November 12 2015

Ferguson Commission applicant trained Ferguson mayor in leadership

St. Louis American FOCUS St. Louis, which wants to implement the Ferguson Commission’s calls to action, trained key leaders in Ferguson government.

See A11

The

CAC Audited NOVEMBER 12 – 18, 2015

stlamerican.com

Victory leads to threats at Mizzou

Protests end in resignations – and reprisals

By Mariah Stewart and Tyler Kingkade Of The Huffington Post COLUMBIA, Mo. – What started Monday morning as a celebration for University of Missouri activists in achieving victory with resignations of both the system’s president and the flagship campus’ chancellor has quickly shifted to an atmosphere many students are saying is more unsafe than ever.

Clashes with journalists, heated online debates,

threats posted to social media and called into the Black Student Center, and instances of black students reporting white individuals calling them to hurl racial slurs have exacerbated the racial tensions that prompted the activism to begin with.

Many students planned to skip class on Wednesday, November 11 following threats and rumors about what was happening on campus on

n “How is it that so many community members seem to care about black lives only when they are on the field?”

– Alanna Diggs, Mizzou student

See MIZZOU, A6

Rally for $15 minimum wage

Photo by Wiley Price

Blessed in STL COGIC’s 108th Holy Convocation brings T.D. Jakes, Denzel Washington to town “God has blessed during our time in St. Louis,” said Church of God In Christ Presiding Bishop Charles Blake Sr. during service on Sunday, November 8 in the Edward Jones Dome.

As 25,000 saints came marching into the city for the 108th Holy Convocation from November 2-9, the church counted the region as one of

COMPLIMENTARY

Inclusion plan for stadium project released Aldermen, advocates say process rushed, plan inadequate

By Rebecca Rivas Of The St. Louis American

Fast food workers, Black Lives Matter activists, union members and elected officials held a rally on Tuesday, November 10 in front of St. Louis City Hall.

The rally was in support of a nationwide 24-hour strike for a $15 minimum wage and union rights.

By Kenya Vaughn Of The St. Louis American

Vol. 86 No. 32

n According to COGIC, the 2015 Holy Convocation created an estimated $27 million economic impact for St. Louis.

Photo by Wiley Price

the many things they were thanking God for in the midst of worship, See COGIC, A7

St. Louis License Collector Mavis Thompson presented COGIC Presiding Bishop Charles Blake Sr. with a cross when the 108th Holy Convocation was opened in St. Louis on November 3.

When the Ballpark Village project at Busch Stadium was in the planning phase, St. Louis city leaders and the developers presented an inclusion plan that many applauded – even some minority advocacy groups.

Yet when the construction phase began, some aldermen discovered that the city’s St. Louis Development Corporation (SLDC) had allowed developers Cordish Company and the St. Louis Cardinals to leave undisclosed millions in construction costs unmonitored when it comes to hiring minorities and women.

Buried deep in Ballpark Village’s development agreement was language that allowed developers to only monitor the “outside shell” of the building and not the inside construction.

SLDC Executive Director Otis Williams told The St. Louis American they were well aware of the clause and justified the decision by saying, “You can’t n “This is as restrictive” when what you get be competing for national when not projects. everyone is The aldermen were at the table.” left completely in the dark.

On Tuesday, – Aldermen November 10, some Antonio – not all – aldermen French were presented with an inclusion plan for the proposed $1 billion stadium. That was nearly two weeks after the stadium ordinance was introduced.

The inclusion plan – meant to ensure that minority businesses and workers are employed on the project – is six pages long.

The plan was not included in the ordinance that will be discussed at Thursday’s Ways and Means Committee meeting. Hence, the plan currently has no legal standing.

“Nothing is included in the actual bill right now,” said Aldermen Antonio French, a member of the committee, who received a copy of the inclusion plan on Tuesday afternoon. “This is not even close to being sufficient. This is what you get when not everyone is at the table.”

Aldermanic President Lewis Reed said he has reached out to members of the Ways and Means Committee so that “a comprehensive and, most importantly, realizable inclusion plan” can be written into the ordinance.

See STADIUM, A6

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2015

A2

relationship.

Fox’s final clap back on Twitter seemed to compel 50 to put away his social media ammunition.

“I got some stories stored in my vault too,” Fox tweeted. “He can try it if he wants…”

THE STUFF THAT HAS PEOPLE TALKING Vivica Fox’s gay claims ignite online war with 50 Cent

she came forward with the allegations earlier this year Cosby’s then lawyer, Marty Singer, called her a liar.

She is seeking unspecified damages.

Did the Kardashians fake a Lamar Odom visit?

all your contact info and reach out to you upon my release – which won’t be long.

Much respect.”

Blood clots force Tamar to withdraw from DWTS

Despite fighting through illness to perform Last week paparazzi staked on “Dancing With the Stars” on Apollo outside Cedars Sinai Hospital Monday night, Tamar Braxton has Another lawsuit has been brought Nida in LA caught the Kardashian had to pull out of the competition.

Last night Vivica Fox implied her against Bill Cosby. The latest one family dutifully visiting The singer had been hospitalized ex-boyfriend, rapper 50 Cent, was gay on comes courtesy of Kristina Ruehli – Lamar Odom on his birthday. during rehearsals, purportedly for “Watch What Happens Live.” who accuses Cosby of trying to rape her Sources told Terez Owens the pneumonia, but returned to avoid being Fox and Kandi Burruss were chatting back in 1965 when she was 22 years old.

Kardashians were not actually allowed disqualified for not performing. Early with Andy Cohen on “Watch What Happens Ruehli claims she met Bill Cosby when he to visit Odom because he turned them Wednesday, she posted a picture of Live” when Cohen mentioned a meme 50 Cent came into the agency where she worked as a away at the door. herself in a hospital bed with partner posted on Instagram claiming Empire ratings secretary and invited her to a party, but when Odom is said to be furious at Khloe Val Chmerkovskiy sitting beside her. dropped because of too much “gay stuff.” she arrived the house was empty. for running back to James Harden and “After yesterday’s final #dwts “First of all it’s the pot calling the She alleges Cosby gave her a drink.

Tamar upset Kris Jenner used him to promote performance I went back to the hospital kettle black, that’s all I’m saying,” Fox After consuming the drink she said her 60th birthday bash. (after the doctors didn’t want me to Braxton responded. “We had a great time. I mean, she became woozy – and later leave in the first place) only to find he just seems like he’s got something woke up naked with Cosby’s out that I don’t have pneumonia but that’s not quite clear.” genitals in her face and his hand something way more serious and that is An early release for Apollo?

She said 50 looked like a “booty on the back of her head. having several P.E.’s (blood clots in both sides snatcher” on a magazine cover with She was one of the women listed of my lungs),” a portion of the caption read.

Last year, “Real Housewives of Atlanta” rapper Soulja Boy. Fox later to testify in the 2005 sexual “As you all know I will be the first to always star Phaedra Parks’ husband Apollo Nida was apologized to Soulja Boy for her assault lawsuit brought by encourage anyone to push through any obstacle sentenced to eight years in prison for bank remarks.

Temple University sports that comes along one’s way. But in this case, 50 Cent commenced to director Andrea Constand, fraud and identity theft. my health is my current obstacle.”

Could Apollo be coming home sooner than dragging Fox through several which Cosby settled before expected…? social media channels, with it went to trial.

In a letter posted on Radar Online, the Sources: RadarOnline.com, The New York unflattering photos and Ruehli is suing Bill embattled former reality star says Post, TMZ.com , Terez Owens, CNN.com, explicit details of their sexual Cosby for defamation of “Thanks for the love and support. I’ll hold Instagram encounters during their brief character because when Vivica Fox

Cosby catches another case

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ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2015

Remembering Homer G. Phillips Hospital

John Wright places medical icon in context of Ville community

By Mark Loehrer For The St. Louis American

On Friday, October 23, the 20th annual Homer G. Phillips Public Health Lecture Series featured local author and historian John Wright as keynote speaker. Wright’s topic was “Homer G. Phillips and the Ville: Celebrating the Legacy.”

Will Ross, assistant dean for Diversity at Washington University School of Medicine, introduced Wright. In his opening remarks, Ross criticized local media for what he claimed was factually challenged coverage of a recent scandal.

The scandal involved accusations that the hospital staff illegally took babies and offered them for adoption during the 1940‘60s .

Lamenting the harm that this coverage caused to the hospital’s reputation, Ross announced a potentially promising development: the nationally broadcast program “20/20” has agreed to produce a program on the Homer G. Phillips “scandal.”

Wright prefaced his lecture with comments on the relationship between St. Louis and its black history, stating, “It’s easy for St. Louis to forget the role blacks have had in the making of the region.”

He noted the controversy surrounding the Siegfried Reinhardt mural at LambertSt. Louis International Airport. Wright pointed out that only through popular protest was a companion mural constructed depicting the role of blacks in the history of flight.

To Wright, Homer G. Phillips Hospital reflected the work and sacrifice of the surrounding community. He insinuated that the hospital’s story provides a metaphor for the black experience in St. Louis – nothing has been achieved without a fight.

Despite the passage of a 1923 bond, the city refused to allocate funds towards a new facility, instead favoring a segregated add-on to City Hospital. Only through a sustained effort on the part of Homer G. Phillips himself, with the black community’s support, did the city finally relent and allow an all-black hospital to be built. With the hospital’s dedication in 1937, at 2601 N. Whittier in the heart of the Ville, the segregated community finally

Local author and historian John Wright spoke on “Homer G. Phillips and the Ville: Celebrating the Legacy” on October 23 at Washington University School of Medicine. Photo by Lois Ingrum

had its own hospital.

Before Wright began his talk, Dr. Larry Shapiro, executive vice chancellor at Washington University School of Medicine, stated that Homer G. Phillips Hospital fostered a “culture of equity and excellence.” Wright’s lecture reinforced this by reminding attendees of why the hospital was so important, not just in St. Louis but nationally.

As one of just two hospitals of its caliber, it served as a primary training facility for young doctors, attracting nearly 50 percent of black medical

n Dr. Larry Shapiro of Washington University School of Medicine said Homer G. Phillips Hospital fostered a “culture of equity and excellence.” school graduates. For the first half of the hospital’s lifespan, St. Louis remained segregated. Wright stated that thanks to the hospital and its high-caliber staff, blacks in St. Louis had access to a level of care that surpassed anything they could receive from a white hospital in that period.

More important still, Wright pointed out, was the connection that existed between the hospital and the Ville neighborhood

where it stood. The Ville, he noted, provided the foundation for the black middle class in the period after segregation, boasting one of the best high schools in the Midwest in Sumner High School.

It was not uncommon, Wright stated, for those living near Homer G. Phillips to personally know a doctor who worked at the hospital. Many women from the Ville and neighboring black communities worked at the hospital as nurses.

For students at Sumner High School, the hospital provided proof that hard work could lead to success and respect. In effect, the hospital, which physically towered over the Ville, was a symbol of the strength of the black community, despite segregation.

However, soon after segregation ended in St. Louis, closing Homer G. Phillips became part of the city’s political agenda.

Wright concluded that the closure of the hospital in 1979 was a betrayal of the trust between the white and black communities.

He characterized the move as the action of a politically weak mayor, a mayor unwilling to confront whites in South City with the fact that the aging City Hospital was the more suitable building to close.

Thus, one of the largest employers of middle class blacks in the region was closed. Wright stressed this was particularly devastating to the economic vitality of the North Side, which was already suffering the effects of migration to the county.

Police reform is not sufficient

A3

By Jesse L. Jackson Sr. Guest columnist

It used to be said that blacks carried twice the burden of whites. Unemployment rates among African Americans are generally twice those of whites. Poverty is nearly three times that of whites. Homeownership is about 60 percent that of whites.

In critical ways, African Americans rank even lower. The typical African-American household, for example, has about 1/10 the wealth of the typical white household, a disparity that has tripled over the past decade.

Now a study by the New York Times documents what we know to be true: Driving while black is dangerous. African Americans are significantly more likely to be pulled over while driving for traffic violations than whites. When pulled over, they are twice as likely to be searched, even though police are far more likely to find drugs and weapons in the searches of whites than blacks.

In Chicago, blacks are five times more likely to be searched when stopped than white drivers, even though the police are less likely to find contraband when searching them.

Part of the reason, police argue, is that African Americans are more likely to live in impoverished neighborhoods. As the Washington Post reported, poor African Americans are 10 times more likely to live in high-poverty census tracts than poor whites.

In Chicago, about 35 percent of poor African Americans live in poor neighborhoods while Guest Columnist about 4 percent of whites do.

Housing discrimination, zoning patterns, Jesse L. Jackson Sr. redlining by banks, public housing construction all combine to pen poor African Americans in poor neighborhoods. And then the police are assigned to patrol aggressively in what quickly become “high-crime districts.”

This is a recipe for tension, suspicion and violence. And as distrust rises, crimes go unsolved as residents don’t trust the police enough to cooperate.

We need reform of our criminal injustice system, better monitoring and training of police, who should live in the neighborhoods that they patrol. But police reform is not sufficient.

We need a transformation of housing policy to spread lowcost housing across metropolitan areas. We need aggressive enforcement of laws against redlining, a crackdown on banks and auto companies that target African Americans for the highest rate and trickiest loans. We need real investment to put people to work, to provide public transport that can take them to where the jobs are, and to give children a fair start from the beginning.

It is time to convene a National Commission on Race and Poverty.

Jesse L. Jackson Sr. is founder and president of the Chicago-based Rainbow PUSH Coalition. You can keep up with his work at www.rainbowpush.org

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Rev. 11/15

Editorial / Commentary A4

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2015

How change should – and does – come about “This is not – I repeat, not – the way change should come about,” University of Missouri system president Tim Wolfe said as he resigned on Monday, November 9, in response to ongoing student protests, one brave student’s hunger strike and a stunning boycott by the football team.

Those who stand in the way of change do not – we repeat, do not – get to choose how change goes down.

Wolfe went on to claim that “change comes from listening, learning, caring and conversation.” He should have been more willing to listen to black student concerns in a caring manner, and more attentive to festering racial hostilities, then perhaps he and chancellor R. Bowen Loftin, who also resigned, would still hold leadership positions.

Wolfe should have been willing to listen to student concerns on October 10, when a student protest shut down streets near campus during Mizzou’s Homecoming Parade. The snazzy red car ferrying Wolfe was snared in the street shutdown. Rather than getting out of the car to engage with students, Wolfe sat silently inside the vehicle – including when his driver clipped one protestor in an attempt to drive through the protest line.

Wolfe waited nearly a month before he commented on this disgraceful incident. By then, Jonathan Butler had started his courageous hunger strike. The day after Wolfe’s belated and tepid response, Mizzou’s black football players announced a strike from football activities, in solidarity with Butler and the Concerned Student 1950 movement. When Coach Gary Pinkel and the rest of the team sided with its black majority – threatening disaster for Mizzou’s lucrative football program – Wolfe was far past the point of getting to decide how change would come about.

As we wrote in this space just last week, “if Ferguson taught us anything, it’s that the world can be turned upside down and the public – very much including marginalized sectors of the public – can and will force elected officials to do things their way.” Officials of every variety had better pay close attention to the fate of Tim Wolfe. Ferguson was a transformational moment that continues to spark movements that are capable of forcing dramatic, abrupt changes for officials accustomed to setting a slow pace of change through “listening, learning, caring and conversation,” or what have you. We are in an era of direct action, and officials who lack the courage and empathy to react with grace under the pressure of direct action may well find themselves complaining about how change is not supposed to happen, after change has overwhelmed them.

As black students at Mizzou celebrated a victory, and reacted fearfully to threats and reprisals from bigots, the Ferguson Commission

Photo by Mariah Stewart

The Carnahan Quad at the University of Missouri – Columbia was the scene of mass protests over racial issues on campus that culminated on Monday, November 9 with the resignations of both the system president and the campus chancellor.

– whose mantra is “STL Positive Change” – interviewed the only organization that applied to officially continue its work after the commission expires on December 31. That applicant, FOCUS St. Louis, prides itself on training leaders in St. Louis. Given the position in which the St. Louis region finds itself, perhaps the last group we want leading positive change is an organization that prides itself on having trained many of St. Louis’ current leaders. True, FOCUS St. Louis has trained the Rev. Starsky Wilson, the brilliant co-chair of the Ferguson Commission. But it also trained John Shaw, who resigned in disgrace as Ferguson’s city manager after the DOJ report revealed him colluding with Ferguson police and courts on a revenue scheme. It also trained Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III, who goes down in history with Tim Wolfe as a “leader” who was not anywhere near prepared for the challenging times in which he suddenly found himself.

In its presentation to the commission, FOCUS St. Louis sounded very much aligned with the “listening, learning, caring and conversation” model of pursuing change. That will not – we repeat, will not – get the job done in a direly needed transformation of the St. Louis region.

