Smokescreen: How St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones Has Been Shielded by Activists Amidst Jail Controversy
Part II
In Part II of ‘Smokescreen,’ we will clarify how St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones has been shielded by activists for the government amidst the perennial jail controversy and what this means for the future of our city.
As we continue to clarify how St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones uses fake activists for the government to cover up her actual direction of the perennial jail controversy, we must keep in mind two matters. First, how her mystification undermines everyday citizens taking matters into their own hands and identifying with the prisoners who have rebelled to emancipate themselves.
Second, how the very presence of Jones, who is long overdue for discarding, is useful for the reconversion of St. Louis, out of a crisis of legitimacy where the oppression of institutions is still very much felt daily. The powers behind Mayor Jones, whether progressive or conservative, don’t mind her fiddling so long as parts of the city and country don’t burn again. They would rather have the city talking about an inconsequential bureaucrat in the big picture (Clemons-Abdullah) that can be discarded than the icon and image who keeps the soul of the city (inside and outside the jail) from realizing its power more consistently.
Violations of Detainees Right to Counsel
Another issue that came to the fore during the Clemons-Abdullah tenure, that Mayor Jones has yet to face consequences, is the violations of detainees right to counsel. During her tenure, Clemons-Abdullah instituted policies at the jail that drew the ire of judges and attorneys, and rightfully so. After one attorney took photographs of a severe medical condition that his client was not being treated and submitted them to the media, a policy banning all electronics in the jail was instated. Apparently, the attorney’s strategy partially worked because his client was taken to a “free-world” medical facility to be examined. Nevertheless, a doctor still determined the detainee was fit for confinement.
Once lawyers raised an outcry about the policy it was amended to allow attorneys to bring their phones in during professional booth visits. However, to do this, they had to sign a waiver stating they would not take any photographs inside of the facility. The aim of the policy was to send a message to those who might expose the crude reality that detainees face.
Another policy that stone-walled detainees right to counsel was one that required attorneys or other professionals to print all discovery on colored paper provided by the CJC. Supposedly, this policy was supposed to combat drugs being smuggled into the facility. Apparently, certain narcotics can be soaked into paper documents so they can be smuggled into the jail. Ironically, it was a corrections officer, who was caught attempting to smuggle drugs into the CJC and was ultimately prosecuted for this.
None of the activists for “prison abolition” ever publicly castigated Mayor Jones. I understand that Clemons-Abdullah did herself no favors by implementing such asinine policies. She would not have been able to do so without the approval of the mayor. If the mayor was against the actions Clemons-Abdullah was taking, why didn’t she fire her much earlier than her recent removal? Why wouldn’t the activists who were transparently opposed to Clemons-Abdullah be in opposition to Mayor Jones as well?
The Government’s Division of Civilian Oversight
On August 3, 2022, Mayor Tishaura Jones signed legislation to effectively create a Division of Civilian Oversight within the municipal government. The division is comprised of the Civilian Oversight Board (COB) and the Detention Facility Oversight Board (DFOB). The projected aim of the Civilian Oversight Board was to train ten civilians to investigate incidents involving police use of force and police department internal investigations. It is not clear who would be tasked with training members of the COB. According to the website for the city, the DFOB was designed to have nine civilians to serve as an “Advisory body to the Mayor, Commissioner of Corrections, and Director of Public Safety with regard to detention facility operations, conditions of detention, and Division of Corrections policy.” The overview of the DFOB goes on to state, “The DFOB shall be authorized [by who?] to receive complaints of alleged corrections misconduct and detention incidents, issue subpoenas to require the attendance of witnesses or production of documents, and shall be granted access to city detention facilities upon request in order that it may obtain information and make findings and recommendations…” It is reasonable to assume that the individual authorizing the actions of the DFOB would be the mayor or her Public Safety Commissioner. However, this is not made clear on the city’s webpage for the Division of Civilian Oversight.
