ABOUT CARA SPENCER AND SOMETHINGS ABOUT ME

I am not a Cara Spencer fan.  Like Jones she is neoliberal that calls herself a progressive.  (Showing up at demos but passing neoliberal legislation and getting cozy with developers that make large donations to your mayoral campaign is a perfect illustration of "not walking your talk.") 

I am not impressed with her record at the BOA, and she doesn't seem to be strong enough to stand up to the St. Louis Ole Boys, both the county country club set, and the ones in City Hall and other agencies that receive public money.  And like Jones I believe will end up in their pocket. In fact, my prediction is that she will win and that she will be Jones part 2. (And hopefully Spencer will prove me wrong.  I love being wrong about matters such as these.)

There is a personal side to this, too, though. In the next post below DEAR SAINT LOUIS: ARPA FUNDS PART 3- DO SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE WITH THE MONEY

there is a section about the homeless:

I’d like to know why at least $32 million wasn’t allocated for the unhoused? This would provide the same level of shelter as Biddle House was able to provide when managed by Homefull for 2700 people. (Biddle House under Homefull was $28 per night, per bed.) And there are issues with 2-1-1. Hire the people volunteering. Hire the people that are already doing the work. Another $16 million for the unhoused would bring the budgeted total to $50 million. Leaving a balance of $448 million.

I had talked to a lot of people about this. There is a spreadsheet that goes with it with more detail.** I had talked about and given it to everyone that was active or volunteered around the homeless, and I had a proposal and list of people and locations to fully implement a plan for a 24 hour shelter.

Most people that were familiar with the system just guffawed and told me I was dreaming and there was no way. But I kept pushing. If the city had taken my proposal and let me get it set up, I think it would still be going on. It was very comprehensive, and no one I talked to had anything like it mapped out.

This was roughly 2017 through 2019, and part of the plan also included the St Louis City ID (see my previous post) and the ID was to include block by block neighborhood emergency preparations, and transient ID's for the homeless population.

From the same post: The best thing the city can do right now is prosper the citizens directly. I’ve suggested before breaking the city down into sections and working to create sustainable neighborhoods. How about a network of 1,240 residents that are prepared to oversee 250 individual people each, in case of natural disasters or other emergencies? $12-15 million allocated to creating this type of network would prepare us for the next pandemic, tornado, flood, etc.

(I have started a blog specifically for this and have been focusing mostly on this issue since last summer WHEN THERE IS AN EMERGENCY/ CUANDO HAY UNA EMERGENCIA )

I have been talking to people and handing out flyers since 1981.  The name on this profile, Leah Carder, is Red Rachael backwards.  That was the nickname given to me when I was 15 and became political.  And yes, I started out as communist.  (See LETTERS FROM AN OLD ACTIVIST: 50501 FACEBOOK AND REDDIT POST WITH BIO )

Since 1992 I have been on my own, doing whatever I felt wasn't being addressed or joining or volunteering with other groups.  Mostly in Los Angeles, where I lived from 1985 until 2010, with two forays back here in 1995 and parts of 07 and 08. And while I lived there the population was about 12 million, twice the size of the state of Missouri. 

And yet I received more responses, and gratitude, from city and state leaders and organizations there than I ever have here. Certainly, some of the ideas I have had others could have had as well.  But often I will hear from someone that "it was your email" that prompted it.  But always "you didn't hear it from me". 

(There doesn't seem to be a lot of original thinkers in power here.  I had three somewhat positive responses to the City ID card, but most people would say "We have state I.D.s." Completely missing the point. Of course, this is a city where in 2011 I had an employee of City Hall argue with me, loudly and insultingly that "St. Louis doesn't have a port!" It was in a coffeehouse on Delmar. This person refused to acknowledge me whenever we would see each other after that, I assume because they educated themselves and learned they were wrong.  A few years later, for political gain, I think it was Steve Stenger that actually investigated the corruption that I had been talking about that had started that argument.)   