There are powerful and entrenched opponents to change in this region who will not listen to caring conversation, they will need to be deliberately opposed and defeated. We need creative and courageous leaders like the Ferguson protestors and Concerned Student 1950 organizers if we are going to bring racial equity to St. Louis. Many current leaders and the organizations that train them have everything to prove before they earn our trust.

As I See It - A Forum for Community Issues

Policies and programs

By The Rev. Starsky D. Wilson Guest columnist

In the ongoing struggle for social justice and equity, policies and programs can both be helpful tools. However, government officials and their constituents need to understand the distinctions between the two and the responsibility of governance for policy to institute real, progressive change.

Programs are short-term interventions that create temporary improvements in the wake of challenges. Policies, on the other hand, are covenants we collectively choose to live by, as articulated in legislation and regulation.

As a citizen of St. Louis, I’ve witnessed a massive outcry for policy intervention in the year since the killing of a black teenager by a white police officer in nearby Ferguson. To meet that demand, the Ferguson Commission has sought to clarify the best approach for ensuring that the momentous changes that our region and the rest of the country need can happen – and that they endure.

First, the commission, which I co-chair, identified a few mission-critical areas for driving equity and determined that what is needed is a system for averting racial injustice in policymaking. Whether through a city council, a state legislature or Congress, we must look carefully at the data and ask: Could certain populations be negatively affected by a piece of legislation?

This is where the distinction between programs and policies comes in. Ultimately, programs can’t eliminate the systemic injustices that any group faces. They can help people manage the effects

of these injustices, but they don’t overcome or cure them.

Policies, conversely, actually shift the way communities and their members react and relate to one another. We can only achieve equity for all through collective commitment to policy intervention and a clearly articulated picture of success.

The success of any program or policy is defined by the values a community holds. For America to live its values of liberty, justice and progress – marked by equity in health, income, housing and education by providing equal opportunities for success to all – both programs and policy must target economic mobility.

In 1873, Guest Columnist Susan Blow established Rev. Starsky D. the first publicly funded Wilson kindergarten in the United States at the Des Peres School in the Carondelet neighborhood of St. Louis. A decade later, every school in the city had kindergarten, leading the nation.

Now, when more than half of all public-school students live below the poverty line, every American child has access to this resource without restriction, The concept of public education and its systems were set up to guarantee equal access, making this an actual policy intervention and a nationwide commitment.

Subsequently, programs like Parents as Teachers (PAT), an evidence-based homevisiting model founded in Missouri in 1981, have been

replicated across various states.

This program requires school districts to visit parents at home and equip them to prepare their very young children for school by acting as their first teachers.

When programs like PAT are initiated at scale, they can drive a community’s values forward.

Hard-wiring a program into the state budget, establishing a federal presence, encouraging replication and making it accessible to all individuals are public commitments.

Because PAT scaled through public funding and legislation, it actually became a policy intervention.

The provision of civilian oversight for local police forces is another necessary policy intervention. If we hope to improve relationships between citizens and law enforcement in a sustainable way, these bodies should have subpoena power and authority to investigate issues surrounding police behavior.

For nearly two generations, American government has outsourced its policymaking responsibilities, shifting the burden to a fragmented landscape of nonprofit organizations running social programs rather than drafting policy that guides, nurtures and cultivates communities with fiscal commitments. Lasting change and social equity doesn’t happen overnight.

The surest way to achieve this vision is to collectively recommit to America’s values of justice and progress and to drive those values through widespread policy change.

Rev. Starsky Wilson is president/CEO of Deaconess Foundation, pastor of Saint John’s Church (The Beloved Community) and co-chair of the Ferguson Commission. Follow @revstarsky.

As I See It - A Forum for Community Issues

Calculated attempt to shift power

By Jared Boyd Guest columnist In the 1964 Supreme Court case Reynolds v. Sims, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote: “The fundamental principle of representative government in this country is one of equal representation for equal numbers of people.”

As a result of this decision, legislative districts, whether for state representative or U.S. Congress, have to be roughly equal in population.

The U.S. Supreme Court this term is reconsidering how legislative districts are drawn in Evenwel v. Abbott.

Currently, legislative districts are drawn and divided based on total population. Appellants/ plaintiffs in Evenwel claim legislative districts should be drawn and divided based on the number of eligible voters, instead of total population.

The difference between drawing districts based upon eligible voters and total population may seem technical.

However, apportioning legislative districts based on a new eligible voter population standard will disproportionately hurt the voting strength of communities with high numbers of children, immigrants and ex-convicts prevented from voting based upon state restrictions.

According to an amicus brief submitted by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, drawing legislative districts based upon total population would exclude 21 percent of whites, 55 percent of Latinos, 45 percent of Asian Americans and 30 percent of African Americans.

In Reynolds v. Sims, the U.S. Supreme Court deemed Alabama legislative districts originally drawn in 1901 unconstitutional because

they were grossly uneven in population. For over 60 years before the Reynolds case came to the Supreme Court, Alabama legislators refused to re-draw districts based upon population shifts.

It was not a coincidence that cities like Birmingham experienced an influx of new residents (largely AfricanAmerican) during and after World War II and were severely underrepresented in the state legislators. By 1960, Birmingham had 41 times the population of a rural county with the same number of legislators.

As a result of Reynolds, state legislative districts must be roughly equal in total population across a state.

While Guest Columnist Reynolds was largely Jared about African Boyd Americans moving to cities, Evenwel is motivated in part by Latino migration. Appellants in Evenwel claim that large numbers of “non-citizens” in Texas cause some districts to have uneven numbers of total voters in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

According to the Pew Research Center, only about 45 percent of Latinos are eligible to vote. This figure is low not just based upon non-citizen Latinos, but can also be attributed to the disproportionate number of Latinos younger than 18 years old.

Evenwel also has the potential to dilute AfricanAmerican voting power largely due to laws disenfranchising current or former felons.

Letters to the Editor Lessen the additional hardship The Congressional Black Caucus applauds the decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to lower rates for inmate calling services.

For several years, members of the CBC and the CBC Prison Telecom Working Group have regularly introduced legislation calling upon the FCC to regulate exorbitant calling rates for prisoners. And, earlier this year, our members met with the director of the Federal Bureau of Prison where we had a comprehensive and candid discussion about the excessive rates prisoners and their families are charged simply for trying to stay in touch.

Prior to this change, these prohibitively expensive phone calls could range up to nearly $14 dollars per minute and often force families and individuals to forgo contact with loved ones while they are incarcerated. The new caps reduce the average rates for phone calls substantially and lessen the additional hardship that many families are faced with while their loved ones are imprisoned.

G. K. Butterfield, chairman Congressional Black Caucus

Best assessment systems The Missouri Association of School Administrators believes that Missouri schools should be held accountable for a high quality education for every child. However, using a third grader’s test scores on a mandated standardized test that is given once in April, and using that test to rate the quality of the teacher, the principal, the school building, the superintendent and the school district and does nothing to improve the education of the child who took the test. The best assessment systems should be focused on

According to a 2012 Sentencing Project Report on felon disenfranchisement, 1 in 13 voting age African Americans is disenfranchised based upon a conviction, a rate more than four times than non-African-Americans. In Missouri 7 percent of African Americans, or 35,172 votingage people, are barred from voting based upon a current or previous felony.

If the appellants in Evenwel prevail, not only will former felons be prevented from voting, they will also not be counted in apportioning legislative districts. Denying communities of color representation for current or former felonies is even more perverse when considering incarceration rate disparities stemming from the War on Drugs. African Americans use drugs at roughly the same rate as non-African Americans, yet are policed and punished for drug related offenses far more severely.

Evenwel is a calculated attempt to shift political power to less diverse rural areas. This case is brought by the Project on Fair Representation, the legal organization responsible for gutting the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder two years ago. The Project on Fair Representation is also involved in another U.S. Supreme Court case this term, Fisher v. Texas, which could effectively end affirmative action in higher education.

Frederick Douglas famously stated: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” Evenwel is a stark reminder that not only progress, but also the preservation of previously won rights like equal representation, requires struggle.

Jared Boyd is president of the Mound City Bar Association.

All letters are edited for length and style.

providing meaningful feedback to the student, teacher and administrators. Much of the standardized testing students are presented with today do not measure critical thinking and creativity, but rather recall and knowledge.

Roger Kurtz, executive director Missouri Association of School Administrators

Comfortable talking about sex When teens and parents are comfortable talking about sexuality and relationships, parents can help their teens make healthier decisions.

Young people need to learn age-appropriate skills around healthy relationships, consent,

The largest weekly newspaper in Missouri 70,000 copies - CAC Audited 100% Independently owned & operated Continuously published, without interruption since 1928

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and communication – as well as how to recognize the signs of unhealthy relationships and how to leave an abusive relationship safely.

Planned Parenthood is committed to helping parents talk about healthy relationships and consent with their children at different ages.

Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri’s (PPSLR) parent program, Real Life. Real Talk, helps parents and teens open the lines of communication.

Check out Planned Parenthood. org for resources, guidance, and videos for parents and teens. To schedule a Real Life.

Real Talk. program for your group or organization, contact education@ppslr.org.

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ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 – 18, 2015

A5

Executive disorder

By state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal Guest columnist

Clay swears in youth cabinet

U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay recently swore in the 5th Class of Missouri’s 1st District Congressional Youth Cabinet at Harris-Stowe State University. Clay and Harris-Stowe State University President Dwaun J. Warmack welcomed 30 outstanding high school students from across St. Louis and St. Louis County.

The Congressional Youth Cabinet will advise Clay and his staff on key national and local issues that impact young people.

CWAH Gala is Nov. 15 Community Women Against Hardship will host its 27th Annual Circle of Support gala 5 p.m. Sunday, November 15 at the Sheldon Concert Hall, 3648 Washington Blvd. The Kimmie Horne ensemble – with special guest Althea Rene – are featured performers. Kimmie is the grandniece of the iconic Lena Horne.

Tickets range from $25-$100 and proceeds support CWAH’s work in the community. Call MetroTix at (314 ) 534-1111, send a check or money order payable to CWAH to CWAH Gala, 3963 West Belle Place, St. Louis, MO 63108 or visit www.cwah.org.

Hospice volunteers needed

Crossroads Hospice seeks compassionate volunteers to provide comfort, companionship and a helping hand to terminally-ill patients and their families in their homes, in assisted living facilities and nursing facilities. For more information or to sign up, contact Jessica Bray at (636) 735-2000 or Jessica.Bray@ crossroadshospice.com or visit https://www.crossroadshospice.com/hospice-volunteering/hospicevolunteering/.

Emerson supports Ferguson Middle School library

Emerson donated $5000 to the Ferguson Middle School library to support the diversification of books to engage more students in the love of reading and to purchase production resources for the student-run broadcasting studio, Echo Live. Holly James, library/media specialist at Ferguson Middle, determined the majority of the collection was over 10 years old. The collection is missing books for students reading at lower levels, high-interest books highlighting African-American characters, and fiction to appeal to youth culture.

The St. Louis region recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the completion of the Gateway Arch. Within the black community, there was abundant speculation about whether or not Percy Green II would be allowed to participate in the festivities. Those 50 years ago, Percy climbed the Arch to bring attention to the lack of black construction workers on the site.

The American reported that our illustrious governor declared the state is now ready to provide 10 percent of “goods and services” work to minorities and disadvantaged businesses.

At first glance, Governor Nixon’s Executive Order 15-06 appears to be a very small step forward in increasing opportunities for businesses owned by minorities and women to obtain more state contracts.

However, in what has become an all-too-familiar trademark of the Nixon administration, the executive order employs nebulous verbiage that, while appearing to move the state slowly forward in this area, in reality accomplishes very little for minorities and women in Missouri. Par for Mr. Nixon’s course, the devil appears in the details.

Executive Order 15-06 includes a “good faith waiver provision” for contractors who do not meet the benchmarks set forth in the order, but who “make a good faith effort to increase minority contracting.” Nixon has established a few new rules while concurrently informing contractors that they don’t have to follow these new rules if they don’t want to. Executive Order 15-06 doesn’t apply to contractors who do nothing at all, provided they say they tried.

While the order authorizes the establishment of “enforcement procedures” and “consequences” for contractors who fail to Maria meet the percentages delineated by the executive order, said Chappelle “consequences” are nowhere to be found in the Executive Order Nadal itself.

As a longtime follower of Mr. Nixon’s exploits, this tactic is nothing new. Just this summer, days before vetoing the bipartisan Student Transfer Bill, HB 42, Gov. Nixon announced his “historic agreement” to help the struggling school districts in the St. Louis region. However, a few weeks later, a House budget committee discovered that despite Mr. Nixon’s public statements to the contrary, there was indeed no official written agreement at all.

The person with whom the governor announced the plan told the committee: “When I heard ‘agreement,’ I thought to myself, ‘What agreement?’ There is no agreement.”

Gov. Nixon never had an education plan for Missouri. The agreement he announced only served one function: to provide a thinly veiled red herring in support of his HB 42 veto.

Executive Order 15-06 follows the same cynical template: announce an impressive-sounding plan that upon closer inspection is no plan at all. For his many shortcomings, Gov. Nixon certainly excels at Kabuki Theater.

Let’s pretend for a moment that Executive Order 15-06 had real teeth. Ten percent – after 50 years, we qualify for 10 percent of jobs? Are you okay with 10 percent? Minorities comprise 20 percent of the population in the state, over 30 percent of St. Louis County and 56 percent of St. Louis City. In Minnesota, they are celebrating goals of 30 percent minority and female participation. That’s Minnesota, which has a much smaller minority population.

In Mr. Nixon’s mind, over the last 50 years, we have gone from zero percent to 10. This is a shame. The governor’s executive order is similar to the work of his Ferguson Commission; it puts forth vague suggestions while in reality accomplishing nothing to grow the black middle-class or eliminate underemployed black communities.

Maria Chappelle-Nadal (D-University City) represents District 14 in the Missouri Senate.

A6

MIZZOU Continued from A1

Tuesday night. A Starbucks near campus was closed because too many employees of the store felt unsafe coming to work. The University of Missouri Police Department said it would increase patrols, and some deans and faculty emailed students offering them the option to stay home.

One member of the Concerned Student 1950 group, who wished to remain anonymous, said a majority of black students living in dorms are now living in “safe houses” off campus.

“A group of seven of us cannot walk alone because we are all people of color,” she said. “The campus is a ghost town right now. No one feels safe to go to class.”

She said students were asking for police escorts to go to their dorms, but the police “were not doing it.”

Captain Brian Weiner, of the campus police, said the department has been providing escorts but sometimes the wait is long. When asked if he thinks students should be concerned about threats, he said, “Campus is operating as normal. We have strong

STADIUM Continued from A1

The plan states that the project will adopt the city’s goals for contracts – which are 25 percent for minority-owned companies and five percent for women-owned companies, as well as 3 percent for Missouribased disabled veterans. On the workforce side, it aims for 25 percent minority workers and five percent women.

It does not specify how many local residents would be employed – in the city workforce ordinance, it is 20 percent, along with 15 percent apprentices.

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 – 18, 2015 law enforcement on campus.

There’s nothing specific to ramp it up more.”

The student said it’s ridiculous that the university claims the campus is safe.

“They had the nerve to say that there is no threat to campus, even though your whole black population evacuated campus,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

The Concerned Student 1950 group has received numerous death threats via social media and activists are “really stressed right now,” she said. That is why students were trying to preserve a safe space around the protest tent camp that they established on Carnahan Quad, she said.

“Everything escalated so quickly that I don’t think we were ready for any of this to happen,” said another student, a junior at Mizzou who also requested anonymity out of fear. “It came out of nowhere.

I never thought I was going to fear being on campus until last night.”

Around 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 10, this student said she was followed by three white college-aged men as she left the student center.

“There were some voices behind me, but I didn’t think anything of it,” this student

said. “But then they started N-word since I’ve been on saying things like, ‘Hey, Mizzou’s campus, but it was n***er.’ They kept getting never someone following me closer to me. So, I just kept into a dark place, like last walking.” night,” she said.

This student, who was At the time she called in wearing her work uniform, said the threat to her, university one of the males police were also remarked, “I didn’t investigating a n “They had think n***ers had series of other the nerve to jobs. I thought they threats on campus, say that there only took them.” some of which The three white were posted to is no threat to males continued social media, like campus, even to harass her, this the anonymous app though your student said, asking Yik Yak. Popular whole black where she was among college going, what she was population students, Yik Yak doing, and calling only allows users evacuated her racial slurs. She within a short campus.

What started running, radius of an area to does that which she said post to a feed. mean?” prompted the men On Wednesday to shout, “I guess morning, campus – member of n***ers can’t take police announced the heat.” When she Concerned they had arrested a Student 1950 got in her vehicle, student at the she drove away and group Missouri University called the university of Science and police department.

Technology in The police Rolla, Missouri told her they would search who allegedly posted one of the for suspects, but called her threats.

Wednesday morning to say Throughout the day they haven’t found anything Tuesday, Yik Yak was filled so far, she said. It wasn’t her with users criticizing the first encounter with racism on mostly-black student protesters. campus, she said, though it was Some complained that campus the scariest. racism was blown out of “Two people have shouted proportion; others said they at me and called me the were tired of being called

racist because they were white.

