Canvassing while black in Clayton
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CAC Audited APRIL 5 – 11, 2018
Vol. 90 No. 2 COMPLIMENTARY
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‘I am outraged’ Protestors disrupt CWE in solidarity with Stephon Clark demonstrations By Rebecca Rivas Of The St. Louis American Robyne O’Mara, a white retired nurse, was driving to the solidarity march for Stephon Clark on Friday, March 30 when news about Clark’s autopsy came on the radio. “They revealed that Mr. Clark had been shot in the back seven times,” O’Mara said as tears started running down her petite face. “I’m sorry, it’s just that I am outraged.”
n “We are doing everything else that we are supposed to do. It’s not moving the needle.” – Rev. Darryl Gray
Clark, a 22-year-old father of two, was shot and killed by Sacramento police officers in his grandma’s backyard on the evening of March
18. He was unarmed and police said they thought the cellphone in his hand was a gun. On March 30, an independent autopsy commissioned by
Health Salute
Renee CunninghamWilliams saluted for excellence in mental health
‘Me Too’ movement founder brings anti-sexual violence message to St. Louis
By Rebecca Rivas Of The St. Louis American
See WILLIAMS, A6
See CLARK, A7
‘It can’t be ignored anymore’
Focus on the vulnerable
Growing up, Renee M. CunninghamWilliams, PhD, associate professor of social work and associate dean for doctoral education at the Brown School at Washington University, said she had a front-row seat to observe how at-risk youth can get thrown offcourse in life. She grew up in the Arthur n “I’m proud Blumeyer Housing to be at the Project in midtown forefront of St. Louis, one of understanding the last remaining public-housing risk and projects in the protections city before being for vulnerable demolished in youth, 2006. “I didn’t especially know Blumeyer Africanwas considered American impoverished until youth.” I went to Howard University, as a – Renee first generation Cunninghamcollege student, Williams where I saw great variations in social class,” CunninghamWilliams said. Blumeyer was a community where
Clark’s family shows that police shot Clark eight times; six of those wounds were in his back, one was in his side and another to his left thigh. At 6 p.m. on March 30, about 100 to 150 protestors marched through the streets in the Central West End and shut down two intersections, shouting, “Cell up, don’t shoot!” Rev. Darryl Gray, one of the organizers of
By Jessica Karins For The St. Louis American
Photo by Wiley Price
Celebrating Easter kids-style Yolonda Burguss walks her daughter, Yafarrie Whitherspoon, 3, across the grass during an Easter egg hunt at Trinity Christian Fellowship Church in the Tower Grove East neighborhood on Sunday.
Whenever sexual harassment, sexual assault and sexual violence are in the news, you will likely find Tarana Burke’s voice there too. When Ryan Seacrest hosted the Academy Awards red carpet show on March 4 despite sexual harassment allegations, Burke was the person reporters turned to for a condemnation of the decision. She was chosen as one of Time Magazine’s “silence breakers,” a group of women speaking out about the issue who received the 2017 Person of the Year honor. She has also been invited to college campuses across the country to speak about a phrase she coined, the “Me Too” rallying cry of sexual violence survivors. One of those college campus Tarana Burke events was hosted recently at Webster University. “I’ve been crisscrossing the country having conservations on college campuses and in communities to talk about what the Me Too movement is actually about, and really to do the work of shifting the narrative of what mainstream media and corporate America and other people are saying that is,” Burke said. “I’m really hoping to deputize people to also be messengers, to go out and talk about what this work is actually about. And we have so much work to do that it can’t be done by one person.” “Me Too” was popularized on social media in 2017 when actress Alyssa Milano began using it as
See BURKE, A7
Seed to STEM at SLPS Monsanto Fund supports hands-on learning with Gateway Greening and public schools By LaShana (Shän) Lewis For The St. Louis American
n The Seed to STEM program acts as an outdoor school that connects PK-5 students to gardening and nature.
It was too cold to go outside during the first day of spring, but the pre-kindergartners at Clay Academy of Exploration and Civics were still looking forward to learning more about gardening from a man they referred to as “Mr. Nick.” Mr. Nick is Nicholas Speed, a youth educator for Gateway Greening, whose Seed to STEM program was recently awarded a $205,000 grant from the Monsanto Fund for
2018-2019. Gateway Greening has helped students and teachers in St. Louis schools support their own gardens for many years. The Seed to STEM program acts as an outdoor school that connects PK-5 students to gardening and nature.
Five schools are currently benefitting from it, including Clay Academy, an elementary school in the St. Louis Public School District whose students are 98.1 percent African-American. The gardens are used as classrooms and learning laboratories, which has allowed students
to get hands-on experience with learning about the soil and food they grow. This day’s lesson centered on earthworms. Speed placed a large dishpan full of pipe cleaners, paper cups, and various other items on a small table in the corner of the colorful room and headed toward the front of the class. The students had all just finished their alphabets, led by a student, and settled down on color carpet blocks.
See STEM, A6