Stamped from the Beginning: The Dilemma of Government Sanctioned Oversight Boards
Many both inside and outside the government applauded the signing of the legislation into municipal law by Mayor Jones. The signing of the legislation into law was not unprecedented. There have been government-sanctioned civilian oversight committees, boards, and task forces erected over the past thirty to forty years in multitudes of cities across the country. It is disappointing that people continue to fall for the charade that these government established and controlled institutions represent. Those who happily join these government boards tell us something about their conception of power. Their participation says that the primary power they deem legitimate flows from the state and its institutions which are rooted in hierarchy and domination. These government oversight initiatives, which are nothing more than appendages to state power and the ruling class personalities that institute them, are designed to lend the shining governments of the damned legitimacy in times of crisis. The establishment of the DFOB is a prime example of this.
Detention Facility Oversight Board was Established to Pacify, not Reform
Mayor Jones’ DFOB dove-tailed the establishment of her predecessor Lyda Krewson’s Corrections Task Force to “study” what caused the uprising at the jail toward the end of Krewson’s term as mayor. Such investigative reports locally, nationally, and internationally for more than a hundred years have proposed to tell the public why illegitimate government and their policies find mass discontent getting out of hand. Such “studies” are meant to take on the tone of objectivity and reset the legitimacy of government that has quite frankly been lost. Eleven years after the Ferguson Rebellion, this is where we have arrived. After “Black Lives Matter” the city rulers are still hiding behind the name, image, and likeness of “Black women” while Black toilers (and their families) find the dispossessed in jail.
It should be clear to anyone what caused the eruption. Most human beings have an aversion to tyranny and oppression and will strike a blow against it if degradation is continuous. The truth is that no person who is accused of a crime wants to be detained pre-trial. Many prison reform activists and self-proclaimed jail abolitionists very rarely, if ever, speak to this reality. Instead, many have focused on the abolition of cash bail which still gives the state great latitude to keep the accused behind bars while they await trial. Krewson’s task force, like Jones’ DFOB, were established to pacify, not fulfill the concerns of the public or the detainees about the conditions at the CJC. And this is what paid activists for the government are for. To chatter, mobilize the masses in zig zag formation, and give the state room to legitimate itself.
Mayor Jones came to power on the premise that she would “defund” the police and that she identifies with those oppressed in jails and repressed in the streets in both the post George Floyd and Ferguson rebellions. However, she cannot serve two masters. She cannot serve the oppressed and her pay masters’ within the left block of capital. She has made her choice on what interests she will serve. The idea of the mayor hand selecting individuals to oversee her administration of the permanent slaughter is a cruel joke timed to quell any serious examination of the problems at the jail. The fact that she selected self-styled activists to serve on the DFOB who operate inside and outside the Democratic Party and got out the vote for her and other Black Democrats is telling.
For the past three years, DFOB members have not been allowed full access to the jail to oversee its operations. They have been completely stonewalled. They were told paternalistically that they would have to be trained before they could tour the CJC and speak to detainees about the conditions at the facility. Imagine that! The fox who has just ravaged the hen house telling the hens coming to investigate the raid that he would have to train them before they could investigate her handiwork. How absurd is that?! According to statements made by DFOB members in the media, when they were finally allowed into the CJC for a “tour” of the facility, they basically were shuffled through and not allowed to question or observe anyone or anything of significance.
Was the question of access to the jail a distraction in the first place? What does access into the jail with no real official authority to act independent of Mayor Jones and her minions really mean?
This nonsense reminds me of a scene from the Malcolm X documentary Make It Plain where a sharecropper asks to see the landowner’s books to see whether or not he had broken even. Instead of allowing the sharecropper to look at the ledger thoroughly, the landlord opens the book and says, “I have it right here. Now you see it,” before slamming the book closed before the sharecropper can surmise anything from what he has “seen”. Those DFOB members who might be sincere must come to realize that their job on the board is not anything approaching oversight, accountability, or reform of conditions at the CJC. Their job, whether they realize it or not, is lending legitimacy to the mayor’s regime and the persona she has built as being on the side of the oppressed while overseeing their continuous subjugation.
Why No Smoke in the City for the Mayor?: The Nature of Prison Reform and the State
This is the nature of prison reform and the state. It is not unique to St. Louis. You have a group of activists who are either paid or volunteer to roll over and play dead on command to legitimate the hierarchical regime of the mayor. That is what has played out over the past few years while those talk about jail and prison reform and abolition. However, even in the face of being hamstrung why have they not gathered the courage to demand Mayor Jones’ resignation? Meanwhile, calls for Clemons-Abdullah’s resignation as jail commissioner were unceasing.