Some left comments asking for academic buildings to be declared “white safe spaces,” saying “the South will rise again” and threatening “ready for someone to get hit with a brick.”

Brooks Buffington, co-founder & COO of Yik Yak, released a statement Wednesday condemning the online harassment and threats.

“Let’s not waste any words here: This sort of misbehavior is NOT what Yik Yak is to be used for. Period,” Buffington said.

Freshman Mickell Miller said she already doesn’t feel welcome at her own school.

“I was just in math class and there were people saying [the protests are] pointless, that nothing is going to change,” Miller said.

The university did announce one change this week, in addition to the resignations of system president Tim Wolfe and chancellor R. Bowen Loftin: the appointment of Chuck Henson as vice chancellor in charge of diversity and equity on campus, a newly created position.

Henson, whose academic background is in civil rights law, said for now he will spend a lot of time listening to student

concerns.

“What I can do is engage eye-to-eye,” Henson said, “and there will be a long period of listening.”

Alanna Diggs, who leads the Four Front Minority Student Leaders Council at Mizzou, said the resignations of Wolfe and Loftin represent the beginning of change, but it must be followed up with more diversity in administrative positions, more action by lower-level administrators still in power, and cultural change among faculty and students.

“Marginalized students on this campus feel physically and psycho-socially unsafe on our campus, especially walking through Greek town or downtown,” Diggs said.

“Don’t forget about how negatively community reacted to the football team’s boycott.

How is it that so many community members seem to care about black lives only when they are on the field?”

The plan also promises about $3.5 million in programs for minority recruitment and contractor loan funds.

“The current plan as presented is a nice collection of promises, like many inclusion plans in the past, but completely unenforceable, ungoverned by the city, and would more than likely lead to the same results we have seen over and over again,” Reed said.

Mary Ellen Ponder, the mayor’s chief of staff, told The St. Louis American, “This is the most robust, best-monitored minority-participation plan done in St. Louis.”

The plan states that the construction management team

– Hunt Construction Group, Clayco, Inc., KAI Design and Build, and Legacy Building Group (HCKL) – will do most of the monitoring of how many minority businesses are getting contracts and how many minority workers will gets jobs on the stadium. Basically, the contractors will police themselves.

The “owner” of the project is the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority (RSA), and the plan states that it will set up a committee that reviews HCKL’s numbers.

Ponder said the RSA will hire a third-party consultant to “ensure compliance.” However, the plan only budgets $75,000

including for goods and services. During that time, black-owned businesses received 6.43 percent of all prime contract dollars, or $30.4 million. However, businesses owned by non-minority males garnered almost 90 percent of the prime contracts, or $424 million.

“Most in the community feel that we have seen the same players and the same plans leading to the same poor outcomes that were highlighted in the recent disparity study,” Reed said.

While French received a copy of the inclusion plan on Tuesday, Alderman Terry Kennedy said he still had not received anything from the mayor’s office or SLDC when contacted by The American.

Kennedy, the leader of the Aldermanic Black Caucus, has been a long-time champion of minority participation and sponsored the ordinance that established the city’s current workforce goals.

Kennedy said Ballpark Village was presented to the Board of Aldermen in the same kind of rushed, last-minute way – which is how the inclusion loophole got past the aldermen.

“By the time it comes to the

Board of Aldermen, it is rush, rush, rush,” Kennedy said.

“Without staffing, you end up basing your opinion on what you are told – which is not always accurate.”

On these “big deals,” Kennedy said, aldermen aren’t given time to scrutinize the documents which prevents the board from putting safeguards in place.

“The legislative process is not designed for rush,” Kennedy said. “It is designed for deliberation.”

French said this is particularly true for AfricanAmerican aldermen.

“It tells me that this is business as usual, which is not a good sign for this project – only dealing with AfricanAmerican officials at the last minute and enough to get the votes,” French said.

“If we are going to do this the way you always have, this project is going to turn out like every other project – which is not having the minority participation and not making a real step in lifting people out of poverty and creating real wealth.”

annually for RSA to pay a team to monitor the $1 billion project.

On the new Busch Stadium project, the owner – the Cardinals – paid RobertsRoberts & Associates $200,000 a year as minority-compliance consultants. And that was just one consultant for the $365 million project. On the St. Louis-Lambert International Airport expansion project that cost just over $1 billion, several companies jointly earned $2 million a year to ensure compliance.

Yaphett El-Amin, executive director of the minoritycontractor advocacy group MOKAN, said she is not sure who SLDC consulted with on the stadium plan, but the budget for compliance is not realistic.

“We cannot afford not to get this one right,” El-Amin said.

“This could be the area that could make all the difference to this project. We can’t support economic development that is developing everyone else’s community but ours.”

A recent disparity study showed that black-owned businesses earned a small portion of the city’s contracts between 2007 and 2012,

Mariah Stewart reported from Columbia. Tyler Kingkade reported from New York.

Rebecca Rivas of The St. Louis American also contributed reporting from St. Louis.

This story is published as part of a partnership between The St. Louis American and The Huffington Post.

Follow this reporter on Twitter @rebeccarivas.

A7

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 – 18, 2015

COGIC

Jennings opens foster home

Continued from A1 praise, music, preaching, community service and a host of other activities.

Blake’s remarks came as he was preparing to present the Presiding Bishop’s Prestigious Award to Donald Crawford of Crawford Broadcasting Company for gifting radio station KSTL 690 AM to the COGIC church – where it will be folded into its Jubilee Broadcasting Company, which includes broadcast radio, internet radio and television.

“Not only has the city itself and the leaders of this city been considerate and kind, but the businesses, corporations and organizations in this city have also reached out in a very special way to show love and appreciation to us,” Blake said.

On the opening night of Convocation, Blake was presented with the key to the city by Mayor Francis Slay.

For the fourth year, the Memphis-based denomination held its annual convention in America’s Center in downtown St. Louis. Blake and his church have made themselves easy to love.

Their worship services and musical offerings bridged together several denominations of the faith community through high-profile guest speakers and musical performances.

Hundreds of hands waved throughout the Dome when Blake asked all non-COGIC visitors to make themselves known during the Friday service. COGIC gave them a rousing applause to welcome them into their space.

COGIC brought to St. Louis Bishop T.D. Jakes, Bishop Paul S. Morton and a list of gospel music superstars that stretched across generations – including Pastor Shirley Caesar and Tye Tribbett.

Jakes, who came to Convocation despite battling the flu and a back ailment, preached on “The Pain of Recovery” and seemed to encourage himself as much as the thousands who came to

On Tuesday, November 10, the Jennings School district opened Hope House, a foster home for district children. Jennings Superintendent Tiffany Anderson, Jennnings Mayor Yolonda Fountain-Henderson and district board members cut the ribbon on the new facility, along with district children.

Photo by Wiley Price

hear him.

Bishop Morton called on the audience to have “reckless faith” and proclaimed that “God is raising up a nation that is going to be water walkers.”

But their positive impact stretched well beyond the faith-based element and the sermons and songs that pierced the hearts of the Christian community.

According to COGIC, the 2015 Holy Convocation created an estimated $27 million economic impact for St. Louis.

Their spending is just a small portion of the positive reach that COGIC’s regional footprint over the course of Convocation.

“We had a huge job fair this year. We had a health fair. We had what’s called ‘Christmas in November,’ where we gave away food and clothing,” said

Bishop Edwin Bass, interim COO of COGIC and pastor of the Empowered COGIC Church of Spanish Lake.

“We did a reading program with the St. Louis Public Schools and that was really well received. It’s great to see our church, reaching out to the community and not only having services – though they are critically important. We are also working to impact the quality of life of people here.”

They also conducted financial literacy programming this year.

“The Church of God in Christ goes there not only to share the gospel, but we go there to assist, to uplift and to help,” Blake said during Friday night services.

Thanks to a visit by stage and film star Denzel Washington as keynote speaker

for their 14th Annual COGIC Cares Banquet, the scholarship and disaster relief fundraising effort was among the more visible.

“With this scholarship I plan to claim even more territory for the Kingdom of God, on our campus and beyond,” said Joshua Hawkins.

“As a sophomore at Harvard University, I will carry His name in every classroom, in every boardroom, every internship and beyond.”

More than $50,000 in scholarships was awarded this year – in large part due to the smashing success of the banquet, which had to be moved across the street from America’s Center to the Marriott’s Majestic Ballroom to accommodate its audience.

But even with the star power, Blake and the saints

made it clear that the biggest name in the building for Holy Convocation was Jesus.

“Our theme for this year is ‘Christ’s extreme sacrifice calls for our extreme commitment,’” Blake said. “Jesus suffered for all of us. He gave his life for us. If He loved us that much – to die for us – then we should love him enough to live for him.”

The church body hopes this theme ripples across the city.

“I hope that they take away that God is the answer to all of life’s challenges. I hope that they take away that God loves everyone,” Bass said.

“I hope our Church of God in Christ people take away that God’s favor is on our church and the leader of our church and that we have a leader who is concerned about every member of our church – and

not only our church, but also the community at large. “ They also want the world to know that they are grateful for St. Louis being such a hospitable host for their historic convention – and that their presence is a mutual exchange of blessings.

They are committed to hold Convocation in St. Louis through 2019. Bass said that the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Bureau is doing everything possible to ensure that COGIC continues to return to the city for “the foreseeable future.”

“What a blessing it is to be in St. Louis at our 108th Convocation,” said Mother Willie Mae Rivers during her annual service. “The Lord has been here with us.”

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2015

A8

Amonderez Green family awaiting independent autopsy results

Amonderez Green’s father, Jermell Simpson, reacted to news of his son’s death in Normandy on October 28. The county medical examiner’s autopsy report is consistent with police claims that the 18-year-old youth killed himself, though the family disputes police claims and is awaiting the results of an independent autopsy.

Photo by Lawrence Bryant

Family disputes police claim that youth killed himself and medical examiner’s report

By Mariah Stewart Ferguson Fellow A local family still wants answers for the fatal shooting that led to 18-year-old Amonderez Green’s death.

The incident began around 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 28, when the family requested Ferguson Police’s assistance because Green

was “suicidal,” according to a statement from St. Louis County Police, which is investigating the incident.

Normandy Police joined Ferguson Police and made several attempts to talk with Green in the presence of his mother and father, county police claimed. County police claimed Green then fired a silver .38 caliber revolver at the

officers. A Normandy police officer then used a Taser on Green that had no effect before pulling his firearm and firing three times without hitting Green, according to county police.

Three residential homes in the incident location were struck by bullets that matched the gun Green was carrying, according to county police.

Several members of the Green family confirmed to The American that he was carrying such a gun.

Family members disputed autopsy findings by the St. Louis County medical examiner, who claimed Green was killed by a .38 caliber bullet that entered through his chin. This finding matched county police’s claim that Green turned his gun on himself after starting a gunfight and fleeing police.

Family members told The American they are awaiting the results of an independent autopsy.

Donneka Sloan, a cousin of Green, told The American “there’s still a lot of disbelief” surrounding the incident.

The family’s disbelief in the police’s version of events is supported by witnesses.

A witness who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation said Green “did not shoot himself.”

Several witnesses and Green’s father claimed it was Ferguson Police who shot Green. Although witnesses were encouraged to testify to county police investigators and a local NAACP official offered to accompany them, several alleged witnesses said they distrusted the police and would not testify to them.

“I feel like people are afraid to come out and say something because they don’t want repercussions,” said Percy Green, the youth’s uncle (no relation to civil rights icon Percy Green II).

Sloan said their distrust was furthered when Green’s mother, Lakea Green, wasn’t allowed inside the vehicle that transported his body to the hospital.

Green’s n “We’re not family trying to start described the youth another Mike as “very loving, Brown prosweet and humble.” test.”

“He was a hard – Percy Green, worker uncle of and Amonderez supported Green his family,” Sloan said.

Local activists began demonstrations in the Normandy neighborhood where the shooting occurred and outside the Ferguson Police Department, but Green’s family did not approve.

“We’re not trying to start another Mike Brown protest,” said Percy Green. “We just want prayer.”

The youth’s uncle said he still did not believe county police’s version of events.

“There’s something behind it,” he said. “There’s something more than what’s being said.”

The family provided a statement to the Huffington Post: “We are not satisfied with the police investigation at this point, but we hold in our hearts that the truth about his death will come to light.

We, the immediate family of Amonderez Green, ask that in this time your thoughts and prayers are with Lakea, his mother, and his siblings. We will release further statements when more details are revealed.”

This story is published as part of a partnership between The Huffington Post and The St. Louis American.

www.stlamerican.com www.stlamerican.com www.stlamerican.com www.stlamerican.com www.stlamerican.com

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2015

A11

Ferguson Commission applicant trained Ferguson mayor in leadership The Ferguson Commission had exactly one response to its call for an organization willing to officially pursue the calls to action in its report – FOCUS St. Louis, working in partnership with a fiscal agent and research partner.

This partnership made a public presentation to the commission on Monday, November 9, in the commission’s first full public meeting since the September 14 release of its report.

The presentation was conducted by Yemi AkandeBartsch, president and CEO of FOCUS St. Louis, and Michelle Miller, director of its Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs. Amelia A.J. Bond, president and CEO of St. Louis Community Foundation, the proposed partnership’s fiscal agent, also made brief remarks.

The proposed partnership’s research partner, Applied Research Collaborative (ARC), was represented in the capacity audience at St. Louis Community College – Corporate College in Bridgeton, but no one from the group spoke. ARC draws faculty from the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Institute for Urban Research, the Saint Louis University Center for Sustainability, and the University of Missouri-St. Louis Public Policy Research Center. For this proposal, Harris-Stowe State University Center for Neighborhood Affairs also was included.

The role FOCUS St. Louis applied for is “core intermediary” – an organization that will, in the commission’s terms, “provide the backbone support needed for the region to carry out implementation of the calls to action contained in the Ferguson Commission

report.” In brief remarks on Monday, the commission’s managing director, Bethany A. Johnson-Javois, described this role as a “neutral convener with dedicated staff” that will provide an “accountability mechanism” for the region’s “process and progress” in effecting change.

FOCUS St. Louis was the sole applicant for core intermediary, but commission members testified to multiple conflicts in voting on its candidacy. Commission co-chair the Rev. Starsky Wilson is member and secretary of the organization’s board of directors, commission member Felicia Pulliam is its development director, and two other commission members, Daniel Isom and T.R. Carr, have affiliations with universities in ARC, the research partner. Those members abstained from voting on FOCUS St. Louis’ proposal.

Commission member Rose Windmiller, assistant vice chancellor of Government & Community Relations at Washington University, chaired the external review process for selection of a core intermediary. She said the FOCUS St. Louis proposal was reviewed on October 27, at which time the commission raised some issues, including fundraising capacity and two other important points: the need to “engage with underdeveloped, under-resourced community members” and the “need for multiple partners.”

FOCUS St. Louis then presented a proposal that detailed the addition of four new staff members who would lead steering committees organized around three of the Ferguson Commission report’s concepts: Justice For

Photo by Wiley Price

Yemi Akande-Bartsch, president and CEO of FOCUS St. Louis (right), and Michelle Miller, director of its Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs, presented to the Ferguson Commission on Monday, November 9. FOCUS St. Louis was the only applicant to officially pursue the commission’s calls to action in its report.

All, Youth at the Center, and Opportunity to Thrive. These steering committees would then organize action teams that would pursue implementation of the report’s calls to action.

Commission member Brittany Packnett, executive director of Teach For America St. Louis, pointed out that this flow chart omitted the most central concept in the commission’s report: Racial Equity.

FOCUS St. Louis acknowledged other glaring omissions. Michelle Miller said, “Grass roots groups are not at the table. Youth is not at the table.”

Of course, the Ferguson movement that spawned the commission and its report was a grass-roots youth movement calling for racial equity.

Packnett asked FOCUS St. Louis if its initiative involved anyone who participated in Ferguson protests. Miller said they had spoken to David Gerth, director of Metropolitan Congregations United, and Laura Granich, director of Missouri Jobs with Justice.

Both were present on Monday.

Gerth said, “We’ll support any process that advances the commission’s calls to action, because that’s where we’re

headed.” He said his members were pursuing “radical transformation, if not outright revolution.” The FOCUS St. Louis model, he said, looked like “a management process. I’m not sure it’s transformational.”

Granich said if the core intermediary does not pursue an aggressive, inclusive, transformational approach, “we will be back here again in 20 years.”

FOCUS St. Louis has not yet included Ferguson movement leaders in its proposal, but the organization has trained as leaders at least two key figures in Ferguson government. One resigned in disgrace after the Department of Justice report, and the other faced an unsuccessful recall effort led by Ferguson protestors.

In public remarks at the meeting, Akande confirmed to The American that John Shaw, former city manager of Ferguson, has been through FOCUS St. Louis leadership training. The DOJ report revealed Shaw colluding with the Ferguson police chief, judge and court clerk in a revenue scheme where Ferguson police were directed to ticket heavily – and even competed on who could write

the most citations from one traffic stop. The DOJ reported that African Americans were disproportionately the target of this revenue scheme.

