Action St. Louis

St. Louis aldermen are planning to bring back a proposal that would provide tenants facing eviction with legal representation.

St. Louis Alderwoman Chistine Ingrassia wants tenants to have lawyers in evictions, a proposal that could cost about $1.6 million a year.

The Ferguson uprising in 2014 was widely tweeted. It gave a voice to people who often have been ignored by traditional media. What happens if the platform goes up in smoke?

People in the St. Louis region are still reeling from the effects of flash flooding last week.

Action St. Louis and Arch City Defenders will host a town hall for renters at 6 p.m. today. Renters from the St. Louis area can speak with housing advocates about housing issues, eviction questions and how to build a tenant-led housing movement in St. Louis.

As Kayla Reed and a new generation of local leaders saw each of their reform efforts fail to curb police violence in the St. Louis area, they soon realized that what they really had to overcome was the police union’s political force in local elections.

It’s been more than six years since Michael Brown’s killing made St. Louis the epicenter of the most promising civil rights movement since the 1960s. Yet despite stacks of studies and seemingly unprecedented public support for change, St. Louis has not seen a single substantive victory for police reform, thanks in large part to an influential police union and a larger police apparatus that has stymied accountability.

Kayla Reed shares what she saw at the City Justice Center and the Medium Security Institution, better known as the Workhouse — and what she hopes city leaders will do with those observations.

In St. Louis, there are many stories about how environmental racism impacts everyday people and their health, housing, and daily lives. So in this season, we’ll use the Washington University Interdisciplinary Environmental Law Clinic’s 2019 report on Environmental Racism in St. Louis to guide us through conversations about the top environmental issues facing the most vulnerable communities in St. Louis. In this episode, we look back at how St. Louis’ history of systemic racism has impacted the living environments of low-income and Black residents, how the report featured stories of everyday people, and what type of environment the report’s recommendations could create for the next generation.

On Wednesday's "St. Louis on the Air," we heard from two struggling tenants at the Fountains at Carondelet as well as Lee Camp, an attorney with ArchCity Defenders. Kennard Williams, a lead organizer with Action St. Louis and active member of the St. Louis Housing Defense Collective, joined host Sarah Fenske throughout the discussion, and also interacted with callers.