office Mayor-elect Jones made public statements about how the problems at the jail reflected failed leadership, and how it was leaving a mess for her administration to clean up. Well, since September 2022, Mayor Tishaura Jones has had an opportunity to “field” a team of “leaders” and it appears the mess has expanded, not retracted. Mayor Jones selected Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah to oversee her projected “clean up” of the St. Louis City jail. Clemons-Abdullah’s entire tenure has been marred by disaster after disaster. The best that Mayor Jones has been able to offer is excuses, empty promises, and evasions of responsibility for the continuous downward trajectory at the jail.
When Clemons-Abdullah was tapped to be St. Louis city jail commissioner, her 30 years of experience in corrections was touted as being essential in helping correct the course of the jail. Unfortunately, many of the tactics used by the prior administration, under Mayor Lyda Krewson, to conquer and suppress detainees’ revolt against savage conditions at the jail remained after Clemons-Abdullah’s appointment.
Detainees are still revolting against the normative use of pepper spray, poor food, constant lockdowns, and water shutoffs among other inhumane conditions. Mayor Jones’ regime has added to the bevy of atrocities at the jail, a steady stream of detainee deaths over a two-year period that no one, including Clemons-Abdullah or Mayor Jones have taken responsibility for. The normal chorus of Mayor Jones’ administration concerning the CJC has been to explain, evade, and rationalize. And yet, all Mayor Jones has done and continues to do is pose for photo ops and sweat.
Activists with the ‘Close the Workhouse’ Campaign and Mayor Jones: Natural Allies or Strange Bedfellows?
During her campaign for mayor, Mayor Jones promised to close the Medium Security Institution, infamously known as the “Workhouse” within the first 100 days in office. Mayor Jones was sworn into office in April 2021. The Workhouse was not closed until the summer of 2022, well beyond the mayor’s 100-day promise. The mayor never came forward to explain the delay in closing the Workhouse. Instead, she ordered a rebranding of the Workhouse as the City Justice Center-Annex. These type of sleight-of-hand tactics insult the intelligence of ordinary St. Louisans and expose Mayor Jones as a person of wily character.
Between Mayor Krewson stepping down and Mayor Jones’s taking office and discontinuation of the use of the Workhouse as a detention facility, the Workhouse was used as an overflow facility for the Justice Center, and at one point a facility to house female detainees exclusively. With Mayor Jones coming to power under the slogan ‘Listen to Black Women,’ there was no women’s solidarity and empowerment flowing from her administration toward precarious lives from the very beginning. There were never any protests or calls for the mayor’s resignation regarding her administration’s continued use of the Workhouse and detention facility for St. Louis detainees. In fact, it appears that many activists have never rescinded their support for the administration of Mayor Jones despite their claims to be self-styled abolitionists.
The Super Friends Tour of the Workhouse
Some activists united around Mayor Jones because of her verbal commitment to close the Workhouse within her first 100 days in office and this coalition has not ceased amid the ongoing problems at the CJC. To get as much mileage out of this campaign pronouncement, one of her first photo ops was to visit the Workhouse. Her, then Circuit Attorney, Kim Gardner, and Congresswoman Corie Bush united as a ‘Black girl magic trio’ and made a Super Friends tour of the Workhouse. Activists who got out the vote for her, behind the treacherous and degrading slogan, “Black votes matter,” were present. The slogan was deceitful for it pretended to offer empowerment to those who only would be kept in subjugation. During this tour, Mayor Jones made a big show of the plight of the detainees at the Workhouse and told them lies about how she wanted to get them home when she knew she had no power over such things as a member of the Executive Branch of the municipal government. Did Mayor Jones miss one too many civic lessons about the ‘separation of powers’ within hierarchical representative government? Or was this another one of her Black girl magic fairy tales spun to pacify detainees at that facility and quell the unrest that had been raging at the CJC?
The Context of the Super Friends Tour
It is vital to note the timing of the Super Friends tour. The production took place a little over two weeks after detainees at the St. Louis City Justice Center staged an insurrection on the morning of Easter Sunday 2021. Agents of repression in municipal government and overseers at the jail believed their methods successful, that the suppression of detainee’s self-emancipating spirit had been stamped out. Could Mayor Jones not have realized that detainees’ swapping of their “grave clothes” for the fresh white garments of resurrection posed a threat to her newly minted government’s legitimacy? Having been sworn into office and officially assumed her duties as mayor, could she not be aware that many of the detainees at the Workhouse had been transferred from the CJC as a means of punishment for participating in the insurrection against hellish conditions there? Indeed, the ‘musical jails’ game has been a real predicament for those detained. But it also has been an imbroglio, a predicament hanging over Mayor Jones’ very legitimacy as a public figure.