Shaw resigned on March 10.

Police Chief Thomas Jackson and municipal Judge Ronald Brockmeyer also resigned after the DOJ report was released.

Court clerk Mary Ann Twitty previously was fired when the DOJ investigation revealed that she sent a racist email from her city account.

On Tuesday, FOCUS St. Louis refused to tell The American whether anyone in a list of other public figures in Ferguson and St. Louis County, including Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III, had received its leadership training.

However, Knowles was listed as one of the “outstanding individuals” in FOCUS St. Louis’ 2013-14 Leadership St. Louis class. In this class, Knowles and his classmates were supposed to “engage in face-to-face dialogue with regional decision makers and gain a deeper understanding of leadership approaches that produce results,” according to a June 28, 2013 FOCUS St. Louis press release.

FOCUS St. Louis declined to discuss Knowles or any of

its leadership trainees without their consent, but the mayor seems to have impressed the organization, as it subsequently invited Knowles to present at one of its public events as an expert on “Building Healthy Places.”

“This year-long series will examine the successes and challenges in creating a healthy community, the important role of talent and entrepreneurship, and emerging trends in this growing field,” FOCUS St. Louis said in a public announcement that remains on its website. “This series is aimed at community leaders interested in community development, the built environment and creating a healthy community.”

Knowles was advertised to speak at FOCUS St. Louis’ second “Building Healthy Places” event. The Ferguson mayor was presented by FOCUS St. Louis as an expert on “Community Regeneration” at a public event on May 29, 2014.

Just 72 days later, a Ferguson police officer killed an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown Jr., and Ferguson was engulfed in protests that Knowles, the city mayor, said he watched on his television set at home.

Before Ferguson protests erupted, FOCUS St. Louis was working with Knowles to arrange an intensive study of Ferguson government. On July 22, 2014 – a little more than two weeks before Ferguson exploded – Knowles introduced a council resolution supporting FOCUS St. Louis bringing its Coro leadership fellows to study “the characteristics of Ferguson that distinguish our City and make it unique.”

Knowles’ resolution stated: “The City of Ferguson supports the Focus St. Louis Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs and is pleased to work with program fellows on their Logic Study as they explore the people, values, and institutions within the City.”

The FOCUS St. Louis study in Ferguson was scheduled for September 2014, by which time “the characteristics of Ferguson that distinguish” it were all over the national and international news. FOCUS St. Louis told The American it did not proceed with this study of the “people, values, and institutions” of Ferguson as protests engulfed the city last September.

At the end of Monday’s meeting, the Ferguson Commission told FOCUS St. Louis to work with commission staff to revise its proposal.

The commission has meetings tentatively scheduled for December 14 and 18, and will go out of commission on December 31.

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2015

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NEWSPAPER IN

Healthy Kids

EDUCATION

PRESENT:

Planting the Seeds for Success!

The weekly Healthy Kids page provides health tips on nutrition, exercise and more.

Drink

Water!

Exercise

Do It For A Cause!

Nutrition Challenge: Drink at least eight glasses of water every day. This helps prevent overeating, it improves digestion and it’s even good for your skin!

Exercise Challenge: This time of year there are many different charity walks and fundraisers. Find out how you and your family can get involved. Perhaps you can take “pledges” to raise money for an organization like the American Heart Association or the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Many of these are 5K which stands for 5

And...

If someone is hurt, sick, or in danger, calling 911 can get help on its way.

911 is designed to bring aid from emergency services

Healthcare Careers

Try this—

reduce the amount of sugary Get in the habit of filling a glass drinks you consume throughout in Education Program day. full of water every time youWeekly feel theNewspaper Supervisor, School Based Services thirsty. Don’t drink anything else Learning Standards: until you’ve finished the water!

HPE 1, HPE 2, HPE 5, NH 1, Where do you This will greatly increase the NH 5 work? I work amount of water you drink and for Provident, a community counseling agency that provides individual, group and family counseling to adults and children. kilometers; this is just a little Keep this up until you can Where did you over 3 miles. You should always switch that to running three and go to school? start slowly and build up your walking one block. Eventually I graduated from Hazelwood East High School strength, speed and endurance. you’ll be able to run the full and earned a Master of Arts in Counseling from You could begin by walking a mile. But of course, if running’s Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis and a mile every day, then try walking not your thing, you can always Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Wilberforce three blocks and running one. walk the 5K instead. Just make University, Wilberforce, Ohio. sure you walk briskly (quickly) to increase your heart rate while What does a school-based services supervisor do? I am a licensed professional counselor raising money for charity. who helps kids stay out of trouble in school by Learning Standards: providing a safe place for them to talk about their HPE 1, HPE 2, HPE 5, HPE 6, feelings and frustrations.

NH 1, NH 3, NH 5

personnel (firefighters, police officers and paramedics). As a class, discuss when you should (and should not) call 911.

Learning Standards: HPE 2, HPE 3, NH 1, NH 7

Kristen Caldwell

Healthy Snacks Tuna-topped Carrots Ingredients: Large carrot (cut into ¼ in diagonal slices), 1 6-oz Can of tuna (packed in water, drained), 2 Green onions, chopped (optional), 1 Tbsp Low-fat mayonnaise Directions: Mix last three ingredients. Top carrot slices with the tuna mixture or use as a dip for the carrots.

You can also use peppers strips, cucumber slices or celery sticks.

Why did you choose this career? Ever since I worked for the Division of Youth Services, I’ve been drawn to working with Kids who are more challenging. It’s important to me that they have a voice and someone that will listen to them.

What is your favorite part of the job you have?

I get to help kids poke holes in their overflowing cup so that they can be happier, healthier people.

I also get to support teachers and administrators educating our children, despite the barriers.

Learning Standards: HPE6, NH3

Content—Cathy Sewell • Design—Beth Sharpe

Nutrition

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2015

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The St. Louis American’s award winning NIE program provides newspapers and resources to more than 7,000 teachers and students each week throughout the school year, at no charge.

CLASSROOM SPOTLIGHT

SCIENCE STARS African American Health Physicist Roscoe Koontz

Hanrahan Elementary School 6th grade teacher, Evelyn Clark, shows

students Dorian Jones, Mya Lewis, Antonio Jackson, and Jeremiah Martinez how to use the newspaper to locate math concepts as a STEM lesson.

Hanrahan Elementary School is in the Jennings School District.

Photo by Wiley Price / St. Louis American.

Roscoe Koontz was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1922. He graduated from Vashon High School before spending three years serving in the army during World War II. While Koontz was in the army, he received preengineer training from West Virginia State College. In 1946, he left the army and finished his education at Tennessee State University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry.

Teachers, if you are using the St. Louis American’s NIE program and would like to nominate your class for a Classroom Spotlight, please email: nie@stlamerican.com.

SCIENCE CORNER

What is Radiation?

Radiation is the process of sending off energy in the form of light, heat, x-rays or nuclear particles. When radiation occurs, the waves move out in all directions from the producer of the energy. There are two main types of radiation: ionizing (which has the potential to modify ions), and non-ion izing.

Ionizing is typically the most harmful to living things, but there are some examples of harmful non-ionizing radiation, as well.

light, x-rays, nuclear power production, radon, CT scans, and coal mining. Some examples of non-ionizing radiation include microwaves, radio waves, heat from a camp fire, light bulbs, power lines, LEDs, lasers, light from the sun, computer screens, and cordless phones.

The important thing to remember is that radiation involves risks. It is important that when radiation is in use, there are trained people there who understand the many types of radiation hazards and who know how to prevent and control them.

Some examples of ionizing radiation include ultraviolet

Learning Standards: I can read nonfiction text to learn main idea and supporting details. I can gain background knowledge and make text to world connections.

SCIENCE EXPERIMENT Create A Simple Heat Background Information:

Transfer for Radiation! bottles should be positioned so that they are mouth to mouth with the card separating the two liquids. You may want to do this over a sink.)

In this experiment, you will see how currents are formed when warm and cold water meet.

Materials Needed:

• 4 Identical Bottles • Ice Water • Wam Water • Food Coloring • Index Cards Process:

q Fill two bottles with warm water

e Carefully slip the card out from

Learning Standards: I can read a biography about a

in between the two bottles. Make sure that you are holding onto the top bottle when you remove the card.

Observe what happens to the colored liquids in the two bottles.

MAP CORNER

r Cold over warm: Repeat steps 2

from the tap and the other two bottles with cold water. Use food coloring to color the warm water yellow and the cold water blue.

Each bottle must be filled to the brim with water.

and 3, but this time place the bottle of cold water on top of the warm water. Observe what happens.

Analyze/Draw Conclusions: In steps 2 and 4, you joined warm and cold water. Were your results the same or different? Why?

w Warm over cold: Place an index card over the mouth of one of the warm water bottles. Hold the card in place as you turn the bottle upside down and rest it on top of one of the cold water bottles. (The

Learning Standards: I can complete sequential directions to complete an experiment. I can analyze the results.

MATH CONNECTION Decipher Roman Numerals!

Scientists must use creative thinking and problem solving.

Put your problem solving skills to the test as you decipher roman numerals.

For reference: I = one, V = five, X = 10, L = 50, C = 100

z x c v

XXVI ________ LXIII ______ IX ______

b n m

XCIV ________ VIII ______ LII ______

XV ______

Learning Standards: I can decipher roman numerals.

DID YOU KNOW? Did you know that cockroaches could survive a nuclear holocaust because radiation does not affect them as much as it affects other species?

Koontz became one of the very first formally trained health physicists and he participated in the Atomic Energy Health Physics Fellowship Training Program. While there, he designed a pinhole gamma ray camera and helped to design automatic air and water sampling equipment and radiation activity measuring devices. Koontz and his fellow students and professors helped to develop many of the current techniques and procedures used to protect people from the hazards of ionizing radiation.

Digital Gamma Camera In addition to this work, Koontz System for Thyroid worked as an engineer at Atomics Diagnostics International. While there, he helped to design and implement the radioactive waste and sodium disposal system for the Clinch River Breeder Reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Radiation is still in use today. It has many benefits in medicine, research and industry (such as power plants). There are also many dangers involved. Koontz worked to assure that radiation and radioactive materials are used safely and that nuclear facilities and research laboratories have people who work there who understand the risks and work to prevent and control those risks.

All the American flags placed on the moon are now white due to radiation from the sun.

Smokers receive a radiation dose equivalent to about 300 chest x-rays annually due to the radioactive chemicals contained in tobacco smoke that comes from the ingredients of the fertilizers that are used in farming tobacco.

person who has made contributions in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Enjoy these activities that help you get to know your St. Louis American newspaper.

Activity One — Missouri Map: Locate and circle names of cities mentioned in the newspaper.

Draw a map of Missouri identifying the cities you circled.

Make sure you include a title, compass rose, and map key.

Activity Two — Can I Quote You on That?

When quoting their St. Louis interviewees, reporters Jefferson City must think of interesting ways to say “said.” Use Springfield quotes in the newspaper to see how reporters quote their subjects.

Make a list of at least 10 different ways that were used.

Share your results with your classmates.

Kansas City

Columbia

Learning Standards: I can use the newspaper to locate information.

I can create a detailed map from given information and I can identify word choice in writing.

I can make text to world connections.

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ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2015

Dec. 7 hearing set for church arson suspect

David Lopez Jackson charged with two counts of seconddegree arson

By Sandra Jordan Of The St. Louis American

A December 7 hearing is scheduled for David Lopez Jackson, the suspect charged with two counts of seconddegree arson for fires set at St. Louis churches.

He remains jailed in St. Louis on a $75,000 cash only bond. The 35-year-old was arrested on October 29 and charged for fires set at Ebenezer Lutheran Church and New Life Missionary Baptist Church (recently renamed United Believers in Christ

David Lopez Jackson Ministries).

According to prosecutors, Jackson has applied for a public defender and his request is being processed. The Missouri Public Defender’s Office in St. Louis did not respond to a request for comment on his status.

The investigation into all seven church fires is ongoing, although St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said Jackson is the only suspect in the case.

“Forensic evidence discovered links the defendant to the scene of the fire at Ebenezer Lutheran Church,” Dotson told reporters after the arrest. “Surveillance footage shows the defendant’s car at the scene of the fire at New Life Missionary Baptist Church. The defendant has confirmed that the car belongs to him and that he has exclusive use of it.”

Police said a canister with gasoline, along with a thermos that smelled of gasoline, were found inside of Jackson’s car at the time of his arrest. The possible motive for the church arsons is still unclear.

The investigation includes bomb and arson units in St. Louis City and St. Louis County, and federal investigators from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives.

Help with heating bills for low-income households

The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) can help low-income Missourians pay their heating bills this fall and winter.

LIHEAP offers help paying heating bills through March.

Payment amounts can range from $45 to $450, and are based on the household size, income and type of fuel used for home heating.

An individual may be eligible for the program if they are a U.S. citizen or legally admitted for permanent residence, responsible for paying home heating costs,

have an income at or below 135 percent of the poverty level ($27,120 annually for a family of three), and have $3,000 or less in bank accounts, retirement accounts or investments.

In fiscal year 2015, almost 143,000 Missouri households received LIHEAP assistance.

If an individual qualifies for Energy Assistance, they may also qualify for additional help through the Energy Crisis Intervention Program (ECIP).

ECIP makes payments to energy providers for households who have their energy service

terminated or received a threat of disconnection, or who are running short of purchased fuel (propane). The amount is based on the amount to restore or continue services which may be up to $800 for the winter program.

Applications are now being accepted. Missourians interested in applying for LIHEAP can download the LIHEAP application with instructions and information on their nearest agency location http://dss.mo.gov/fsd/liheap. htm or visit www.DSS.mo.gov for more information.

Business

Salute to Salute

B1

NOVEMBER 12 – 18, 2015

to business performers Danielle Carr, Adella D. Jones, Arvetta Powell recognized Nov. 20

People On The Move Michael Bruce Curry was installed as the 27th presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the denomination’s first African-American spiritual leader.

Curry focused Michael Bruce Curry his installation sermon on racial reconciliation.

The Episcopal Church is the U.S.based part of the global Anglican Communion, one of the largest Christian communities in the world.

Its membership is about 1.8 million.

Melodee ColbertKean is the new president with the National League of Cities. A member of the Joplin Council, she is the first Missouri city official to be named to top leadership Melodee with NLC in more Colbert-Kean than 50 years. She will serve a oneyear term representing more than 19,000 cities and towns, focusing on crumbling infrastructure, marketplace fairness and continuing tax-exempt municipal bonds.

Danielle Carr, director of professional development and inclusion at Greensfelder, Hemker & Gale

Arvetta Powell, director of DiBearsity and associate Exbearience at Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc.

Adella D. Jones, director of marketing and community outreach for Home State Health

By American staff

n The 16th Annual Salute to Excellence in Business Awards & Networking Luncheon will be held Friday, November 20 at the Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis.

approximately 50 of the city’s largest law firms.

Carr’s professional history also includes seven years of corporate litigation practice, first with a large Chicago law firm and then with Chicago’s largest minority-owned law firm.

Three business professionals – two diversity champions and one community outreach specialist – will be honored with Business Performance Awards on Friday, November 20 at the St. Louis American Foundation’s 16th annual Salute to Excellence in Business Awards & Networking luncheon.

The event will be held at the Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis. The networking reception begins at 11 a.m., and the luncheon program at noon.

Danielle Carr: cultivating diversity At Greensfelder, Hemker & Gale law firm, Danielle Carr is responsible for cultivating a diverse and inclusive workforce. As the director of professional development and inclusion, she also heads up attorney development and

Adella D. Jones: in the community training. She is a member of the firm’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee, Recruiting Committee and multiple firm professional development committees.

Before joining Greensfelder, Carr was a managing director for Major, Lindsey & Africa, the nation’s largest legal recruiting firm. She also spent six years as executive director for the Chicago Committee on Minorities in Large Law Firms, where she was responsible for planning and implementing diversity programming for

Just hours after Home State Health opened for business in 2012, Adella D. Jones led the Summer Heat Safety initiative. She teamed up with regional agencies to provide air conditioners and fans for needy seniors and vulnerable families.

It was just the start of her journey with organization to help develop successful community partnerships and on-going initiatives.

Jones is the director of marketing and community outreach for Home State Health, See SALUTE, B2

‘Color of Debt’ scrutinized

WUSTL Law hosts forum about ProPublica report on debt collection

By Chris King Of The St. Louis American

Judgments per 100 Residents

The Washington University School of Law and ProPublica held a spirited public forum about ProPublica’s “Color of Debt” report on racial patterns in debt collection at the law school on November 5.

“It’s a decision that individual companies make to pursue debt collection in this n “I tell students way,” said Paul Kiel, there is the law who co-wrote the ProPublica report and there is justice, and there with Annie Waldman.

“It’s a business is a difference decision.” between the two.”

