Missouri

Paid Sick Leave And Higher Minimum Wage On The Missouri Ballot

September 30, 2024 Kay Mills, Portside. Organize! Ballot Initiative, Minimum Wage, Missouri, Paid Sick Leave, Worker Rights and Jobs

“By challenging feelings of isolation and polarization, breaking down division, and creating long-term relationships, we can achieve our goal of building a democracy and economy that works for all of us.”

Missouri Decided To Execute An Innocent Man

September 25, 2024 People's Dispatch. Educate! Death Penalty, Marcellus Williams, Missouri, United States, US prisons, US South

Marcellus Williams has maintained his innocence since the murder of Felicia Gayle in 1998. He was convicted of this crime without evidence, with the case against him resting upon two unreliable witnesses. Recently, DNA testing has confirmed that Williams’ DNA was nowhere to be found at the crime scene. Yet at 6 pm today, the State of Missouri is set to execute Williams for a crime that he did not commit. In January of 2024, prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County Wesley Bell asked to vacate Marcellus Williams’ murder conviction based on “clear and convincing evidence” of Williams’ innocence. As stated in Bell’s motion to vacate, “DNA evidence supporting a conclusion that Mr. Williams was not the individual who stabbed Ms. Gayle has never been considered by a court.”

The Private Pilots Flying Abortion Seekers Across The Midwest

September 9, 2024 Lucas Frisancho, Next City. Create! abortion access, Abortion Bans, Abortions, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Mutual Aid, Reproductive Rights, Transportation

In the fall of 2022, Mike climbed into the pilot’s seat with an idea. For the past few months, the private pilot had been volunteering with the Illinois-based Midwest Access Coalition, an abortion support fund that he’d come across in his post-George Floyd anti-racism journey. “I thought, there’s gotta be people out there helping people travel for abortions, because it’s not like every medical facility you go to provide abortion care,” says Mike. Next City has agreed to use Mike’s first name only to protect his safety and privacy as he engages in this sensitive work. “So I reached out to say, hey, I want to volunteer for anything you might need – driving, hosting, whatever.”

St. Louis’ Turn-Of-The-Century Transit Renaissance

April 12, 2024 Aysha Khan, Next City. Create! light rail, Missouri, Transit, Transportation, Urban Design

Heartland Urbanist, Columbus-based organizer Matt Caffrey digs into the story behind St. Louis’s light metro system. In the mid-1980s, while many other transit agencies were moving toward developing trams – slow street-running light rail – St. Louis made the bold choice to build a light rail system on dedicated right of way. Opened in 1993, it’s now a 46-mile light rail system with two lines and 6.7 million riders in 2022. It’s also, he explains, a massive driver of private investment. Part of the reason why residents and visitors are able to take advantage of this system was local organizers with a St. Louis nonprofit, Citizens for Modern Transit.

Voters Reject Stadium Sales Tax To Help Fund New Royals Ballpark

April 3, 2024 Celisa Calacal, Flatland - Kansas City. Resist! Kansas City, Missouri, Stadium, Taxes, Voting

Jackson County voters handed the Kansas City Royals and Chiefs a major setback on Tuesday, rejecting a stadium sales tax extension that would fund a new downtown baseball stadium and renovations at Arrowhead Stadium. Question 1 would have repealed Jackson County’s existing 3/8th-cent sales tax and replaced it with a tax at the same level until 2064. The results mean that the existing sales tax will end in 2031, when the Royals and Chiefs’ leases expire, and can only be used on the existing Truman Sports Complex properties.

Toyota Workers At Critical Engine Plant Launch UAW Union Drive

March 7, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. Organize! Auto Workers, Missouri, Toyota, Unions, United Auto Workers (UAW), Worker Rights and Jobs

Auto workers at a Toyota engine plant in Troy, Missouri, have signed up 30 percent of their 1,000 co-workers to join the United Auto Workers (UAW)—a first at Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, on the heels of the union’s announcements of organizing campaigns at Volkswagen, Hyundai, and Mercedes-Benz. Workers at the plant just outside St. Louis build 2.6 million cylinder heads per year. Should they stop building them, it would cut off supplies for all of the company’s engine plants in North America. Toyota is still working to build up its supply of chips and other inventory, following pandemic lockdowns and global supply-chain snarls.