Anyhow, after I sent this email to Mayor Jones and the BOA members, someone told me "You didn't hear this from me but" Spencer apparently had been using my spreadsheet as her own.  Thankfully I post everything on facebook (all these letters are posted there too) and unlike blogger you can't alter the publication dates.  And also, thankfully I have friends that read it. 

Spencer hadn't been on my radar at all.  I don't live in her ward, and I didn't even move to the city until summer of 2018. I'd heard from a few activists that she was verbally supportive of programs for the unhoused, and that she was "progressive" but when I started asking around about her, I found many people who told me that she did this a lot (took an idea introduced to her by someone else, including formal proposals) and passed them off as her own.

Is it true? I don't know.  She certainly never contacted me to say that she was working on something like this. I also looked up her record and have kept an eye on her ever since. Needless to say I was hoping Butler would be on the ballot. 

And back towards the beginning of February, on the day of the first 50501 demonstration, I met a strange woman at the tiny demo I went to.  She wouldn't tell me her name, but I thought she was a newbie and paranoid. I had my emergency prep leaflets and had given them to everyone. 

Again "you didn't hear it from me, but you saw Cara somewhere because you gave her one of your leaflets."  I'd only been a few places that week, and the odd young woman that had refused to say her name and seemed to avoid conversation with me. (I have problems recognizing even people I know. And I become a chatterbox to fill the void and was so grateful when more people had shown up that were more engaging with me.  I think I probably have always been a high masking autistic.  Even before I heard about this, I had been bothered for hours after the demo about "what had I done wrong to that weird young lady?") 

I took a picture of her sign, which I had admired, but not of her face, so I can't verify this was the place. (Her sign said Department of Oligarchs Gutting our Economic security- with each line start with a capital letter spelling out "DOGE".) 

My (probably TLDR) point here is that I am not the only person that deals with this. And in St. Louis it is mostly unpaid activists that create change and actually provide safety nets, and the people at City Hall that spend the public money and congratulate themselves for everything they think is good and condemn and blame others for all the bad. 

One hilarious part of Spencer's interview with Sarah Fenske was her insistence in one part of the interview that the BOA was to the Mayor as Congress to the President. And then in several other parts of that interview, and other interviews, insistence that the BOA had limited capabilities, required the public's active participation to get anything done, and that were too often burdened by jobs that were the Mayor's. 

And I do have a lot to say in another post about Velasquez and her desire for the City to create another expensive department for a City Manager because apparently NO ONE at City Hall can figure out how to get the streets ploughed. 

Again, somewhere I have an email about how to do that by breaking the whole city down into small chunks and hiring people in the communities to oversee much of these things, as well as integrating it into emergency preparedness and community policing, among other things.  I won't hold my breath for a call from City Hall, though.  I will just wait for some lesser version, probably badly executed and expensive, to be introduced by someone in office. 

Sincerely... etc...

*The details were almost impossible to get, thanks again to the fact that the City constantly outsources everything, and those entities are not required to be transparent. One of the reasons I am not a Darlene Green fan is that I have never been able to get any information from her office.

In the whole of City Hall, I've had so few helpful responses about ANYTHING that I remember them clearly. Sharon Tyus responding to my questions about publication rules on the City Journal, Anne Schweitzer responding to my email about landlords and rent control, and the receptionist helping me when I was having a meltdown over getting no response to my personal application for Arpa funds. None of the people I was directed to would even answer their phones or return my calls, except for one really nasty woman that told me "It's on the website, you should just go there but wouldn't give me a direct web address.

The receptionist did give the direct address. The City website is badly constructed, and new pages don't always link properly or at all. Lots of broken links. And while the information I was seeking was there, it was not easily found if you didn't already know where it was. I had so many friends helping me, and none of us were able to find it without the direct link.

Once you have dealt with City Hall a few times you begin to understand why this city is in such bad shape, and that has been my experience for the whole 9 years I've been back here, through Slay, Krewson, and Jones.