The “business decision” in question – Karen Tokarz, is legal action. In Washington “Color of Debt,” University School which The American of Law printed on October 15, ProPublica analyzed five years of court judgments from debt collection suits in St. Louis, Chicago and Newark. “Even accounting for income,” they reported, “the rate of judgments was twice as high in mostly black neighborhoods as it was in mostly white ones.”

Most of these cases, they found, are tried in lower-level courts where defendants frequently have no legal representation.

See DEBT, B6

5.0

8.8

13.0

18.9

27.6

Howard Hayes was appointed to the Advisory Board of Directors for the Missouri Small Business and Technology Development Centers. He is director of Howard minority business Hayes development for the St. Louis Development Corporation. The SBTDC is a statewide program designed to contribute to the growth of Missouri’s economy by making small businesses more competitive through education, technical assistance and coaching.

Shawntell Lucas joined the Board of Directors of Committed Caring Faith Communities.

CCFC is a not-forprofit organization that has assisted more than 100 churches, faith Shawntell and communityLucas based organizations in Missouri to establish substance abuse prevention and recovery support services. It recently received a grant from the St. Louis County Children’s Service Fund to develop a program for African-American boys.

Da’Vione Johnson has joined the Board of Directors of Youth In Need.

He is a program facilitator at Wyman Center. Youth In Need serves more than 13,000 children, teens and Da’Vione families each year Johnson with residential programs, homeless street outreach, education, counseling and support groups, foster care case management and infant, child and family development programs.

Star Ellis won Diamonique’s Productions’ Playwright Viewer’s Choice Award at their 5th Annual Playwright Awards Gala held in San Antonio, Texas. She is a local playwright Star Ellis and owner/ CEO of StarFire Productions, featuring urban-style dinner theater.

For upcoming StarFire Productions written and directed by Star Ellis, visit www.StarFireHot.com.

On the move? Congratulations! Send your good professional news and a color headshot to cking@stlamerican. com

B2

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 – 18, 2015

Personal Finance

Making holidays bright – and affordable

By Nathaniel Sillin

track your spending.

Already dreading what you’ll spend this holiday season? It doesn’t have to be that way.

Gifts aren’t the only budgetbusting culprit during the holidays. The weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s are also a peak time for spending on groceries, travel, events, entertainment, energy, clothes and meals out.

Financial advisors recommend you use no more than 1.5 percent of your annual income on holiday spending (http://www. practicalmoneyskills.com/ holiday), so consider the following suggestions to keep it under control:

Be open about money trouble. If you are facing financial difficulties during the holiday season, don’t spend to hide the problem. Don’t be ashamed to make adjustments and tell friends and family members that you’d like to temporarily downsize your spending until conditions improve. They might actually appreciate a spending reprieve, too.

Start with a list and make a budget. Begin your planning by listing every possible holiday expense you’ll face – and don’t stop at gifts. Consult the Practical Money Skills for Life comprehensive holiday budget planner (http://www. practicalmoneyskills.com/ yourholidaybudget) to help organize your information and

SALUTE

continued from page B1 the Missouri subsidiary of Centene Corporation based in Clayton. Home State is a managed care organization serving Missouri families

Build a bargain-hunting strike force. Let friends and family know you’re looking for particular toys, gifts, foods or decorating items and volunteer to do the same for them. Save and share coupons.

Encourage your group to find resources, check prices and share requests and ideas via social media. Results can come back in a matter of minutes.

Evaluate all transportation costs. Do you really need to run out of one or two items at a time? Designate certain days of the week for particular items, keep an eye

out for free delivery and see if friends and family might want to share errands. Those with large vehicles or trucks can help move, deliver and even install appliances or electronics if they have the skills to do so.

Smart transportation choices extend to car pools or public transportation for events and entertainment.

Leverage your creativity.

If there’s something you make or do really well that people love, consider making such accomplishments into gifts.

From specialty food items your friends enjoy, to clothing or art, anything done well can be a gift. Don’t rule out lessons or skilled labor as potential holiday gifts, particularly for

in the Central, Eastern and Western Managed Care Regions of the state.

Since Home State began operations on July 1, 2012, Jones has established ongoing initiatives with grassroots organizations such as the St. Louis Clergy Coalition, the Black Health Care Coalition

of Kansas City and the Voluntary Action Center of Columbia. Jones directed a statewide investment of over $700,000 in sponsorships that have paved the way for Home State to support a number of community initiatives.

Prior to joining Home State, Jones served as the vice

president of Government & Community Affairs for Metro.

Arvetta Powell: DiBearsity leader Arvetta Powell holds the colorful title of director of DiBearsity and associate

relatives who can’t afford such services at this time.

Smart shopping for ingredients or supplies can make such creative gifts a real money saver.

throughout the holidays. If you keep it up, your holiday fund can eventually become an emergency fund to be used for other savings goals, including retirement.

Build a year-round gift stash. If there are gifts or foodstuffs you can buy on sale and keep for a while, you’ll have a ready source of thankyou gifts for hosts, teachers or co-workers year-round. Set aside a similar area for cards, gift tags and wrapping paper.

Also keep in mind that many retailers put holiday-themed items on sale before the holidays are finished. If you think you’ll need these items next year, grab your coupons, take advantage and put those items aside for future gift giving.

Take notes for next holiday season. Create a paper or digital file where you can collect ideas for next year. Check print and online resources like Consumer Reports for items that can be bought at specific times of the year at a discount so you are able to hide them for the holidays – but remember where you hid them.

Late saving for gifts?

Do it anyway. If you don’t have a holiday fund set up, don’t let that keep you from starting one. Every little bit helps. Take 5-10 percent of your next paycheck and set it aside, doing it each week

Exbearience at Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc. She leads the company’s diversity initiative, along with diversity training, the company’s Diversity Council and advises on diversity recruiting.

Prior to Build-A-Bear Workshop, Powell was the senior human resources director for Walmart Stores’ Real Estate division. Powell joined Walmart after working for Venture Stores as the Corporate Human Resources Manager.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in business management from Webster University. She is a member of the Society of Human Resource Management and

Bottom line: Keeping holidays affordable isn’t a challenge when you’re willing to do a little planning, ideasharing and record-keeping.

Make it an activity you can do year-round.

Nathaniel Sillin directs Visa’s financial education programs. To follow Practical Money Skills on Twitter: www. twitter.com/PracticalMoney.

the National Association of African Americans in Human Resources, St. Louis Chapter.

She is a member of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis Board of Directors.

The 16th Annual Salute to Excellence in Business Awards & Networking Luncheon will be held Friday, November 20 at the Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis, with a networking reception at 11 a.m. and luncheon program at noon.

Tickets are $100 for VIP/ Preferred seating, $75 for general admission. Call 314-533-8000 or visitwww. stlamerican.com for more information or to purchase tickets.

n “As a football team, we are here to support the movement and use our platform to make a difference.”

– Mizzou wide receiver J’Mon Moore

Sports

INSIDE

Mizzou black players change college athletics forever ~ See ‘Sports Eye’ page B4 ~ B3

NOVEMBER 12 – 18, 2015

Prep Football Notebook

Rams Roundup

One step closer

Rams lose winnable game

With Palmer L. Alexander III

With Earl Austin Jr.

Class 6 semifinals on Friday night

Several St. Louis area teams moved one step closer to realizing a dream to play in the Edward Jones Dome during Thanksgiving weekend by winning a district championship. The next step for the Class 6 winners is a date in the state semifinals on Friday night.

Here is rundown of this weekend’s state playoff games involving area schools.

Face Bears with .500 record this Sunday

Class 6 Semifinals Springfield Kickapoo (12-0) at CBC (12-0), Friday, 7 p.m.

Earl Austin Jr.

Blue Springs South (12-0) at Kirkwood (10-1), Friday, 7 p.m.

CBC and Kirkwood are in the semifinals for the second consecutive year. Only this time, they are not playing each other as they did last year. CBC will host undefeated Kickapoo while Kirkwood will host undefeated Blue Springs South, who defeated Francis Howell last Friday night.

Defending champion CBC ran is winning streak to 26 games with a 47-0 victory over Hazelwood Central to win the district championship.

Class 5 Quarterfinals Chaminade (10-1) at Summit (10-2), Friday, 7 p.m.

Battle (9-2) at Fort Zumwalt North (11-0), Friday, 7 p.m.

Chaminade advanced to the quarterfinals with a dramatic lastminute victory over Pattonville in the District 2 finals. The Red Devils will visit Summit, who were in the state quarterfinals in 2012 when they lost a classic game to Kirkwood on a lastsecond field goal. The Fort Zumwalt North-Battle matchup is a rematch of last year’s quarterfinal game, which Battle

See PREP, B4

Photo by Wiley Price

University City Lions Keeson Taylor (24) makes a run for the end zone against St. Dominic during the Missouri Class 4 state district final on Saturday. U. City went on to win 26-0.

The St. Louis Rams traveled up north to play the Minnesota Vikings, looking to extend a winning streak to three games and position themselves for a possible wild card playoff berth. But instead of a win, the Rams suffered another frustrating loss 21-18 in OT against the Vikings.

The Rams lack of an efficient passing game really reared its head. Nine different Rams players caught at least one pass.

Eight of the players not named Kenny Britt totaled eight catches for a robust 85 yards. Britt led all receivers with 87 yards on just three catches. The Vikings dared the Rams to throw the football and it paid off.

Rams QB Nick Foles Palmer L. wasn’t sharp at all, in Alexander the very first series when he had time to throw, he didn’t see a wide open Kenny Britt that would’ve been an easy score for the Rams.

What I’m starting to really notice now is there seems to be a lack of chemistry or something to that effect. Or maybe n “If we the Rams receivers were out in aren’t that good with the street, the exception of we probably Tavon Austin. Just would’ve had as I write this, it is rumored the Rams a fight.” are having auditions at wideout. Hakeem – Vikings head Nicks, Wes Welker coach Mike and Vincent Brown Zimmer are or have made a visit to Earth City.

You have to able to throw the football, especially when you do have a solid RB in rookie Todd Gurley. The Vikings put more than eight guys in a box to stop the run and it paid off. More teams will follow this trend against the Rams unless the receivers start making teams pay.

Gurley was held under 100 yards, but he did contribute a touchdown. The Rams got an additional boost in the run See RAMS, B5

In The Clutch With Ishmael H. Sistrunk

Leagues squirm as NY sacks fantasy sports For sports fans, it’s hard to both FanDuel and DraftKings go more than a few minutes cease accepting wagers from without being bombarded with NY residents. advertisements from FanDuel “It is clear that DraftKings and/or DraftKings. Listening and FanDuel are the leaders of to local sports radio, watching a massive, multibillion-dollar sports on television or visiting scheme intended to evade the sports-related websites, law and fleece sports it seems like every fans across the counother ad is touting this try,” Schneiderman said. new, revolutionary “Today we have sent a way to play fantasy clear message: not in sports. They tout playNew York, and not on ers who have earned my watch.” six or seven figures Why now? Daily by competing in daily fantasy sports has been fantasy leagues. They in existence since 2007. often offer to match a Ishmael H. They have been catenew customer’s first gorized with weekly Sistrunk deposit into the system, fantasy sports as “games up to a few hundred dollars. of skill” and until now, have “It’s easy!” they say. Just pick avoided too much scrutiny. your players and win cold, There is a stark difference hard cash. Then do it all over between daily and weekly fanagain tomorrow. Of course, as tasy leagues though. First, most mommas around the world will weekly fantasy leagues are free warn you, “If it seems too good to competitors. Those that do to be true, it probably is.” charge, charge the league’s In a move that was more a commissioner for the service, matter of ‘when’ than ‘if’, New and typically do not offer cash York Attorney General Eric compensation for winners.

Schneiderman dealt a major Obviously many league comblow to daily fantasy sports missioners set up their own when he declared them illegal buy-ins and payouts for their gambling and demanded that individual leagues, but that

n New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman dealt a major blow to daily fantasy sports when he declared them illegal gambling and demanded that both FanDuel and DraftKings cease accepting wagers from NY residents.

This DraftKings promotions tent was set up in the parking lot of Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots. Owner Robert Kraft is an investor in the daily fantasy sports operation, even though NFL teams are banned from investing in such businesses. is completely independent of the fantasy site that is hosting the league. Daily fantasy sites

generally charge an entry fee to every competitor for every game entered and make a cash

payout to the winner. Sounds a lot like gambling to me.

Proponents of daily fantasy

claim that it is skill-based, rather than luck-based, and therefore should not be categorized as gambling. Yet poker fails to stand up to the same scrutiny.

I dare anyone to sit across a poker table from Phil Ivey or Daniel Negreanu with a pile of cash and emerge with anything more than lint and regret in their pockets. The same skills involved in picking fantasy sports are used by those picking sports winners and losers See CLUTCH, B5

B4

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 – 18, 2015

Sports Eye

Mizzou black players change college athletics forever With Alvin Reid

Call out the instigator, heroes informed their coaches because there’s something in and the world that they would the air not practice or play until We’ve got to together Timothy Wolfe, the university sooner or later, because the system president, resigned or revolution’s here was removed from office and And you know it’s right graduate student Jonathan Released in May Butler ended his 10-day 1969, Thunder Clap hunger strike.

Newman’s “Something Wolfe had been in the Air” hit the under fire for his tepid charts nine months (really non-existent) after UCLA basketball response to repeated star Lew Alcindor and racial incidents other prominent college on the Columbia athletes chose not to campus and Butler’s participate in the 1968 protest. A group of Alvin Summer Olympics in activist collegians, Reid Mexico City. including members of Tommie Williams ConcerendStudent1950, and John Carlos won gold and blocked his car during the bronze medals, respectively, Homecoming parade. in the 200 meters then donned With Saturday’s game in black gloves and raised the Kansas City against BYU just “Black Power” fist on the five days in the future, dozens medal stand as of faculty members the Star Spangled refused to work n The NCAA Banner played.

Monday morning. awoke Tuesday Then, a tearful The players who skipped the Games Wolfe resigned. in a new world were ripped by Butler tweeted his – one in which the predominantly hunger strike had student athletes ended. white sports had more power media. Williams The NCAA and Carlos were than at any time awoke Tuesday in stripped of their a new world – one in the past. medals and ordered in which student out of the Olympic athletes had more Village. power than at any There indeed time in the past. was something in the air in Dave Zirin, sports editor of October 1968.

The Nation, said Monday, “We Forty-seven years later, now have a rumble through about 30 black football players the entirety of college sports. at the University of Missouri I’m sure it is being discussed told this nation and those that (at NCAA headquarters) in run collegiate athletics that “the Indianapolis.” revolution’s here.”

Zirin said the Mizzou black On Saturday, November players’ actions are important 7, these gallant, young black for “what it says about race and

On November 8, Mizzou Head Coach Gary Pinkel tweeted this photo with the sentiment: “The Mizzou Family stands as one. We are united. We are behind our players.” power on college campuses.”

He said black students comprise 7 percent of the

campus population, while the football team is 69 percent black.

“What you see there are people who are often defined as being powerless. We think about them in terms of powerlessness. Here, you see an exercise of that power,” Zirin wrote.

“Things grind to a halt if (players) say, ‘We’re not going to do this anymore if our demands are not met or at least discussed.’”

Zirin said the players’ strategy to force coach Gary Pinkel’s hand was brilliant: “They said, ‘Either stand with us or against us.’”

To his credit, Pinkel did not threaten to revoke scholarships and throw them off the team.

It is my guess that Pinkel was informed that Wolfe would either resign or be fired on Monday and that led him to stand with the activist players.

Mizzou player Grant Jones tweeted Monday

PREP

Continued from B3 won en route to winning the state championship.

Class 4 Quarterfinals Affton (11-1) at Cape Girardeau Central (8-4), Friday, 7 p.m.

afternoon, “Huge thanks to Coach Pinkel, the rest of the coaching staff and our Mizzou family for supporting us in this movement!”

It is irresponsible to come to the conclusion that if Mizzou was 9-0 instead of 4-5 the players would not have taken a stand. Those that choose to believe that are trying to downplay the resolve and bravery of the players who have now made history.

Howard Bryant, ESPN senior writer, was standing with Michael Sam on campus when Wolf resigned. He said Sam’s response was “this is what happens when athletes get involved.”

Bryant said the biggest lesson that other universities should learn is that “you had better listen to people. They do have power and they can use it.”

“This is not an eightweek story. I’m told there is a climate here, in which

many black students feel marginalized and it has been like this for many years,” he said.

SEC Network analyst Paul Finebaum said while Missouri is 4-5 and will not play in the SEC Championship game for a third consecutive year, “the players and Coach Pinkel scored the biggest win of the season.”

As for the future at Mizzou and in other college athletic departments, Zirin said, “We’re in a new stage.”

“When (the late) Woody Hayes resigned (after punching a Clemson player during a bowl game) he was making $42,000 a year.

Pinkel makes more than $4 million, but the player situation is the same, if not worse, because of frequent travel. Players have power.

If they didn’t know it before, they do now.”