Protest Ahead of Clemons-Abdullah Dismissal
Some will question, but what about the protest at the Board of Alderman’s meeting? When one looks closely at the so-called protest, they should not be able to take it seriously. What type of protest of the municipal government takes place when the mayor is out of town? It is one that is not meant to disturb anyone who has the power and authority to change what these activists have been protesting about for at least the last two years. The protestors are a loyal opposition to the mayor. A loyal opposition is when those who claim to be discontent with a rotten and decaying social order seek to advise it, instead of kick it while its down by propagating the subversion of the system.
Even in the “protest”, not one activist has called for the mayor’s election to be immediately recalled. Not one behind a megaphone has called for the mayor to step down. Not one activist-philosopher or critical thinker has transparently stated publicly that they were wrong about their support for Mayor Jones and disavowed any further support of her. This from “activists” whose self-appointed task was to make sure there was no death toll on their watch.
It’s alright to lament that one’s government has betrayed. But what good is it to make such a statement when you are going to continue to tip-toe through the tulips when it comes to who is responsible for the pain, degradation, and death of those you claim to be on the side of? What good is it when you are not opposed to collaboration with the state? What good is it when you see the state as mostly good and just in need of a few reforms? It’s no good. It comes a point in time when one must piss or get off the pot.
No Support for Self-Emancipation, Only Victimhood
The peculiar, but unsurprising thing about activist support of detainees at the CJC is that it is support for the detainees as victims, not self-emancipating people arriving on their own authority. I have not heard one of the jail reform activists protesting the conditions of the jail ever say anything encouraging about the detainees self-emancipating activity. They have spent an inordinate amount of time lamenting what the government has or has not done for them or to them.
This suspends detainees in time and history as victims in need of empowerment. Historically, those who take matters into their own hands have brought about the changes, though many times they are temporary, through direct action and the initiation of a confrontation with those in power. Nobody has every struck a blow for freedom begging someone else, certainly not those in power, to alleviate their suffering. Some might claim to know this, but their actions tell a different story. It is no surprise that activists who are funded by the left block of capital would not support the detainees self-emancipating activity. The foundations who fund them don’t look favorably upon such rebellious activity by the oppressed. Why would they want those who they fund encouraging such actions? If you eat the king’s meat, you must kiss the king’s feet. It’s as simple as that.
I know some will object and say that I am being irresponsible and that encouraging detainees to liberate themselves is counterproductive and will only result in the injury and death of detainees at the CJC. No one should be responsible to a fraud world and system that is in a state of decomposition while masquerading as civilization. The 18 deaths that have been recorded since 2020 tells us that people are already dying. Furthermore, while it has not been documented like the death toll, many more have been injured and will likely suffer long-time ailments and affects associated with being doused with chemical agents. Given what is at stake, the only responsible thing to do is oppose tyranny and oppression in the most uncompromising way one can muster. Detainees have done this, intermittently, for four years. They should be supported for arriving on their own authority. Further, responsible citizens should apologize for their moderation up to this moment of danger when we have lived too quietly through many others.
Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah’s dismissal is certainly an occasion for reflection if not celebration. The job is not done unless the administrator who is ultimately responsible for the operation of the jail and green-lit, and at least for a time, supported the actions of evasion, stone-walling, and rationalizing the deplorable situation at the CJC. This administrator is Mayor Tishaura Jones. She is every bit responsible for the death and degradation at the jail. She should not be given a pass for firing Clemons-Abdullah when she was behind the curtain given the nod to all her decisions. If Clemons-Abdullah must go, Mayor Jones must go also. Mayor Jones, Clemons-Abdullah, and the fake activists for the government, in their political practice have revealed behind the “Black Lives Matter” slogan that all Black lives don’t matter to those people of color who rule above society. Some of us continue to die obscured by reasons of state (musical prisons, politicians, prison commissioners, and public studies). It is a very irresponsible and uncivil precedent to set and reinforce.
This post was reposted from Stories by Adofo Minka on Medium
