#Transforming911: Gina Sheridan
Gina: It was early evening, I had just gotten off work, and it started to drizzle. I’m always very aware wherever I am. So when I had pulled up to my house, I put the car in park and the doors automatically unlocked. I saw this guy and thought, “What’s he doing?” I don’t like…
#Transforming911: Jessica and Adam Hopkins
Adam: Mark was my best friend. He was an asshole, but he was the coolest asshole I’d ever met. We met him right before we moved into our new home. We had gotten some lunch nearby and were about to close on the property. So we decided to have a cigarette and a beer on…
#Transforming911: Jessica Bueler
Jessica: I was working the ThurtenE Carnival at WashU for the weekend. Welcome Neighbor STL provided all of the food for the event — nine different food booths from eight different countries. My job was to drive back and forth from the commercial kitchen to transport it. There was a golf cart waiting each time…
#Transforming911: Reverend Erika L. Essiem
Erika: I have a 16-year-old daughter with mental health issues and we moved to Ferguson last year. She has ADHD and PTSD. She also has a dysfunctional and dysregulated mood disorder. Trying to get care has been hard. A lot of psychiatrists have waiting lists, but we finally got into a place a few months…
#Transforming911: Alison & Riley Owens
Alison: I had just gotten home to watch the 9 p.m. news when I heard a loud crash. It sounded like the porch collapsed. I was sitting 20 feet from the front door, so I got up to check it out and was like, “What in the world?” My front door was wide open and…
#Transforming911: Erik Mills
Erik: I’m from St. Louis — born and raised. I actually never left. Grew up in Florissant, went to school there, went to college at WashU. Got my first job here and stayed ever since. Lindy: Do you have a story from when you’ve had to call 911? Erik: I don’t. I have never wanted…
#Transforming911: Isabella Rainey
Isabella: I had to call 911 when I was a senior in high school. It’s one of those things where you’ve been taught your entire life to call 911 during an emergency, but the second you do, it’s like, ‘Excuse me?’ I was with my boyfriend at the time and one of his close friends….
#Transforming911: Tracy Stanton
Tracy: In 2016, I was living in the 22nd Ward. I was out on the street with other addicts. Every time the alderman saw us, he called 911. It was clear we needed help and support, but not once did he ask if we wanted treatment or even a sandwich. What happens when you call…
#Transforming911: Ronnie Amiyn
Ronnie: When I think of 911, I think of my experiences as a child. It was not an option to call because of police overreactions when they came upon a scene. We knew it was likely that someone was going to get hurt or locked up. My own mother got roughed up by the police….
#Transforming911: B.N. Blithe de Carona (Bee)
Bee: I’m a conceptual mixed-media artist who lives in Fountain Park now and I spend my days making art. I’m lucky to have my studio and office in my home. Aside from this being the place where I was born and where most of my family lives, St. Louis is a dream for artists. There…
#Transforming911: Janice and Jerome Jernigans and Cami Thomas
Janice: My mom and dad were born and raised in St. Louis City and so was I. I went to Catholic school and became a public school teacher. My husband’s a public school teacher. And we decided to move to the City and make it a better place. We’re in Hyde Park and moved here…
Grace & Yosiyah Griffin – Barriers & Blessings
Our 2021 5-part series, Barriers & Blessings—How Commercial Prosperity Shapes School Success, is a continuation of FTF’s Still Separate, Still Unequal advocacy tool for education equity in the St. Louis region. The stories that we tell ourselves and that we pass on matter. They reflect and reinforce our beliefs, the decisions we make, and the…
Dwayne T. James and Toby Weiss – Barriers & Blessings
Our 2021 5-part series, Barriers & Blessings—How Commercial Prosperity Shapes School Success, is a continuation of FTF’s Still Separate, Still Unequal advocacy tool for education equity in the St. Louis region.
Krystal Barnett – Barriers & Blessings
Our 2021 5-part series, Barriers & Blessings—How Commercial Prosperity Shapes School Success, is a continuation of FTF’s Still Separate, Still Unequal advocacy tool for education equity in the St. Louis region.
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.
Terrell Carter – #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.
Nicolle Barton – #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.