Westminster (12-0) at University City (7-5), Saturday, noon

out all three of its opponents in winning the District 3 title.

Affton and Cape Central are meeting in a rematch of last year’s state quarterfinals game, which Cape Central won on its way to the Class 4 Show Me Bowl.

Westminster’s high-powered offense will provide a big challenge to University City’s stellar defense, which shut

Class 3 Quarterfinals John Burroughs (11-1) at Park Hills Central (10-2), Saturday, 1 p.m.

The Bombers are seeking their fifth trip to the Show-Me Bowl in the past six years.

They took a big step last weekend by defeating McCluer South-Berkeley 40-14 to win a district championship.

Class 2 Quarterfinals Cardinal Ritter (11-1) at Malden (12-0), Friday, 7 p.m.

Palmyra (10-2) at Lutheran North (8-4), Saturday, 1 p.m.

Both games are rematches of last year’s state quarterfinals, which were won by Malden and Palmyra. Cardinal Ritter trailed Jefferson 22-8 in the district championship game against Jefferson, but stormed back to take a 52-30 victory. Lutheran North continues to be one of the area’s hottest teams. The Crusaders defeated previously unbeaten Brentwood 64-38 to win the District 5 title and run their winning streak to seven games.

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ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 – 18, 2015

Quarterfinals showdown

Belleville Althoff Crusaders faces five-time defending state champ Rochester on Saturday Lindenwood-Belleville will host this weekend’s Illinois Class 4A state quarterfinals football showdown between Belleville Althoff Crusaders and the five-time defending state champion Rochester.

Kick-off is set for 3 p.m.

Saturday.

The game will pit two of the state’s most powerful offensive units, regardless of class. Rochester comes into the match up riding a 27-game playoff winning streak. Its last playoff loss for head coach Derek Leonard was a heartbreaking 41-40 loss to

CLUTCH Continued from B3

against the spread. Of course, that is illegal in most places across the country with the exception of Las Vegas.

Speaking of Vegas, the City of Sin actually preempted New York’s decision by declaring daily fantasy sports as gambling and demanding that companies cease operation in Vegas until they

From The East Side

Metamora back in 2009.

Rochester enters the match up with a Cadillac no-huddle spread attack. It is led by quarterback Danny Zeigler, who is 179 of 246 for 2,988 yards passing and a whopping 36 touchdowns. In addition, Zeigler has shared the wealth to 15 different players.

Leading the way are receivers junior Collin Stallworth (6’ 6 210) with 44 receptions for 860 yards and 13 touchdowns.

In addition, brothers D’Ante Cox and Avante Cox are top receiving targets.

D’Ante has 41 receptions for

803 yards and nine touchdowns, Avante has 16 receptions for 465 yards and seven touchdowns.

The running game is solid for Rochester as well, with tailback Kenny Hedges leading the

acquired the proper gambling licenses.

The question now is why would so many big sports entities decide to align themselves with a business model so close to gambling? The MLB, who banned Pete Rose for life for gambling, invested an undisclosed amount in DraftKings in 2013. The NBA acquired an equity stake in FanDuel. The NFL and NHL, not wanting to be left out of the party, agreed to multi-year sponsorship deals in daily

fantasy sports corporations.

Roger Goodell, never a man of contradiction, has pointed out that the NFL does not have equity in any daily fantasy sports league, and individual teams are not allowed to do so. However, he conveniently forgets to point out that two of the most public and identifiable owners, Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft, are investors in DraftKings. To no surprise, DraftKings has a very visible presence at the stadiums of both the Dallas

With Maurice Scott

Maurice Scott

Continued from B3 game from Tavon Austin, who ran eight times for 66 yards.

Backup RB Tre Mason was ineffective as he only had three carries for the same amount of yardage. The Rams did gain 160 yards on the ground.

One of the most talked about things about that loss was coach Jeff Fisher’s decision to go for a two-point conversion instead of kicking an extra point field goal. Fisher was concerned about the wind.

Well, okay. So the best play they came up with was a draw play that got stuffed at the line of scrimmage. He has a

Cowboys and New England Patriots.

Now that New York has taken the step to outlaw daily fantasy gambling sports, expect other states to follow suit. You can also expect the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL to do some major backtracking on its backing of daily fantasy sports as the daily draft empires to come crumbling down. Actually, they will likely just morph into prize-oriented games instead of cash-oriented. However in

Coldon must be a factor on Saturday as well.

Head coach Ken Turner has built this team from scratch, and the additions of Goodwin, Coldon, and Easley, the Crusaders have the athletic ability to beat Rochester.

An overflow crowd of more than 6,000 is expected at Lindenwood-Belleville this Saturday for the pinball version of high school football.

doing so, they will lose much of the get-rich-quick allure that allows them to prey on low-income sports fans.

Though I’m an avid (weekly-format) fantasy football and basketball competitor, playing in a league with a dozen friends (with or without a small seasonal prize) is different than daily leagues with unlimited cash entries operating outside of gambling regulation. Another one of those universal momma-sayings is that, “If it looks like a duck,

swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it is probably a duck.” Let’s see how long daily fantasy sports operations are able to duck the sword of state attorney generals. The rush of advertising was meant to lure in more customers, but instead may have been the reason for the demise of an industry.

Scott’s pick: Althoff 47, Rochester 45.

Follow Ishmael and In the Clutch on Twitter @ IshmaelSistrunk

St. Louis American Prep Athlete of the Week

Led by linebacker Cameron Lynch (50), the St. Louis Rams defense brings down Minnesota wide receiver Cordarrelle Patterson during Sunday’s game in Minnesota. The Vikings went on to win in overtime 21-18.

RAMS

way. The thumping tailback has rushed for an impressive 1,338 yards and 11 touchdowns in this spread offense.

Ken Turner’s 11-0 Althoff team has some “get up” of their own on offense.

Quarterback Jordan Augustine is 179-246 for 2,988 yards and 36 touchdowns, both school records.

Augustine has a strong group of talented receivers in Keenen Young, Jordan Goodwin and Tarkis Ferguson Jr. Young had 105 yards in receptions with three touchdowns in last week’s win against Quincy Notre Dame.

Althoff’s running game is led by Malik Easley. His ability to get out on the perimeter against Rochester will be key if the Crusaders are going to win. The ever dangerous C.J.

Tyler Foote John Burroughs – Football The sophomore quarterback enjoyed a big performance in leading the Bombers to a victory over McCluer SouthBerkeley in the Class 3, District 4 championship game.

The 6’2” 205-pound Foote completed 16 of 21 passes for 192 yards and two touchdowns on scoring plays of 36 and five yards in the Bombers’ 40-14 record. He threw four touchdown passes in a victory over Lift for Life in the district semifinals.

For the season, Foote has completed 118 of 186 passes for 1,904 yards with 32 touchdowns and only four interceptions.

Foote will lead John Burroughs (11-1) into the state quarterfinals against Park Hills Central on Saturday afternoon at 1 p.m. placekicker nicknamed Greg “The Leg” Zuerlein who nailed four kicks, including a 61-yarder, but you don’t have him attempt an extra point?

Then there was the hit by Rams cornerback Lamarcus Joyner. In the fourth quarter Vikings QB Teddy Bridgewater was scrambling and slid, and Joyner dived just as Bridgewater was making his slide. Joyner hit the Vikings QB with a glancing blow across the facemask with his shoulder. It did knock out the Vikings QB and really irritated their head coach Mike Zimmer. Zimmer felt the hit to his QB was dirty. “If we were out in the street, we probably would’ve had a fight,” he said after the game.

This week the Rams face off against the Chicago Bears, and the Rams have a chance to again move a game over .500 with a win. The Rams are just going to have to stop hurting themselves. This was another winnable game for the Rams.

But you are not going to win games when you punt the ball eight times and you have 12 penalties for 87 yards.

I don’t know which team will show up against the Bears this Sunday. Neither do the Rams.

For more Rams Roundup, please subscribe to youtube. com/stlamericanvideo and you can also hear me on my weekly podcast @NTheZone with Arlington Lane II.

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ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 – 18, 2015

DEBT

continued from page B1 The Rev. Starsky Wilson, co-chair of the Ferguson Commission and president of the Deaconess Foundation, said ProPublica’s findings about debt collection aligned with the commission’s finding about fines assessed by municipal courts. “It’s a dual drag on individuals seeking to advance,” he said.

He said this impacts the economic mobility of low-income African Americans who disproportionately lose assets from debt collection suits. Economic mobility was a key concern in the Ferguson Commission report. Coming out of the Ferguson unrest, the St. Louis Regional Chamber for the first time added economic mobility to the metrics it uses to judge the region’s fiscal health.

Todd Swanstrom, a political science professor at University of Missouri-St. Louis, said that racial patterns in home foreclosures would make for a triple drag on the same low-income population. Comparing ProPublica’s map of debt collection judgments to maps of foreclosures in the St. Louis region, he said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

ProPublica did not argue that lenders or collectors are guilty of racial bias. Instead, they found that “generations of discrimination have left black families with grossly fewer resources to draw on when they come under financial pressure.”

Swanstrom seconded that. “With the lack of

assets, people lead brittle lives,” he said. “A relatively small judgment can have a cumulative effect that is very problematic.”

But is there also racial bias at work? The lenders that seek collection interviewed

by ProPublica, including the Metropolitan Sewer District, all said they don’t track their customers by race. But in the largely segregated St. Louis region, it’s not difficult to make an educated guess about someone’s race based on the address where their bill is sent.

Is there another way to investigate this data that could lead to criminal action against collectors? Kiel said he was not

n “Our weak campaign ethics laws prevent us from passing payday lending reforms.”

– Treasurer Tishaura O. Jones aware of such cases leading to criminal charges.

Karen Tokarz, professor of law at Washington University School of Law, said she talks to law students about the more unsavory elements of their profession where they may one day find employment, such as filing debt collection suits against low-income people.

“I tell students there is the law and there is justice, and there is a difference between the two,” Tokarz said. “It’s a harsh lesson to teach. It’s a harsh reality that is inescapable and that we have to come to terms with.”

Another harsh reality is the Republican super-majority in the Missouri Legislature. St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura O. Jones said that her tenure as state representative convinced her that legislative change on this issue will be difficult. “Our weak campaign ethics laws prevent us from passing payday

lending reforms,” Jones said.

Wilson said that means change may need to bypass the Legislature. “We need a mobilization of people,” Wilson said. “We need people power. We need voter initiatives.”

ProPublica’s report included six suggestions for reform, which The American printed in its October 15 editorial. They are: lower how much can be taken from debtors’ wages, restrict how much can be taken from debtors’ bank accounts, provide clear notice to debtors about laws that protect them, limit attorney’s fees to reflect actual work on a suit, cut interest on judgments to reasonable level, and improve enrollment in programs to help lowincome debtors.

One law that protect debtors is a statute of limitations on debt, but ProPublica found many collection actions are filed to collect debt after the statute of limitations has expired. Speaking from the audience, attorney Hope Whitehead said that consumers need to file class action suits against debt collectors who violate the statute of limitations.

Two attorneys who file debt collection suits also spoke up from the audience. Both insisted the only “color” important to debt collection is the color of the money owed. Pam Patton – who did indeed get her law degree from Washington University – files debt collection suits as a principal in the local firm Kramer and Frank.

“I’m getting the impression you’re saying we shouldn’t sue people in certain zip codes,” Patton said. “Are we supposed to say to people, ‘You don’t have to pay your bill’?”

Check out the latest Edition of

PARTYLINE Page C8

C1 • ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2015

Denzel’s faith

Saint Louis Fashion Week’s

Photo by Nathan Brown/COGIC

extreme makeover

Denzel Washington delivered the keynote address for the 14th Annual COGIC Cares Banquet during the 108th Holy Convocation in St. Louis on November 7.

Iconic actor speaks to COGIC on gratitude and God’s grace

Alive Magazine and The St. Louis Fashion Fund offer blissful peek at spring styles

By Kenya Vaughn Of The St. Louis American With jam-packed programming that stretched across faith, film and fashion, the St. Louis region flexed its first-tier city potential this past week.

The Caleres Emerging Designer Competition, which transformed Union Station into a glorious grand hall for fashion’s sake on Wednesday, November

4, was a stunning reflection of what the city is capable of.

The event, presented by The Saint Louis Fashion Fund, opened Saint Louis Fashion week with a fierce bang. The runway show could have been folded into any New York fashion week lineup and no one would be the wiser that it was produced by a region often overlooked as a style

By Kenya Vaughn Of The St. Louis American

See FASHION, C6 Photos by Lawrence Bryant

A cool, calm and collected Denzel Washington has accepted two Academy Awards and a Tony Award as millions watched. But the 1,200 or so saints and guests in the Majestic Ballroom of the Marriott Hotel on Saturday, November 7 for The COGIC Cares Banquet saw a different side of the iconic actor when he served as the keynote speaker for the 14th annual fundraiser.

Washington appeared “full” when COGIC Presiding Bishop Charles Blake introduced him as a faithful parishioner during the dinner – which was part of the Church of God in Christ’s 108th Holy Convocation held in St. Louis.

Blake pointed out Washington’s devotion as a faithful COGIC member who leads his entire family in sharing their time, talent and resources with West Angeles Church on Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles.

“You are aware of the great roles that he has played – for some of the most significant and some of the great movies of our time,” Blake said. “But as his pastor, I just want you to know him. Here is a man who has shown great love and great respect for his church and his pastor.”

See DENZEL, C4

“Project Runway: Under The Gunn” finalist Shan Keith with his students.

DELUX power

• Only Online • Shalom Church cracks Billboard Gospel Radio top 30

Local lifestyle magazine honors diverse mix of black millennial achievers

By Kenya Vaughn Of The St. Louis American

Photo by Lawrence Bryant

Gary Gunter, Vice President and General Manager of Radio One St. Louis with DELUX Power 100 Distinguished Honoree Rev. Starsky Wilson Sunday night at Lumiere Live.

“This was about bringing people together who may not receive awards or get that spotlight to link up with people who are in that spotlight, so that everybody can connect and grow,” said Keith Griffin II, publisher of DELUX Magazine, about their Power 100 reception Sunday night at Lumiere Live.

Socialites, social justice servants and everyone in between filled the space to capacity as his urban lifestyle publication recognized 100

young African-American influencers for their contributions to the St. Louis community.

Many were usual suspects who have received previous acclaim for their contributions. Rev. Starsky Wilson of The Ferguson Commission and St. John’s UCC, Brittany Packnett of Teach For America St. Louis and the Ferguson movement, Vanessa Cooksey of Wells Fargo, Michael McMillan of The Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis and St. Louis City Treasurer Tishaura O. Jones were among them.

See DELUX, C4

Dr. F. James Clark and the Shalom Church (City Of Peace) Mass Choir have praised their way into the Top 30 on the Billboard Gospel Radio Chart. Their #28 chart positioning makes Shalom CCOP Choir the only choir in the top 30 with “We Praise Your Name.”

www.stlamerican.com

Calendar

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ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 – 18, 2015 Community Women Against Hardship presents The 27th Annual Circle of Support Gala, featuring a performance

by The Kimmie Horne Ensemble.

For more information, see CONCERTS.

How to place a calendar listing 1. Email your listing to calendar@stlamerican. com OR 2. Visit the calendar section on stlamerican.com and place your listing Calendar listings are free of charge, are edited for space and run on a space-available basis.

concerts Nov. 13, 8 p.m., The Fox Theatre welcomes Gladys Knight and The O’Jays.

The Fox Theatre. For more information, visit www. metrotix.com or call (314 5341111.

Fri., Nov. 13, 8:30 p.m., Fuse TV Presents: Big Freedia - Bounce Shakedown Tour 2015, The Pageant, 6161 Delmar. For more information, visit www.thepageant.com, www.ticketmaster.com or call (314) 726-6161.

Sat., Nov. 14, 9 p.m., Fubar presents Casey Veggies. 3108 Locust St., 63103. For more information, call (314) 2899050 or visit www.fubarstl. com.

Sun., Nov. 15, 5 p.m., Community Women Against Hardship presents The 27th Annual Circle of Support Gala. This concert and silent auction will feature a performance by The Kimmie Horne Ensemble, Horne is the grand niece of legendary vocalist Lena Horne, with special guest Althea Rene. The Sheldon Concert Hall, 3648 Washington Blvd., 63108. For more information, call (314) 289-7523 or visit www.cwah. org.

Sun., Nov. 15, 7 p.m., World Class Entertainment Groups presents Maestro Ky-mani Marley Tour 2015. 2720 Cherokee St., 63118. For more information, call (314) 875-0233 or visit www.2720cherokee.com.

Sat., Nov. 21, 8 p.m., Jazz St. Louis presents The Stanley Clarke Band. Known for his intense dexterity and consummate musicality, Clarke first rose to prominence in the early 1970s with the legendary fusion group Return To Forever. Touhill Performing Arts Center, 1 University Blvd., 63121. For more information, call (314) 341-

5407 or visit www.touhill.org/ events.

