Heather Taylor – #FiveYearsLater #STL2039
Community stories marking the five-year milestone after the killing of Michael Brown Jr. and the Ferguson uprising. Residents reflect on where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going.
Ned – #FiveYearsLater #STL2039
Community stories marking the five-year milestone after the killing of Michael Brown Jr. and the Ferguson uprising. Residents reflect on where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going.
Lisa – #FiveYearsLater #STL2039
Community stories marking the five-year milestone after the killing of Michael Brown Jr. and the Ferguson uprising. Community members reflect on where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going.
Terrance – #FiveYearsLater #STL2039
Community stories marking the five-year milestone after the killing of Michael Brown Jr. and the Ferguson uprising. Residents reflect on where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going.
Ebony – #FiveYearsLater #STL2039
Community stories marking the five-year milestone after the killing of Michael Brown Jr. and the Ferguson uprising. Residents reflect on where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going.
Vetta and Riisa – #STL2039
Sharing the visions of St. Louis residents for a future St. Louis—in 2039—where Racial Equity is the reality and what they’re doing to achieve it today. #STL2039
Rudy and Mary – #STL2039
Sharing the visions of St. Louis residents for a future St. Louis—in 2039—where Racial Equity is the reality and what they’re doing to achieve it today. #STL2039
John and Jamala – #STL2039
Sharing the visions of St. Louis residents for a future St. Louis—in 2039—where Racial Equity is the reality and what they’re doing to achieve it today. #STL2039
Amelia and Maria – #STL2039
Sharing the visions of St. Louis residents for a future St. Louis—in 2039—where Racial Equity is the reality and what they’re doing to achieve it today. #STL2039
Erica and Serena – #STL2039
Sharing the visions of St. Louis residents for a future St. Louis—in 2039—where Racial Equity is the reality and what they’re doing to achieve it today. #STL2039
David and Rachel – #STL2039
Sharing the visions of St. Louis residents for a future St. Louis—in 2039—where Racial Equity is the reality and what they’re doing to achieve it today. #STL2039
Stacey and Bob – #STL2039
Sharing the visions of St. Louis residents for a future St. Louis—in 2039—where Racial Equity is the reality and what they’re doing to achieve it today. #STL2039
Tishaura and Ellen – #STL2039
Sharing the visions of St. Louis residents for a future St. Louis—in 2039—where Racial Equity is the reality and what they’re doing to achieve it today. #STL2039
Val and Greg – #STL2039
Sharing the visions of St. Louis residents for a future St. Louis—in 2039—where Racial Equity is the reality and what they’re doing to achieve it today. #STL2039
Areli and Felipe — #STL2039
This is part of the #STL2039 Action Plan storytelling series in partnership with Humans of St. Louis. Areli Reyes: I’m a DACA student and really passionate about seeing change for Brown and Black bodies out here because there are so many injustices that we’re facing. I went to a college fair and met somebody from…
Stephanie and Neal — #STL2039
Sharing the visions of St. Louis residents for a future St. Louis—in 2039—where Racial Equity is the reality and what they’re doing to achieve it today. #STL2039
Jessica
My nine-to-five is with the Social Innovation STL. I am a Community Organizer, so everything I do is based around that. Some of the ways I am connected with Forward Through Ferguson is through my job with the Social Innovation District, but it really started before that as a Community Organizer. The Social Innovation District…
Julia
My last name is German for “bridge.” I’ve been in St. Louis for almost seven years. I went to SLU because my dad did, then stuck around because St. Louis is my playground and has become my home. My story really goes back to third grade DEAR Time, Drop Everything And Read. Mrs. Smith was…
Blake
I was in my last year of law school when Mike Brown was killed on August 9th. I had just left home on my way back to school. I was already looking at public interest opportunities and social and racial justice opportunities. It’s fair to say that before that happened, I probably was not coming…
Faybra
I show up every day and I fight my hardest to contribute. There aren’t any Montessori schools in St. Louis I know of that have a director or an administrator who does community engaging, outreach coordinating, social justice, and Racial Equity. Before I took this position, I was a Montessori teacher for a school in…
Brittini
Have you ever done a service core type thing? You volunteer, you become poor for a year, and then you get placed at different sites. I was placed at our sister organization called VOICE Buffalo. That’s where my work was supposed to be centered. Why organizing? I’m from Chicago and I have probably been engaged…
Claire
Given the work that U.S. Bank Community Development Corporation does, our investments we make in communities every day, and a lot of them in communities of color, there was a realization that we have a unique responsibility to be more actively engaged in equity work. It’s not to be a White institution that comes in…
De
There is an extreme danger in making gross assumptions about the people who are on the ground, the people who are organizing, and the people who are taking a stance in this movement. A lot of people say that this is a leaderless movement, but I say the opposite. It’s a very leader-full movement because…
Christy
How do I live in a way that effects change in as many areas as possible? How must I be aware of institutional barriers going up? In what ways must I be very intentional and purposeful? I’m really conscious of being a White woman, knowing I could very easily show up someplace and be like,…
Amber
When I went back to school for my Master’s degree, I began working part-time at The Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis as an education policy intern with five other students. During the second year of the internship program, we all had our umbrella issues we focused on as a group – mostly access for undocumented…
Paul
I attend a lot of national conferences to speak about the work of community development credit unions and Prosperity Connection. Whether I’m in St. Louis, or talking to people from other parts of the country, I always start by saying, “My name is Paul Woodruff. I’m from St. Louis, and St. Louis is a great…
Nelson
Staying here long-term wasn’t in my plans, but St. Louis has that way of keeping you here once you move here. Having lived here for many years, I notice how divided the community is. The tensions that are existing, the segregation, the separation between downtown and the county – all these different divides are just…
Justin
I’m from the West End, or as I like to say, “The forgotten West Side.” I found out about Forward Through Ferguson through I’m going to call it the male initiative to bring in African American males. I think it was either through an email or a tweet I received. I looked at it, clicked…
Phillip
It was cool to see there was this very intentional call for both educators and Black men to show up. It also dovetailed with some conversations I was having with other friends about, “What are we going to do? We have this problematic national administration and I can’t spend my time feeling frustrated about that….
