Art, connection and healing
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St. Louis American See page A10
The
CAC Audited JUNE 19 – 25, 2025
Serving, empowering and advocating for equity in St. Louis since 1928
Vol. 97 No. 11 COMPLIMENTARY
stlamerican.com
Residents file suit against state control over SLMPD
Delmar Maker storms back to business
By Ashley Winters St. Louis American St. Louis resident Jamala Rogers and Mike Milton are challenging Missouri’s legislative attempt to usurp control of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD) through House Bill 495. In a lawsuit filed on their behalf by ArchCity Defenders, Rogers and Milton maintain that the law violates the Missouri Constitution by imposing special legislation on a single jurisdiction and by levying an unfunded mandate against St. Louis City taxpayers. “As we can see from recent legislative sessions, this is a pattern of overturning the vision of everyday people who are living and trying to make St. Louis home, despite extreme obstacles,” says Blake Strode, Executive Director of ArchCity Defenders. “Particularly, in this post-tornado landscape, it is clear that public safety means a lot of things: we need money for things like emergency systems,
See SLMPD, A6
Tornado relief concert held Tuesday By Alvin A. Reid St. Louis American
Photo courtesy of ArchCity Defenders
Jamala Rogers, co-founder and executive director of the Organization for Black Struggle.
Steve Ewing, founder of Steve’s Hot Dogs, was driving east from downtown toward his restaurant in the Delmar Maker District on afternoon of May 16, 2025. By the time the usually short trek had ended, parts of the St. Louis area had been slammed by a tornado that left catastrophic damage totaling at least $1.6 billion. “I was trying to make my way back,” Ewing said during the Build Back the Block tornado relief concert Tuesday evening at the Maker District at Steve Ewing Delmar and Union. “I was thinking ‘the sky looks terrible’ as I was driving.” Steve’s Hot Dogs and The Fountain were directly impacted by the storm and, like thousands of other businesses, were forced to shut down.
See EWING, A7
Photo by Lawrence Bryant
‘No Kings’
Charles Barnes marches through downtown St. Louis carrying an American flag during the ‘No Kings’ protest on Saturday, June 15, 2025. Demonstrators made their way through downtown demanding the preservation of democracy and civil liberties. “This is everyone’s fight,” Barnes said, emphasizing the shared responsibility to stand up against authoritarianism.
Ferguson defunding consent decree In Aug. 2016, two years after the police shooting death of Michael Brown, Jr., U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry approved a 131-page consent agreement between the City of Ferguson and the U. S. Justice Department. Demonstrations in 2014 over
Brown’s questionable death prompted the department’s investigation into the city’s police and court practices. The result was a 105-page report alleging patterns of illegal stops, searches, arrests and routine violations of citizen’s constitutional rights -driven partly by racial bias. The decree outlined fundamental changes including a method to track compliance, police body cameras, better
BUSINESS
Debate continues in Senate By Alvin A. Reid St. Louis American
police training and a means to end the court’s practice of extorting money from poor people with excessive and spiraling fines. The Ferguson City Council approved the decree in its entirety in 2016 but only after the Justice Department threatened to sue after it tried to amend parts of the decree.
According to a study by Urban Institute and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the House-approved bill dramatically cutting Medicaid funding now being debated by the Senate would have a cataclysmic impact on American healthcare. Analysis concludes that hospitals would lose $321 billion in spending from the reconciliation process, physicians would face an $81 billion cut, and spending on prescription drugs would decline by $191 billion from 2025 to 2034. During that same decade, U.S. hospitals would deal with a $63 billion increase in uncompensated care. services sought by patients and other providers must be delivered without reimbursement.
See FERGUSON, A7
See MEDICAID, A7
County NAACP says no By Sylvester Brown, Jr. St. Louis American
Medicaid cuts would injure Missouri’s health
SPORTS
Kwame remains on scene in devastated O’Fallon Park
A high five for the departed Bennie Lewis
The Kwame Building Group and its philanthropic arm, Kwame Charitable Foundation, have constructed teams to provide immediate relief for the tornado survivors.
Legendary high school basketball coach Bennie Lewis, the architect of the East St. Louis Lincoln boys’ basketball dynasty during the 1980s, passed away last week.
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