Somebody needs to go to jail. St. Louis City government has to be held accountable. 

After the EF3 level tornado with wind speeds of up to 165 miles an hour swept through the African community of North St Louis last week, causing at least 7 deaths and wreaking massive destruction to more than 5,000 homes, the government of the City of St. Louis has done nothing for the people!

If it weren’t for the resilience, collective spirit and problem-solving of the people, more death and destruction would have hit our already beleaguered community by the city’s criminal negligence.

There was nothing “natural” about this disaster! How many people died as a direct result of the failure of the city to push the button that activates sirens that every St. Louis resident recognizes as the code to immediately “take cover” from a storm? 

Instead people were still in their cars, outside on their porches, in their houses or just realizing that they urgently needed to run for cover when they caught sight of the tornado’s funnel clouds that were a mile wide and 23 miles long! 

The programs of the Black Power Blueprint and Uhuru Movement on the West Florissant corridor took a direct hit by the tornado, including our basketball court, community gardens, buildings targeted for a radio station, and an African Independence workforce program, as well as my home that I share with APEDF President Ona Zene Yeshitela, where our roof was destroyed. 

Undaunted, the Uhuru Movement has sponsored ongoing give-aways to the community with the Uhuru House at 4101 W. Florissant serving as a major hub for food, water, diapers and other necessities of life. Many of the donations have come from supportive allies and friends from South St. Louis.

As of Saturday, my home and many others on the North Side have been slapped with a red sticker “condemning” functional homes where families are living and opening them up to notorious developers such as Paul McKee who are circling like vultures to grab our community’s hard won properties and use them for gentrification to further push out the African community which has already lost thousands of people in the past few years.

The fact that the city failed to activate its sirens in the city’s first actual touchdown by a tornado in a hundred years is inexcusable.  The city and the mayor Cara Spencer must be held responsible for this crime! 

Seventy percent of the African working class community has no insurance in a city that is holding on to millions of dollars from the settlement of the move of the Rams sports team and nearly a half billion dollars of federal ARPA covid relief money–none of which has been distributed to the people!  

We’re disgusted with crying Mayor Cara Spencer’s insidious attempt to make herself the object of pity instead of addressing the needs of the thousands of Black people who are suffering devastation as a result of intentional disregard and contempt by the City.

Spencer is treating our community as a criminal community. She wants to bring in the National Guard and has hired Ben Jonsson a US military colonel who is a counterinsurgency expert previously deployed to Gaza as the City’s new Chief Operating Officer. Johnson had the mission of killing Palestinian people whose conditions, like ours are that of colonialism, the oppression of a whole people by a foreign and alien state power for the benefit of others.

Our goal is NOT to return St. Louis to its status before the tornado. According to the statistics of the St. Louis Federal Reserve bank white families in St. Louis have $992,000 more in wealth than the African families in a city notorious for the Delmar Avenue Divide where one crosses a single street from white prosperity to the poverty and colonial decimation of the African community.

The Uhuru Movement demands that the City of St. Louis adopt the plan put forward by former Alderman Jesse Todd, a plan which Mayor Spencer voted for when she was on the board of Aldermen. This plan calls for:

• Jobs for all who want a job and guaranteed annual income for the disabled/elderly.
• Drug treatment on demand.
• Vacant houses that are boarded must have all windows and doors boarded up on every floor at the owners’ or the Land Reutilization Authority’s (LRA) expense.
• Money used to tear down houses will be given to families to fix up vacant houses.
• Code enforcement must be the same for vacant houses as it is for occupied homes.
• If the LRA property is not sold within a year, it will be sold to an individual for one dollar. The individual will be given grants to fix up the property.
• Tax credits and/or grants will be given to families, NOT big developers to fix up vacant houses.
• Seniors, disabled and low-income homeowners will be given grants to make needed home repairs.
• Grass on lots, alleys and vacant buildings will be cut and trimmed as needed; trash will be cleaned off the property at the owner’s expense.
• Parks will have supervision, equipment and supplies. 

We also demand the establishment of a community-based Reparations Land Trust where land becomes community wealth. The city must employ local Black contractors and pay the residents with trucks who took on the responsibility of the clean-up work. Again, somebody needs to go to jail!

People can donate to our relief fund at: BlackPowerBlueprint.org/NorthsideDisasterFund 

We invite everyone to attend a special community tornado response meeting here at the Uhuru House on Sunday, June 1 at 3pm.