Block The Bombs: Palestine Activists Protest Boeing Facility In Missouri

November 25, 2023 St. Louis Organizers for Palestine, Mondoweiss. Resist! Blockade, Boeing, Gaza, International Solidarity, Missouri, Palestine, Weapons Maker

Hidden in plain sight along a particularly drab stretch of Route 94, just west of the Missouri River in St. Charles, MO, lies a large, plain white building. Almost completely nondescript apart from its size, it is distinguishable from the road only by a pair of small signs identifying it as Boeing Building 598. It is, at present, perhaps the deadliest building in the state. Amidst an ever-growing civilian death toll exacted by Israel’s relentless bombing campaign against Gaza, the displacement of the vast majority of the city’s 2 million residents, and numerous other human rights atrocities of various descriptions, the increasingly urgent calls for a ceasefire finally appear to have gained significant political momentum.

One-Stop Shops Can Change The Game For City’s Small Business Growth

July 22, 2023 Nia Richardson, Next City. Create! Finance and the Economy, Local Investment, Missouri, Small Businesses

In February, researchers at the Institute for Justice published a study analyzing barriers to starting small businesses. “Too often, entrepreneurs struggle with local regulatory burdens, finding themselves trapped by high fees, long wait times, and complex paperwork,” the report begins. “These burdens amount to a death by a thousand cuts, unless aspiring business owners can successfully navigate them before reaching opening day.” The study analyzed the steps required to open a business in 20 large and mid-sized U.S. cities, and their findings were stunning. Opening a restaurant in Boston involves a staggering 92-step process. In Detroit, it’s 77 steps. In Atlanta, it’s 76.

The Two Types Of Death Penalties

November 29, 2022 Kalonji Changa, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Death Penalty, Human Rights, Kevin Johnson, Missouri, political prisoners

A political prisoner is a person targeted or imprisoned because of their political actions, affiliations and/or beliefs. A political prisoner is also an individual, who while incarcerated, transforms themselves from a social prisoner by gaining clarity, embracing and maintaining political struggle. Thirty-seven-year-old Kevin “KJ” Johnson is scheduled to be executed by the State of Missouri on November 29th; most would not view him as a “political prisoner.” However, given the poverty, neglect, suffering and abuse that comes with being a captive in domestic colonies and urban enclaves within a capitalist and imperialist state, from the onset Kevin was undoubtedly a victim of US politics and policing. On July 5, 2005, 19-year-old Kevin “KJ” Johnson witnessed his 12- year-old brother, “Bam Bam” collapse while police conducted a search of their grandmother’s home.

Call For Solidarity After FBI Raids African People’s Socialist Party And Uhuru Movement

August 4, 2022 Jeff Mackler, Popular Resistance. Resist! FBI, Missouri, Omali Yeshitela, Russia

The specter of a Biden administration-authorized Department of Justice (DOJ) initiated McCarthy-era witch hunt was posed in bold relief last week as FBI agents took aim at a Black liberation organization that has been a sharp critic of the U.S./NATO-backed war in Ukraine and a defender of poor nations threatened with U.S. sanctions, coups, embargoes and blockades. These include Cuba, Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Iran. Replete with flash/bang grenades deployed at 5:00 am on Friday, July 29 to startle African Peoples Socialist Party (APSP) leader Omali Yeshitela and his wife at their home in St. Louis, Missouri, FBI agents, carrying federal search warrants, ordered them to come out with their hands up. They were handcuffed and ordered to sit on the curb.

2,500 St. Louis Machinists Union Members To Strike Boeing Aug. 1

July 25, 2022 GOIAM. Resist! Boeing, Missouri, Strike, Unions, weapons

Nearly 2,500 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 837 have voted to strike the Boeing Co. in St. Louis. IAM District 837, which represents workers at three Boeing Defense locations, released the following statement regarding the rejection of the company’s offer: “Our members have spoken loudly and with one voice. We reject Boeing’s current contract offer and will strike at all three St. Louis area locations, starting at 12:01 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 1, 2022. We cannot accept a contract that is not fair and equitable, as this company continues to make billions of dollars each year off the backs of our hardworking members. Boeing previously took away a pension from our members, and now the company is unwilling to adequately compensate our members’ 401(k) plan. We will not allow this company to put our members’ hard-earned retirements in jeopardy.