The Super Friends production was staged to pacify detainees, give them the false hope that a new day was afoot, and to give Mayor Jones a photo op to pose as ‘a friend’ of those who had been trampled on in both jails. Whether those detained awaiting trial realized it or not, the use of activists was strategic to provide Mayor Jones a respite that was needed for her to pivot and spin her narrative of being a friend of the condemned. Nevertheless, the age-old trope of the lion and the lamb lying down together is a fairy tale. The continued barbarity at the CJC and the failure of Mayor Jones to keep her campaign promise of closing the Workhouse within 100 days should serve as proof of this. I know some will say that the only thing that matters is that the Workhouse is now closed. Only a charlatan or a fool would believe such nonsense while observing the same abuses, that were occurring at the Workhouse, now occurring at the CJC under Mayor Jones’ administration.
Stream of Deaths at the CJC
There have been twelve deaths at the CJC since 2022. These deaths occurred on the watch of Mayor Jones. However, it is not readily clear how many of these deaths occurred after Mayor Jones appointed Clemons-Abdullah as jail commissioner. Either way, Mayor Jones is responsible for them because they occurred under her administration, and under the direct watch of her subordinate who answered directly to her. Despite this reality, Clemons-Abdullah has been left to bear the burden of detainees’ deaths after it was Mayor Jones who made the grand pronouncement about “decarcerating” St. Louis and false promises to detainees about getting them home shortly after her election. It is remarkable how deaths can be covered up with professional and administrative language. And yet while the bodies pile up, social death characterizes what too many of us believe is activism and progressive government. The character of what poses as Black leadership and city leadership is demented today.
The deaths of detainees were met with calls for Clemons-Abdullah to step down as commissioner of the CJC. Activists and even some officials in municipal government have stated that not one inmate should die in custody. Professionals and those with formal education often assert that the state possesses or embodies “humanity” — that is, fairness, compassion, or ethical behavior — despite the state’s inherent role in wielding power, coercion, and control. The issue of people dying in jail is a much more nuanced problem than is many times projected. When people are charged with crimes, and arrested, and it is determined by prosecutors and judges that they should remain in custody until the resolution of their charges, no one really knows the depth of the detained population’s health problems. Some people are young and are in the best of health. Some are young and deal with dire and chronic health (physical and mental) conditions that many would be surprised to learn about. The same goes for those taken into custody who are older.
Jail officials are not the only layer involved and therefore responsible for ensuring that the accused are healthy upon being detained in custody of the state. There is an entire system, many times including the so-called health care system, involved in determining whether a person is what is termed “fit for confinement.”
Fit for Confinement, But Not Really
Whenever there are suspicions that a person arrested for a crime has some health issue that may make them unfit to be confined at the jail, such persons are taken to the hospital for a medical examination. The idea behind this practice is to allow a medical professional to conduct an examination and determine whether a person can be incarcerated. In theory, this sounds great, but in reality, no one knows, not even jail personnel, what criteria is used to determine whether a person is fit for confinement. Nonetheless, some of the horrible conditions that people in questionable shape have been allowed to remain incarcerated should raise serious inquiry about how such determinations are reached.
When doctors are making such decisions, do the charges that the person is accused of play a role in determining whether they are fit for confinement? What type of legal liabilities can doctors/hospitals face if they determine a person is unfit for confinement and they are released from custody and commit an offense that results in the death of another person? Why don’t doctors and nurses working in jails make these determinations, given that they are the ones responsible for the care of detainees-often with far fewer resources than hospitals or private healthcare facilities?
The answers to these questions and others are not forthcoming from any official authorities. What we do know is that like many in the professional and political classes, many doctors have a healthy fear and many times contempt for those accused of crimes, based on their own socialization and indoctrination. The accused many times are viewed as a threat to the way of life of the professional classes and society at large. Given the reality of the class dynamics at work, the aspiring wealthy judging the indigent, it is no wonder that many detainees who end up dying in the CJC, have their “fit for confinement” paperwork rubberstamped by physicians tasked with conducting such examinations. Not to excuse those at the jail tasked with providing care for those who are detained under their authority, but this is a nuanced issue that many fail to analyze in this way because they are not intimately familiar with the responsibility and dangers at play in trying to confine another human being against their will.
Now that the public is becoming more aware of the challenges we face as a community — including the plight of our detained neighbors who, despite not being convicted of a crime, are subject to abuse — we can begin to move beyond performative activism aligned with government agendas. It is time to consider taking meaningful, collective action into our own hands rather than delegating responsibility to others or electing leaders who exploit genuine public grievances with empty slogans and superficial promises.
This post was reposted from Stories by Adofo Minka on Medium