Joshua Jones – #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…
Jackie and Elisabeth — #STL2039
This is part of the #STL2039 Action Plan storytelling series in partnership with Humans of St. Louis. Jackie Hutchinson: I am the Board President of Consumers Council of Missouri. CCM’s mission is to educate and advocate for the collective interests of consumers through leadership and partnerships on issues such as utility rates, personal finance, health…
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
Kayla
The Finesse Center started because I didn’t really know what else to do. After my brother passed, one of my friends from Webster University was like, “Hey, I have someone that wants to donate money. Where should they donate?” I was like, “I don’t know. To the family?” And they said, “You know what? We’re…
Karishma
I, quite honestly, was kind of terrified. I knew my comfort zone was solidly in the area of numbers, and analytics, and modeling in statistics and data sets. Secondary data means you’re not actually in front of people, gathering information from their mouths, from their lived experiences, and then listening to it being relayed to…
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…
Julia
I’m a community organizer here in St. Louis. I previously worked with Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE) and I’m the founder of Solidarity Economy St. Louis. When I first started getting involved in community organizing, I was part of a lot of direct action, which is of course what lead me to a…
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…
Trina
It seemed like the perfect life: two kids, picket fence, great career, making money, I’m out in California with Apple. As I neared my 29th birthday, I was just feeling like, “Something is missing. I can’t put my finger on it, but this was not what life is supposed to be about.” I started doing…
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…
Scott
I was born and raised in Ferguson. My grandfather came here in 1920. I still get emotional because it’s my hometown. I couldn’t believe what was going on on many different levels. We worked so hard to make this a good town. I say “we” — the entire community. And to see what was going…
What does it take to find a home?
It’s the summer of 2002. Fredica M., a St. Louis native who’s moved back to the Midwest after spending some time in California, is a 25-year old mother renting an apartment in South City. She’s glad to be back in her hometown, and expecting her third child. What she isn’t expecting is becoming homeless. When…
“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…
The Best Way to Understand It Is to Experience It
In a four part series Josh Walehwa, who’s brother is a police officer, shares his experiences with law enforcement and vision for the future of St. Louis. Check back as additional parts of his story are released. Part 1 The Best Way to Understand It Is to Experience It – Investigatory Stops “We want the…
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…
Sharonica
When educational equity and access is framed as a civil rights issue in the context of the disparities that exist in St. Louis, it is imperative that we create a vision for St. Louis education that nurtures and develops our youth, and provides teachers and districts with the appropriate resources they need.
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…
Traci
David and Goliath is one of my favorite stories in the Bible. I always preached it from the standpoint of this divine power that comes from knowing for certain who you are and where you belong. But this morning when I was reading it, for the first time I recognized that the moment David beheaded…
Ginger
Entrepreneurs are generally inherently disruptive because they’re trying to fix a problem and they’re trying to change whatever the status quo is around that problem. That’s what entrepreneurs do best. The kinds of challenges that face our community as a region, race-wise, require disrupting the norms.
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.
Why do you live where you live?
Deciding where to make your home is challenging enough when you’re familiar with where you’re moving. For those who transplant to St. Louis from an entirely different city, state, or country even, the advice of contacts in your soon-to-be-local area can provide valuable insights
“Will We Be Heard?”
As the Commission spoke to youth across the region, we repeatedly heard that our community’s youngest members often feel unheard and disenfranchised. We must include youth in the conversation as we work to shape a better and more equitable region.
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…
Making ‘Civics’ a Verb
Jauquin Holmes is one of several St. Louisans who’ve made showing up a priority. Part of it stems from his connection with the area where Michael Brown was shot, and unrest has occurred.
“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.
Relationships: Rasheen and Kevin
Commissioners Rasheen Aldridge, an activist, and Kevin Ahlbrand, a detective sergeant with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, talk about their experiences joining the commission and working together towards positive change in the St. Louis region.
Molly
Escaping the vicious cycle of economic strife is a struggle at the crossroads of health, employment, education, housing and finances. Families and individuals whose lives hover at the edge of financial stability are devastated when faced with an unexpected or unmanageable financial set back and often never recover. Predatory lending practices shamelessly prey upon people when they are at their most vulnerable.
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.
Dawn
Achieving justice for all requires a commitment to begin an honest review of how consolidation of police departments and municipal courts could commence. Building relationships based upon mutual respect and trust, being transparent about challenging and destructive behaviors and embracing fair and reasonable laws and policies will lay the foundation for unbiased, responsive government.
Combating Racism with Empathy
The Commission’s charge was to address the underlying root causes that led to the unrest in the wake of Michael Brown Jr’s death. Race is inherent in every root cause. Eliminating existing disparities for racial and ethnic populations is a fundamental goal of the calls in this report.