St. Louis’s Movement-Backed Mayor Promised To Close An Infamous Jail

March 17, 2022 Skyler Aikerson, In These Times. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Electoral Politics, Missouri, St. Louis

St. Louis, Missouri - “What is the delay in closing the Workhouse?” moderator Maquis Govan asks Mayor Tishaura Jones at a virtual town hall on “re-envisioning public safety” February 8. The event was co-organized by Action St. Louis, an affiliate of the Movement for Black Lives. The group’s 501©4 arm, Action St. Louis Power Project, endorsed Jones during her 2021 mayoral run. The Rev. Michelle Higgins opened the event by thanking Jones warmly for “valuing and loving the constituents of this city in this way: taking the time to listen to our questions directly.” Now, activists want clarification on when the mayor will fulfill her campaign promise to close the St. Louis Medium Security Institution, more commonly known as the Workhouse, which activists have been trying to shut down for years.

Missouri Supreme Court Voids ‘Paycheck Protection’ Bill

June 3, 2021 Kaitlyn Schallhorn, The Missouri Times. Educate! Labor Unions, Legal System, Missouri, Worker Rights and Jobs

A 2018 law adding sweeping changes to how labor organizations — exempting, however, public safety unions — conduct business was struck down by the Missouri Supreme Court Tuesday. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision rendering the GOP-backed HB 1413 null for violating public employees’ right to collective bargaining “through representatives of their own choosing.” It also said the law violated the state constitution’s equal protection clause by exempting public safety labor organizations. The state’s highest court concurred with the circuit court in finding the offending provisions could not be severed from the legislation as a whole. Dubbed the “paycheck protection” bill, HB 1413 from Rep. Jered Taylor added a myriad of changes for how labor organizations could operate, including mandating public employees to opt-in to dues and fees annually, preventing supervisory employees from being included in the same bargaining unit as employees, and requiring groups be approved by an election before the State Board of Mediation in order to be certified, among other things. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision rendering the GOP-backed HB 1413 null for violating public employees’ right to collective bargaining “through representatives of their own choosing.” It also said the law violated the state constitution’s equal protection clause by exempting public safety labor organizations.

Self-Emancipation Continues To Rise At The St. Louis City Justice Center

April 15, 2021 Adofo Minka, Black Agenda Report. Resist! COVID-19, Missouri, Prisoner rights, Protest

In the early morning hours of April 4, 2021, a day that many Christians recognized as Resurrection Sunday, detainees, at the St. Louis City Justice Center moved in the spirit of insurrection to challenge their oppressors and well documented repression at the jail. After the first major rebellion at the jail grabbed national attention on February 6, 2021, government bureaucrats in collaboration with “activists” of the social justice state scrambled to mystify what is really happening to detainees at the city’s jails through sham reports and pseudo-independent investigations. The attempt to paper over the status quo of cruelty and inhumanity exacted on detainees in the aftermath of the February 6th jail uprising has proved unsuccessful.

St. Louis Justice Center Inmates Rise Up Again, Demand Hearings

April 5, 2021 Sam Clancy, KSDK. Resist! COVID-19, Legal System, Missouri, Prisoner rights

St. Louis, MO - St. Louis police responded to the city's downtown jail Sunday night after inmates broke windows, set fires and threw debris onto the street below Sunday night. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department sent out an all-points bulletin across city police radios Sunday night after inmates on the third floor of the City Justice Center reportedly covered cameras. A short time later, inmates began breaking the windows and throwing things onto the street. At around 9:30 p.m., smoke was pouring out of the broken windows. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department's Civil Disturbance Team was among the officers responding to the scene Sunday night. By around 10:20, the inmates had moved away from the windows, and police officers could be seen inside the windows looking around with flashlights in hand.

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