Sat., Nov. 28, 8 p.m., The Fox Theatre welcomes Michael McDonald, for more information, visit www. metrotix.com or call (314) 534-1111.

Feb. 13, 7 p.m., St. Louis Music Festival starring Fantasia, Joe and Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly.

For more information, visit www.thechaifetzarena.com Feb. 28, 8 p.m., Gary Clark Jr. - The Story of Sonny Boy Slim Tour, The Pageant, 6161 Delmar. For more information, visit www.thepageant.com, www.ticketmaster.com or call (314) 726-6161.

local gigs Fri., Nov. 13, 8 p.m., Randy Holmes Quintet performs a Tribute to Clifford Brown. Ozark Theatre, 103 E. Lockwood Ave., 63119.

For more information, call (314) 578-2049 or visit www. ozarktheatre.com.

Fri., Nov. 13, 9:30 p.m., The Rustic Goat presents Tribute to Musiq SoulChild.

Performances by Bryant Stewart, Dave Carter, G the Singer, Strings and Talented SStarr. 2617 Washington Ave., 63103. For more information, call (314) 371-4031 or visit www.rusticgoat.com.

Fri., Nov. 20, 6:30 p.m., Hang 10 Productions presents The STL R&B Concert Series feat. Rhoda G & Cold Summer Edition. Emerson Performance Center, 3026 Laclede Ave., 63103. For more information, call (314) 3598299 or (618) 530-6357.

Sat., Nov. 21, 8 p.m., The Ozark Theater presents Danita Sings Whitney. 103 E. Lockwood Ave., 63119. For more information, call (314) 941-0815 or (314) 578-2049.

Featured Event Fri., Nov. 20, 11 a.m., World Wide Technology, Inc. presents The St. Louis American Foundation’s 11th Annual Salute to Excellence in Business Awards & Networking Luncheon. Four Season Hotel St. Louis, 999 N. 2nd St., 63102. For information, call (314) 533-8000.

(In SPECIAL EVENTS) Wednesdays, 6-10 p.m., Lexus Len’s “Wednesday Night Live” featuring: Cheryl Brown, Jeremiah Allen, Jeff Taylor, Gerald Warren & Amos Brewer, The Marquee, 1911 Locust.

special events Thur., Nov. 12, 9 a.m., HireLive presents St. Louis Professional Hiring Event.

HireLive is a national career service company specializing in Sales, Retail and Management Career Fairs. This is your opportunity to interview with 15+ Fortune 500 and industry leading companies seeking talented, experienced and enthusiastic sales, retail and management candidates.

Doubletree Westport Hotel, 1973 Craigshire Rd., 63146.

For more information, email esweeney@hirelive.com or visit www.hirelive.com.

Thur., Nov. 12, 6 p.m., United Way Emerging Leaders Bash. We are gathering for a victory party to celebrate the end of our annual campaign

and the incredible giving spirit of our community. The party includes food and drinks, live entertainment, and more.

Ballpark Village, Busch II Infield, 601 Clark Ave., 63102.

For more information, call (314) 421-0700 or visit www. stl.unitedway.org.

Fri., Nov. 13, 7 p.m., Kingdom House presents Toast & Taste the 1970s.

Guests will enjoy drinks and hors d’oeuvres while Millennium Productions plays tunes from the 1970s and beyond. An auction will round out the evening. 1970s attire encouraged, but not required. Anheuser-Busch Biergarten, 1200 Lynch St., 63118. For more information, (314) 460-6369 or visit www. kingdomhouse.org.

Sat., Nov. 14, 6 p.m., The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater St. Louis (BGCSTL) annual gala, the Great Futures Gala, formerly known as All That Jazz, The “Great Futures Gala is the largest fundraiser benefitting the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater St. Louis with close to $300,000 being raised for community’s youth. Hyatt Regency at the St. Louis Arch

in downtown St. Louis. For ticket information, visit www. bgcstl.org.

Sun., Nov. 15, 5 p.m., St. Andrew’s presents 13th Annual Ageless-Remarkable Saint Louisans Gala. Hyatt Regency St. Louis at the Arch, 315 Chestnut St., 63102.

For more information, call (314) 726-0111 or visit www. standrews1.com.

Tues., Nov. 17, 7 p.m., Childcare Worldwide presents the Ugandan Kids Choir. The children in the choir bring a message of hope – sharing the power of love through music and dance. Missouri History Museum, 5700 Lindell Blvd., 63112. For more information, call (314) 746-4599 or visit www.mohistory.org.

Sun., Nov. 15, 7 p.m., T. Moore Media presents Suite 7. The night will consist of specially crafted cocktails courtesy of Remy Martin, fashion designers from across the Nation, as well as local vendors. Fashion designers will include; Alive Magazine’s favorite, Roi+Rik, Young Addy Collection, Guilty Conscience and various other high-end urban designers. The Vault, 3611 S. Grand Blvd., 63118.

For more information, call (314) 761-9526 or visit www. tmooremedia.ticketleap.com/ suite7.

Wed., Nov. 18, 4 p.m., Chaifetz Arena presents Alvin and the Chipmunks Live.

Chaifetz Arena, 1 S. Compton Ave., 63103. For more information, call (314) 9775000 or visit www.thechaifetz. com.

Fri., Nov. 20, 11 a.m., World Wide Technology, Inc. presents The St. Louis American Foundation’s 11th Annual Salute to Excellence in Business Awards & Networking Luncheon. Four Season Hotel St. Louis, 999 N. 2nd St., 63102. For more information, call (314) 5338000.

Fri., Nov. 20, 7 p.m., The Foster & Adoptive Care Coalition’s Sizzling Celebration. Put on your Friday night best and dancing

shoes to join us for a night of great food, great music, and special surprises. Event proceeds fund programs supporting St. Louis area families served through the Coalition. Moulin Event Center, 2017 Chouteau Ave., 63103. For more information, call (314) 367-8373 or visit www.foster-adopt.org.

Nov. 20 – 21, 2015 United Story Summit. For more information, call (314) 3225588 or visit www.summit. unitedstory.org.

Nov. 20 – 21, Ferguson Youth Initiative presents Party with a Purpose. PWAP is an opportunity for teens (13-19 years old) to share information on what priorities they should focus on to continue enriching the lives of young people in the community in a party atmosphere. Ferguson Middle, 701 January Ave., 63135.

For more information, call (314) 749-5370 or visit www. fyifergyouth.org.

Sat., Nov. 21, 7 p.m., FOCUS St. Louis presents The FOCUS Affair 2015.

Come celebrate the leadership experience, while connecting with FOCUS alumni and regional leaders. Magnolia Hotel, 421 N. 8th St., 63101.

For more information, call (314) 622-1250 or visit www. focus-stl.org/events.

Nov. 26, 11 a.m.

Thanksgiving Day Turkey Dinner, Buffet Style, All You Can Eat! Adults, $12; Seniors (Age 62+), $10; Children 6 to 12, $5; 5 and Under, Free. Homemade Breads and Desserts. Carry Outs Available.

Raffle, Bake Sale, Games, Craft Booth. St. Ignatius Parish, Concord Hill, Missouri.

For more information call 636932-4445 or email thecarols@ saintig.com. Handicap accessible. (www.saintig.com).

Fri., Dec. 4, 8 a.m., Saint Louis Effort for AIDS 30th Anniversary. Performances

by Stacy Carter, Andrew Patrick, Heather Curry, COCA, Dwayne Estes and Some Fun. For more information, call (314) 645-6531 or visit www. stlefa.org.

comedy Sat., Nov. 21, 7 p.m., Comedian Jason Jenkins and Friends. Another great comedy show, this time starring special guest Bobby J, plus other local acts. JC Supper Club, 9053 Riverview Dr., 63136. For more information, call (314) 755-2319.

literary Thur., Nov. 12, 7 p.m., Left Bank Books hosts author Toni Tipton-Martin, author of The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks. 399 N. Euclid Ave., 63108. For more information, call (314) 3676731 or visit www.left-bank. com.

Sat., Nov. 14, 3 p.m., Love Yourself, Love Your Life!

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 – 18, 2015 Book Launch Mix & Mingle. Reprieve Spiritual Wellness for Women, 6614 W. Florissant, 63136. For more information, call (314) 537-2215 or visit www. raechelrivers.com.

Wed., Nov. 18, 7 p.m., Left Bank Books hosts author Denise Bogard, author of The Middle Step. Lisa Harris, a white, suburban woman, finds herself in deep despair after a series of miscarriages and a failed marriage. Eager to embrace parenthood in any way possible, she accepts a job as foster mother in an impoverished area of North St. Louis to four teenage girls.

399 N. Euclid Ave., 63108. For more information, call (314) 367-6731 or visit www.leftbank.com.

Fri., Dec. 4, 7 p.m., St. Louis County Library hosts author Jeff Smith, author of Mr. Smith Goes to Prison. In Mr. Smith Goes to Prison, he exposes the shortcomings of a race-based cycle of poverty and crime that sets inmates up to fail. Library Headquarters, 1640 S. Lindbergh Blvd., 63131. For more information, call (314) 994-3300 or visit www.slcl.org.

theatre Nov. 13 – 14, 8 p.m., Modern American Dance Company presents Liquid Roads.

Infused with the music that flowed up the Mississippi and into our hearts, the show reaches beyond contemporary dance to pure entertainment as four musicians accompany the dancers onstage with original and familiar songs. Broadway World raved that it is a “very special presentation.” Touhill Performing Arts Center, 1 University Blvd., 63121. For more information, call (314) 341-5407 or visit www.touhill. org/events.

Sat., Nov. 14, 6 p.m., Gifted Productions presents Our Money Matters the Musical.

An electrifying production that will have you patting your feet and rocking in your seats while teaching you the value of fostering favorable finances in your business and personal life.

Through song and dance you’ll enjoy helpful tips on managing your finances, the importance of saving, investments, budgeting, planning for college and retirement and it’s all set to popular music. Friendly Temple MBC, 5515 Dr. Martin Luther King Dr., 63112. For more information, call (314) 951-4097.

arts Nov. 14 – Feb. 14, Kemper Art Museum presents The Paintings of Sir Winston Churchill. Sam Fox School of Art, Washington University, 1 Brookings Dr., 63112. For more information, call (314) 935-4523 or visit www. kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu.

Through Dec. 12, St. Louis

C3 Sat., Nov. 21, 11 a.m., The West Side Missionary Baptist Church Social Justice Ministry, in conjunction with the Health Ministry, will present a Health Care Forum. 4675 Page Blvd, 63113. Representatives from Missouri Healthcare for All will share important updates on healthcare reform, relevant legislation in Missouri, and answer audience questions.

This event is for everyone who uses Medicare, Medicaid, or has other healthcare questions.

FREE and open to the public.

County Library presents In His Own Words: The Life and Work of César Chávez.

Library Headquarters, 1640 S. Lindbergh Blvd., 63131. For more information, call (314) 994-3300 or visit www.slcl. org.

Through Dec. 13, COCA presents Daniel Burnett’s Denizen Kim. St. Louis painter, curator, and community-based artist Daniel Burnett will transform the Millstone Gallery with his large-scale wall paintings and constructions inspired by hip-hop, graffiti, mythology, dreams, and nightmares, in collaboration with the COCA world premiere of wUNDERland. The opening reception will be held Friday, Oct. 9, at 8:30 p.m. 524 Trinity Ave., 63130. For more information, call (314) 3837685 or visit www.cocastl.org.

Through March 2016, Pulitzer Arts Foundation hosts Kota: Digital Excavations in African Art. 3716 Washington Blvd., 63108.

For more information, visit www.pulitzerarts.org.

lectures/ workshops Sat., Nov. 14, 10 a.m., The Gateway Housing Foundation presents Free Homebuyer Seminar.

Attendees will learn how to get a free credit analysis, receive information about payment assistance programs, be entered for prizes, and more. 222 S. Meramec Ave., 63105.

Sat., Nov. 14, 12:30 p.m., The Gateway Democrats presents Income Inequality: The Vanishing Middle Class. The focus of the panel discussion is to explore the issues of inequality, poverty, and social justice. Panelists include Professor Terry Jones, UMSL; Sylvester Brown, Sweet Potato Project; Richard Von Glan, Jobs With Justice; and Nancy Cross, Vice President, SEIU. UFCW Union Hall, 300 Weidman Rd., 63021.

For more information, call (314) 984-9580 or visit www. gatewaydemocrats.com.

Wed., Nov. 14, 3 p.m., Education 4 All presents Involved Parent Squad Meet-Up. “It takes a village to raise a child.” Join other like-minded parents in an interactive discussion and discovery session of who is best in your child’s village. Dr. Carletta D. Washington will also provide practical, timely tips for parents based on her experience as a parent and educator.

CIC@CET Building, 20 S. Sarah St., 63138. For more information, call (314) 397-8757 or visit www. education4allinc.com.

Wed., Nov. 14, 6:30 p.m., The Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis hosts The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)

Jazz St. Louis presents The Stanley Clarke Band. See CONCERTS for details.

Workshop. This free workshop is to help students and their families to understand how to navigate applying for financial aid. Attendees will learn about different sources of financial aid (federal, state, and private) and how to implement a successful scholarship search. 8215 Clayton Rd., 63117. For more information, call (314) 725-7990 or visit www.sfstl. org.

Sat., Nov. 21, 10 a.m., St. Louis Alzheimer’s Association presents The Care & Conquer Conference. This conference is for caregivers and individuals with earlystage dementia. Dr. Lenise Cummings-Vaughn, M.D., Assistant Professor at Washington University, will give a presentation. She is the Medical Director of the Stay Healthy Clinic, a clinic created to decrease rehospitalization in those older adults at greatest risk. In addition, she sees patients in the Older Adult Assessment Clinic. Registration is required. New Northside Conference Center, 5939 Goodfellow Blvd., 63147.

For more information or to register, call (800) 272-3900 or visit www.alz.org/stl.

Sat., Nov. 21, 4 p.m., Texture Talk with The Hair Whisperer Tendai.

Get priceless instructions for your natural hair journey at this seminar for all hair textures. Participants will learn how to identify their curl pattern, view natural hair demonstrations, and more. 701 S. 47th St., East St. Louis, IL. 62207. For more information, call (314) 276-9727.

Tuesdays through Dec. 8, 7 p.m., VA Learning Hub. Veterans and transitioning service members are invited to sign up for a no-cost four-week course focused on High-Impact Business

Writing. Express Scripts Hall - Computer Lab 107, UMSL, 1 University Blvd., 63121.

For more information or to register, visit www.eventbrite. com/e/va-learning-hubtickets-19083491236.

health Fri., Nov. 13, 9 a.m., Alive and Well STL and Mental Health America present Reaching Resilience. In this seminar, you’ll learn essential information and practice skill-building activities to adapt well to life changes, transitions or challenging circumstances. Mental Health America of Eastern Missouri, 1905 S. Grand Blvd., 63104.

For more information, call (314) 446-6454 or visit www. aliveandwellstl.com.

Fridays, Nov. 13 – Dec. 18, 1 p.m., Myrtle Hilliard Davis Health Centers presents Diabetes Education Empowerment Program.

Join us for our diabetes selfmanagement workshop, which focuses on quality of life improvements to help better manage your relationship with diabetes. Our approach to teaching this class is primarily community-based, but may also incorporate brief one-onone consultation. 5471 Dr. Martin Luther King Dr., 63112.

For more information or to register, visit www.mhdchc. org.

Sat., Nov. 14, 1 p.m., Legal Services of Eastern Missouri presents Free Marketplace Open Enrollment Event. We

will be helping consumers enroll and re-enroll for tax credits and health insurance through the Missouri Health Insurance Marketplace.

Divoli Library, 4234 N. Grand Ave., 63107. For more information, call (314) 2568753 or visit www.lsem.org.

Saturdays Through Nov. 21, St. Louis County Public Health presents Slide into Fitness. This class focuses on good nutrition, healthy self-esteem, and fun exercises for 12 to 17 years old and their parents or legal guardians. Each class will include classroom instructions and slide dance aerobics. The class is free but advanced registration is required. For more information or to RSVP, call (314) 679-7870 or email tprowell@stlouisco.com.

Sat., Nov. 21, 10 a.m., St. Louis Alzheimer’s Association presents The Care & Conquer Conference. Registration is required. New Northside Conference Center, 5939 Goodfellow Blvd., 63147.

For more information or to register, call (800) 272-3900 or visit www.alz.org/stl.

Mon., Nov. 23, 5:30 p.m., St. Louis Alzheimer’s Association presents The Care & Conquer Conference. Registration is required. Jewish Community Center, 2 Millstone Campus Dr., 63146. For more information or to register, call (800) 272-3900 or visit www.alz.org/stl.

Fridays through Dec. 18, 1 p.m., Myrtle Hilliard Davis Health Centers presents Diabetes Education Empowerment Program.

