Six months ago St. Louis was the scene of almost-daily street protests over the acquittal of a former St. Louis police officer, Jason Stockley, on first-degree murder charges in the shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith, who was black. One of the stated goals of the protesters was to disrupt the region’s businesses and economy. This week McPherson is examining whether those efforts were successful.
On Sunday I interviewed State Rep. Bruce Franks (D-St. Louis) briefly on the sidelines of a rally at the 2720 Cherokee Performing Arts Center in south St. Louis that kicked off his re-election campaign. Franks was one of the most visible faces of the demonstrations against the Stockley verdict.
Sunday’s rally was lively and featured one supporter’s homemade cakes decorated with images of Franks (a photo I snapped appears at the top of this article). An edited version of the interview follows.
McPherson: One of the rallying cries for protesters last fall at places like the Galleria shopping mall was “No justice, no profits.” Why was that an important theme?
Bruce Franks: If you look back historically, the things that have worked as far as protests (go), were those that targeted the economic value of something. Whether it was a bus boycott, whether it was a department store, whether it was an entire city or municipality: When folks start to lose money, when money starts to get allocated in places that they don’t want it allocated, people start to listen. So by concentrating on those who profit, as well as (concentrating on) some of the ways that our resources are allocated, we were able to bring a light to the city. When we talk about police overtime, when we talk about the impact to particular parts of the city, when we talk about the mall… We needed that platform to get attention and let folks know that this is what’s going to happen if things continue to go the way they are.
Q: We’re six months on from the height of the protests. What have been some of the lasting effects on businesses and the region’s economy?
BF: Longer term, what I’ve seen is more businesses willing to engage the community. I’ve seen more police, as of late, get more into the community. We’ve got a new police chief [John Hayden] who is big on community policing as well as community engagement. We have a new public safety director [Jimmie Edwards]. I think those are tangible results from the protests.
Q: When you say you see businesses engaging in the community, what do you mean?
BF: I always say (to business owners): You came into the community; the community didn’t come into your business district. Most of these communities have been here for years and years. It’s our job as business owners to invest in the community and engage the community, because for one, those are our customers. If you can’t treat the people in the community right, your business won’t be successful. [Take] Cherokee Street, for instance, which has done a pretty good job in the last three or four years of engaging the community. That’s what it’s about.
Q: McPherson reported over the weekend that St. Louis City has spent $6.8 million on overtime pay for police officers since the Stockley protests began. Not all of that amount went for policing during the protests. Even so, what’s your reaction to a figure like that?
BF: It brings up a big question mark. If we have four million dollars… five million dollars… six million dollars… to spend on police overtime, for [protests involving] folks who come and exercise their First Amendment rights, how come we don’t have that same availability in our crime-ridden, violent neighborhoods… that we live in each and every day, when we have 200-plus murders [in the city during 2017]? How much of that could we have put into the police department… to hire more officers, outside of raising our taxes? What happens if another protest comes along that is even more in-depth? Then we’re taking [the money] from that same base, and paying for more overtime officers.
Q: It’s been almost four years since the protests that followed a Ferguson police officer’s killing of Michael Brown. If you think about that, along with the Stockley protests, and all the media coverage that happened around both of them, what do you think the long-term economic and reputational effects on St. Louis will be? Are we seeing some of those effects already? And if so, what should the region do as a whole?
BF: What the community can do as a whole – the entire region – is understand why these protests are happening. Let’s have a real conversation to understand why, so we can get to the root causes; so we can make sure our voices are being heard on all these different levels. I think that we have seen some of the long-term effects. On top of the Stockley protests, we had the NAACP bring a travel ban [covering the entire state of Missouri]. Then you have conferences that don’t want to come here; our hospitality industry takes a hit. You don’t want that for the folks that are working there. We do want to bring money into the city. We do want to make sure that we’re generating tax dollars to go into our economy, but at what expense? At the expense of systemic racism and systemic oppression? No, we’re not going to stand for that. When you have a particular part of the city that hasn’t reaped the benefits of any of these tax dollars that are coming in… We keep seeing “beautiful Downtown” and “beautiful Central West End,” and half a mile away from these places you have disenfranchisement. We’ve got to figure out how we can make it a more equitable city first.
