urbanSTL

Changes needed
1 N/S light rail
2 city added in to the county and merge towns in to each other and or the city.
3 civilian police review boards
4 create a county 1% income tax to found schools and rail Transite
5 more good jobs relocate to the core.
6 Have just one county wide police force and use the savings to hire more officers.

i did not put anything with racism on the list cause I do not know how to fix peoples world views. St. Louis is not the most raciest I been to I would have to LA and NYC are just as raciest but with less or not as much white flight.
Also did any one else notice nation wide race relations were at there best in the mid 2000s and ever since then it slowly gotten worse?

True_dope wrote:Also did any one else notice nation wide race relations were at there best in the mid 2000s and ever since then it slowly gotten worse?

Not completely sure about that as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 didn't seem to show race relations to be at their height.

Im glad im not the only person that agrees that race relations nationwide where better in the 2000's especially the mind 2000's I view Katrina as the beginning of relations worsening, But it wasn't until after the current president was elected that it truly began to go downhill. ( im not blaming Obama)

^ a catalyst is a catalyst. the discussion being had goes beyond the Brown/Wilson case. the only thing that's going to make it counterproductive is if the verdict comes out in Wilson's favor and people use that as an excuse to ignore all the legitimate issues that have been exposed in the process (e.g. police militarization; little munis preying on their poor residents; broken, incestuous municipal courts, etc).

^ Exactly. I hate to say this about the loss of young life, which is pretty tragic no matter what the circumstances, but I believe this issue is much bigger, than Mike Brown, Kajieme Powell, and VonDerrit Myers.

Those individual cases do bring up opportunities to discuss police use of profiling and use of force, when it is appropriate, and how much is too much. To varying degrees, there seem to be ways to justify all three shootings, but there's a lot of room for discussion about whether certain different actions could have led to a conclusion that was still safe for the officer and community without killing the victim.

BUT, the bigger discussion is about how we got into a situation with such economic disparity that has a strong alignment to race, how that disparity puts these kids in positions to have run-ins with the law and/or how it might cause officers and more prosperous citizens to profile (unintentionally and intentionally), and most importantly, how we can fix that disparity.

It just feels brutal to say this because it's really, really sad that those kids lost their life (even if what is alleged against all of them is completely true—it's still sad when life is lost, especially young life), but there's definitely some validity to the idea that too much focus on their cases will actually detract from focus on the larger issues.

If people could take a step back and see things in shades of grey, it'd be easier to talk about, but there's too many people who are only able to take perspectives in black or white (unfortunate pun not intended).

Part of a NOLA street art exhibition

Well we'll all know the very outcome of all this soon once everything is announced we'll see how peaceful or disruptive the protests are. I got my letter on the door yesterday warning me of potential mayhem in the area.

shimmy wrote:However, I think the catalyst matters. One that divides such as this one does is go to hinder a logical discussion more than facilitate it. All I've seen from this fiasco are knee-jerk reactions, whether regarding the specifics of the case itself or the issues surrounding it.

any incident that gets people worked-up enough to actually have this particular discussion (especially in St. Louis) is going to provoke knee-jerk reactions. it's unavoidable. IMO, wishing for the perfect time to have the discussion is basically wishing to never have it, i.e. more of the usual St. Louis status quo.

TheNewSaintLouis wrote:Well we'll all know the very outcome of all this soon once everything is announced we'll see how peaceful or disruptive the protests are. I got my letter on the door yesterday warning me of potential mayhem in the area.

Businesses along Florissant Rd throughout Cool Valley and Ferguson are boarded up and I have noticed plenty of business owners & hired security sitting outside at night armed and ready to go.

Between way too early snow, depressing overcast skies, cold weather and impending GJ announcement and rumors swirling regarding it this weekend felt like impending doom. Just.announce it and get it over with!

Today Governor Jay Nixon declared state of emergency in Missouri and activated the National Guard.

If you didn't know better, you'd think Armageddon was about to be loosed.

Are you afraid? I wasn't before, but all of this military buildup is beginning to scare me.

just getting his ducks in order. he said he will use NG if it was needed, this just makes that option legal ect.

I'm not afraid...Sending my wife and kids 150 miles away and protecting my home...Should be fun!

BTW, I work in Clayton and the protesters (all 70 of them) were marching during lunch today. What's up with the masks? What a bunch of pussies. Show your face! Don't be a coward behind a mask. It completely diminishes the movement when one hides behind a mask.

F-ing pussies.

no, that was a joke about everyone's over-reaction..sorry, should have use blue font

agreed

currently posting from my bunker....wifi working good, im set.