April
I work at the School District of Clayton at Wydown Middle School and teach 6th and 7th grade. For a long time, I taught history and now I teach literacy. On Tuesdays, I sponsor a club called Social Justice League. I’ve been doing it for maybe four years. It branched out of a seminar I…
Carmen
Indulging in the luxury of throwing up my arms, I moved to San Diego to be with my partner and left St. Louis vowing not to return. Nine years later, Ferguson happened. I watched in astonishment as brilliant and courageous young protesters moved the tectonic plate I thought could not be moved. This could not…
Zack
My parents were involved in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. I grew up believing I understood and was on the right side of things. But Crossroads Anti-Bias Anti-Racism workshop opened my eyes differently and in such a way that I couldn’t close them anymore. It just changed my way of viewing the rest…
Adelaide
Little kids have this project called Flat Stanley. Flat Stanley travels around the country with you and then tells about his adventures. We drove to Florida on spring break. When we came back, my daughter and her classmates put their Flat Stanley’s on the window outside the classroom to the hallway, and made these speech…
Rebeccah
When I was 20, I was frustrated about having to spend so much of my time helping people understand the impact of racism on folks who were not White. It just felt like such a chore to have to spend my energy saying, “Hey, you realize the world is topsy-turvy, and the privilege and value…
“What can I do? How can I do it?”
Laura H. is a “boomerang” who shares re-plant status with many others in St. Louis. But the timing of her return – the day Michael Brown, Jr., was fatally shot by Officer Darren Wilson – along with its role in how she’s making sense of her place in STL as a white Jewish mother, offers…
What Makes This Different
Angela B. talks about her hopes for — and expectations of — the body that carries Forward Through Ferguson’s calls to action from recommendation to actual change. The last full/public meeting happens Monday, December 7th, before the Commission sunsets on December 31, 2015. Angela, who’s been following the Commission’s work, has appreciated its attention to including and…
Starsky
There are a lot of more usual suspects who could have co-chaired the Commission. It probably made a whole lot better sense to appoint somebody else. But God gave me an opportunity to translate what was going on in the street at the time into the Commission’s work and attempt to do so effectively to…
Mustafah
Movements often center around single identities, even though its participants may come from a wide-swath of backgrounds and traditions. Finding the interconnections between various struggles can be a powerful tool for improving conditions for all people, inclusive of a variety of identities.
Buthaina
The assumption is always that I’m Mexican or Indian. I get a lot of “Holas.” I can’t be mad. A lot of Mexicans think I’m Mexican. The first interaction is usually, “Are you from Mexico?” “No, I’m from Yemen.” “Where’s that?” “It’s in the Middle East.” People are curious. A lot of times, the next…
Charles
One of the bigger challenges that everyone in our region has to overcome, and to possibly become a prototype for other cities, is to get over our segregation mentality. So we can talk about everyone having equity, a better school, a place to go to the grocery store, but we still think in that segregationist mentality.
Felicia
We’re at a critical time to make a decision about who and what we are. I was bitter for a long time around this work — nobody listening, not doing the right thing, and continuing the abuses. And I have learned — because it’s been uncovered, because the scab was ripped off, because the blood…
Summary of Terms
Better Business Bureau Organization that sets standards for marketplace trust and calls out substandard marketplace behavior of businesses and charities. Source:Better Business Bureau, https://www.bbb.org/stlouis/get-to-know-us/vision-mission-and-values/ Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Independent U.S. government agency overseen by Congress that regulates interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable in the 50 states, District of…
“Oh, You’re Here Too?”
Ferguson forced me to have a lot of conversations with my family about ideas of anti-blackness that we grew up with, and ideas about why people are poor in America.
Fostering Racial Equity
Racial equity is an overarching theme underpinning the work of the Commission and the calls to action it proposes. Racial disparities extend to employment, education, housing, transportation, and the application of justice. Those topics are addressed throughout these pages. What is found below is a big-picture sense of racial disparity in the area. The expert…
Preston and Sharon
Our youth present our greatest opportunity to impact positive and lasting change. Addressing our endeavors to the whole child through education, health, encouragement, support, and opportunities will fundamentally change their lives now and their futures forever.
#FwdThruFerguson