Join us for our diabetes selfmanagement workshop, which focuses on quality of life improvements to help better manage your relationship with diabetes. Our approach to teaching this class is primarily community-based, but may also incorporate brief one-on-one consultation. 5471 Dr. Martin Luther King Dr., 63112. For more information or to register, visit www.mhdchc.org.

spiritual Sat., Nov. 14, 6 p.m. UCM Banquet: Where Love, Justice and Mercy Walk Together with keynote speaker Pastor Dietra Wise Baker, National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, 442 DeMazenod Dr. Belleville,IL. For more information, visit ucmetroeast. org or call 314-941 2614 Sat., Nov. 14, 7 p.m., The United States Naval Academy Gospel Choir In Concert, A Salute to America’s Heroes, St. Alphonsus Liguori ‘Rock’ Church, 1118 North Grand Blvd, St. Louis, MO. 63106.

For more information, call 314-533-0304 Or visit www. stalphonsusrock.org Nov. 18 – 20, 7 p.m., Kenneth Hardin Ministries and Barbara McClain Ministries present Thy Kingdom Come: The Revival. Join us for an action packed time as this dynamic duo gives out what the Lord has given them. Grace Fellowship Church Center, 4276 Athlone Ave., 63115.

For more information, call (314) 783-6411 or visit www. kenhardin.org.

Sun., Nov. 29, 7 p.m., Festival Of Praise Tour starring Kim Burrell, Fred Hammond, Donnie McClurkin, Hezikiah Walker and more. The Fox Theatre. For more information, visit www.metrotix.com or call (314) 534-1111.

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2015

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Maya Angelou’s birthplace becomes a landmark

Special to the American

Photo by Lawrence Bryant

DELUX Magazine Publisher Keith Griffin II presents St. Louis American Publisher and Executive Editor Donald M. Suggs with the Trailblazer Lifetime Achievement Award recognition.

DELUX Continued from C1 But so were people who may not be household names (at the moment), but are known among several circles as tastemakers and influencers.

Nightlife professionals like Cornell Boone and Niddy, fashion entrepreneurs like Nathaniel Brown III of DNA Clothing and Louise Thomas of Epiphany Boutique. And radio personalities Staci Static, Boogie D and Tammie Holland were in the mix as well.

The crowd was as diverse as the honorees, but there was a noticeable connection between them as they mingled before the ceremony and “turned up” to the sounds of DJ Charlie Chan Soprano afterwards.

“Tonight as we continue to congratulate each other – and we should continue to honor each other – I hope that we will remember that no amount of titles degrees or fancy clothing can actually free us,” said Packnett. “So when we leave tonight, I hope that we can get ready to roll up our sleeves tomorrow to support our community, sacrifice our comfort and help – help out on racial justice, help out on poverty and do our part to make sure that St. Louis is a place that is just and fair for all of us.”

Wilson reemphasized the notion.

“To be a ‘Power 100’ means that we have the capacity to make people do what they would not do otherwise for the sake of caring for our children,” Wilson said. “The cost of the way we’ve done business over the course of our lifetimes is way too high. If you live in 63106 your life is 18 years shorter than if you live in 63105, the cost is way too high.

If you live in Kinloch you live 40 years less than if you live in Wildwood. The cost is way too high.”

Wilson reminded the audience of the 2016 elections.

“Four of the top five offices

in this state will be up for election. Somebody is going to go to all of your churches asking you to vote for them,” Wilson said.

“You ask them what they’ve done since Ferguson. Before they ask you for a vote, you ask them what they’ve done for your community. Before they ask you for a dime, you make sure that they are responding.

Because powerful people make people do things for them, they just don’t turn out to stand next to them.”

Jones also used her remarks for a “shameless plug” for the Financial Dignity Center in St. Louis City Hall and to share news about her program of providing college seed money to area kindergarteners.

“What Starsky Wilson, Tishaura Jones and Brittany Packnett had to say during their speeches, that was some powerful stuff,” Griffin said.

“And we were able to deliver that to a demographic that may not have the opportunity to hear what Starsky has to say or to know that Tishaura Jones is giving $50 to public and charter school kindergarteners to start college funds.”

For Griffin, the most touching experience of the Power 100 was presenting St. Louis American Publisher and Executive Editor Donald M. Suggs with the Trailblazer Lifetime Achievement Award.

“I see this emerging leadership, as exemplified by people like Keith and some of the people you’ve seen stand on this stage,” Suggs said. “It’s a wonderful thing to try to live one’s life with a sense of purpose, and it’s a wonderful thing to see – it’s very encouraging and very inspiring.

Our hope lies in this leadership.

We have many challenges, but we also opportunities. This is a special moment, and St. Louis is a special place.”

For Griffin, it was a most special night.

“To see the caliber of people who came out to celebrate DELUX and the Power 100, it was definitely one of the highlights of my life.”

A 127-year-old brick twostory in the Gate District is the city’s latest landmark.

The house at 3130 Hickory St. was the birthplace of author and activist Maya Angelou, who was born Marguerite Johnson in April 1928. The Board of Aldermen approved its designation as a city landmark on Friday, limiting the alterations the owners can make to the property.

“This modest house in a once-segregated St. Louis neighborhood helps to convey the journey Ms. Angelou made to become a renowned author, poet, performer and outspoken civil rights activist, and although Ms. Angelou’s life was spent in many places in the United States and abroad, the Property comprises an important part of the history of one of the most prominent and respected women of her generation,” the landmark designation legislation reads.

Angelou’s varied career took her all across the world, and she spent the last three decades of her life in North Carolina.

She grew up between St. Louis and the then-raciallysegregated town of Stamps, Arkansas.

DENZEL Continued from C1 Blake spoke of how the two met.

“It must have been in the early 1990s where I went to a social event and was sitting in a ballroom much like this one. I had the privilege of sitting beside the young actor,” Blake said. “He was the MC, and I was either saying the invocation or either getting an award. As I sat beside the young man, I said to him, ‘I enjoy your acting very, very much.” And he said to me, ‘I enjoy your preaching very, very much.’”

At the time, Blake had no idea that Washington attended his church.

He sat in the back inconspicuously during his visits to West Angeles, never asking for any recognition or introduction. Washington soon brought his wife Pauletta.

And when they began having children, church became a fully committed family affair.

“There were there every Sunday. They were involved.

Their children worked in

Two events that shaped her early life occurred in St. Louis – her rape by her mother’s boyfriend and his subsequent murder by a mob after she testified against him.

“My 7-and-a-half-year-old logic deduced that my voice had killed him, so I stopped speaking for almost six years,” Angelou once said.

From the silence, a louder voice was born.

Her experience would be the premise for “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings,” the stunning Autobiography released in 1970 that would solidify Angelou in the

mainstream as a literary and cultural icon.

In addition to being adapted into an acclaimed television movie, the book has been translated into 17 languages and sold more than one million copies.

A true Renaissance woman, Angelou worked as a professor, singer and dancer, actress, lecturer, television producer and director of Broadway plays in addition to her work as a celebrated author and poet.

Angelou spoke at least six languages, and worked at one time as a newspaper editor in Egypt and Ghana.

our nursery and attended Sunday school,” Blake said.

“Whenever there was a need, Mr. Denzel Washington was always overjoyed to respond with generosity – unprecedented generosity to the life of our church.”

The crowd erupted with applause.

As the camera panned to where Washington was originally sitting, the seat was empty. In his excitement, he had already walked to the side of the stage and was waiting to come to the podium.

Washington was clearly overjoyed as he asked his wife to stand. He recited the Lord’s Prayer. And then he spoke of his own lifelong connection with the Church of God in Christ – and The Holy Convocation.

“My father, my earthly father, Denzel Washington Sr., was a pastor for the Church of God in Christ for 60 years,” Washington said.

“I can remember the most important time in our house – and he would be so excited – was when he was preparing to attend Convocation in Memphis, Tennessee.”

Washington then described the care that was taken as his

father prepared to make his annual trek from upstate New York to Tennessee.

“He would get his best two suits together and my mother would fry him a tin of chicken and prepare a thermos of coffee and he would make the drive,” Washington said. “I know he’s smiling in heaven, seeing his son doing the best I can do today, by the grace of God.” He took a moment to take it all in – and contain his tears.

The purpose of the COGIC Cares Banquet is to raise funds for disaster relief and scholarship funds. This was a record year for the fundraiser as they bestowed 37 scholarships to students around the nation.

Washington gave his denomination a nod for its role in his success.

“Forty years ago, March 27, 1975, I was in my mother’s beauty shop. I had flunked out of college. I had a 1.7 grade point average. I had no future,” Washington said. “I was sitting looking in the mirror, and I see a woman behind me sitting under the dryer. Of course, the voice of God always comes from under a dryer.”

The woman, one of the oldest members of his family

She read a poem at President Bill Clinton’s first inauguration – becoming only the second poet in history, after Robert Frost, to do so.

She also recited an original poem during the inauguration of Barack Obama, the first African American president in U.S. history.

President Obama awarded her with the Medal of Freedom in 2011, which is the country’s highest civilian honor.

She received more than 30 honorary degrees and taught American studies for years at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem.

Her list of friends is as impressive as her illustrious career. Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey referred to her as “sister friend.” She counted Martin Luther King Jr., with whom she worked during the Civil Rights movement, among her friends. King was assassinated on her birthday.

She was also one of the first black women film directors.

Her work on Broadway has been nominated for Tony Awards.

Angelou died in May of last year at the age of 86.

Information from St. Louis Public Radio contributed to this report.

church, began asking for a pen and paper so that she could write down the prophecy she had for Washington’s life.

“She said, ‘Young man, you are going to travel the world and speak to people,’” Washington said. “Now, mind you, I was 20 years old, with a 1.7 grade point average and had flunked out of school.”

She told him he was going to preach.

“In this 40 year journey, I guess she was right,” Washington said. “Through my work, I have spoken to millions of people. In 2015, I said I’m no longer just going to speak through my work. I’m going to make a conscious effort to get up and speak about what God has done for me.”

Just minutes after his proclamation to do so, Washington said, Bishop Blake called and asked him to keynote this year’s banquet.

“I remember saying to my mother, at a time when I was feeling myself, ‘Ma, did you ever think that I was going to become this?’” Washington said. “She said, ‘Boy, do you know all the people who have been praying for your behind?’

And she made me clean the windows.”

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ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 – 18, 2015

Celebrations Birthdays

Anniversaries

MSgt (Ret) Jill Ransom, who served honorably for 33 years with the US Air Force, will have a milestone birthday on Friday, November 13, 2015. She will be 60 years old. We want to congratulate and send best wishes to her on her special day and acknowledge her service to her country.

Happy 94th Birthday to Mrs. Aretha Winters on November 14th!

Pastor Arlene B. and Elder Kenneth W. McClendon will celebrate their 42nd wedding anniversary on November 17, 2015. Apostle Pastor and Elder are the founders of Chronicles Christian Center Church. They have two loving daughters—both educators: Dr. Ingrid D. McClendon Carter (son-in-law Anthony Carter and granddaughter Toni Danielle Carter) and daughter Iris K. McClendon. Elder retired from the U.S. Navy after 20 years and worked for General Motors. Pastor has been a licensed barber and instructor for over 25 years.

Reunions All reunion announcements can be viewed online!

Beaumont Alumni Class 1968 will have its 48-year reunion June 11-12, 2016.

Meetings for the Reunion will be at Florissant Valley Library Branch, 195 New Florissant Rd., S. Florissant, MO 63031, 4th Saturdays of the month.

Schedule : Nov. 28, 2015, 2-5 p.m.; Jan. 23, 2016, 1-4 p.m.;

Feb. 27, 2016, 1- 4 p.m. For more information call 314-8698312.

Beaumont High School – Class of 1980 has planned its 35 year class reunion.

However all BHS Alumni are welcome to attend. Fri, Nov 13 – Sun., Nov. 15, 2015 Hotel Lumiere; Info available on www.eventbrite. com; Search on Beaumont Class of 1980. We need your home and/or email address immediately. Cutoff for reservations is Sat., Oct. 31, 2015. For more information, please contact: Terri Harris Pruitt: terrilynnhpruitt@att. net, 314-478-8923; Janice Lindsey Alphin: jmaphin1@ yahoo.com, 314-330-7881.

Mr. and Mrs. Robert E. Williams Jr. will celebrate 13 years of marriage on November 16, 2015.

Call evenings only please.

Mizzou Black Theatre/World Theatre Workshop Reunion classes are celebrating 34 years of the founding of the theatre program and our founding director. As we plan this event for 2016, we are asking former cast members to forward your names and contact information to Glenn Ellis at btwreunion@ outlook.com. The goal is to meet up in April. More info will follow.

Soldan High Class of 1965 presents: “On the Road Again” to Washington, DC. Cost: $479 per-person, double occupancy, 6-Days and 5-Nights, Thurs.

June2- Tues. June 7, 2016.

Sa’niya Denise Robinson turns one year old on November 12th. She is the daughter of Andre’ Robinson and Melanie DeFrance and granddaughter of Christina Jackson, Sean Smith, Senola Cannady and Melvin DeFrance. Sa’niya is truly a blessing. We love you stink!

First payment due now $75 each person. For more information and reservations contact: Corinne Stuckes (636)-294-4373, Brenda Yancey (314)-830-1334 or Isaiah Hair, Jr. (314)-387-7592 email: cstukes@charter.net.

Soldan High Class of 1966 has planned its 50-year reunion for September 9-10, 2016 at Christian Hospital Atrium, 1111 Dunn Road St. Louis, Mo 63136. For more information, please contact: Meredith Wayne Farrow, 314.521-8540, Robert Collins, 908.313-5002 or Marilyn Edwards Simpson, 341.837-7746. Facebook, soldan class of 1966 or email: stlsoldan1966@yahoo.com.

Soldan High Class of 1971 is planning its 45th year reunion for: June 17-19, 2016 at the Ameristar Casino Resort & Spa, One Ameristar Boulevard, St. Charles, Mo 63301.

University City High Class of 1976 is planning its Fabulous 40th year class reunion for June 24-25, 2016. We need your contact information.

Please email your information to: weareuc76@gmail.com or call the UCHS Class of 76 voicemail at 314-301-9597.

University City Class of 1981 will have its 35-year reunion August 5-7, 2016. Please send your contact information to Denise Weatherford -Bell at msdenise38@yahoo.com.

FREE OF CHARGE Do you have a celebration you’re proud of? If so we would like to share your good news with our readers.

Whether it’s a birth, graduation, wedding, engagement announcement, anniversary, retirement or birthday, send your photos and a brief announcement (50 words or less) to us and we may include it in our paper and website – AT NO COST – as space is available. Photos will not be returned.

Send your announcements to: kdaniel@stlamerican. com or mail to: St. Louis American Celebrations c/o Kate Daniel 2315 Pine St. St. Louis, MO 63103

Reunion notices are free of charge and based on space availability.

We prefer that notices be emailed to us!

However, notices may also be sent by mail to: Kate Daniel, 2315 Pine St., St. Louis, MO 63103 Deadline is 10 a.m. on Friday. If you’d like your class to be featured in a reunion profile, email or mail photos to us.

Our email address is:

reunions@ stlamerican.com

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ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2015 (Left) Bloggers Jasmine Diane, Psyche Southwell and Rocky Richards came through to check out The Caleres Emerging Designer Competition as Saint Louis Fashion Week kicked off Wednesday night at Union Station.

FASHION Continued from C1 Mecca.

But after this year – especially with the import of individuals from fashion capitols of New York and Los Angeles – the fashion community will most certainly take notice of what St. Louis has to offer.

The Saint Louis Fashion Week experience was moved to November for 2015 and trimmed down to a handful of events over the course of three days.

Two book signings, a fashion challenge, designer showcases, a fashion/art hybrid exhibit and even a lecture on technology as it pertains to fashion were elements of this year’s programming.

The streamlined presentation was absolutely worth the wait – and instead of appearing late for fall, the Emerging Designer show in particular gave St. Louis a head start on the next season as the five competitors presented items their Spring 2016 lines.

“Isn’t this fabulous?” said 100.3 The Beat morning show personality Tammie Holland. “I mean absolutely fabulous.”

She was among the 1,200 guests who came to watch five designers compete for a $25,000 prize – the largest in the history of the competition.

Crisp white linens, flowing lace and color blocked jumpers gave insight on the hot looks for next summer, courtesy of rising design stars Houghton, Haus Alkire, Eckhaus Latta, Azede Jean-Pierre and NOVIS. The designers came from across the nation – including New York to compete from the top prize. And among them are style stars that have already made a name for themselves internationally.

Azede Jean-Pierre is most famously known for dressing

Lynn and Gabe were among the stylish crowd who came to soak in The Caleres Emerging Designer Competition Wednesday night at Union Station.

Photos by Lawrence Bryant

First Lady Michelle Obama when she graced the cover of Essence Magazine.

Houghton debuted at

Lincoln Center in February 2012, and in October 2012 Houghton Bride followed.

Houghton has been featured in Vogue internationally, WWD, Elle, The Daily Front Row, W Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Style.com, Vogue. com, Teen Vogue, InStyle. com, People, US, Le Monde, Town and Country, Glamour Brides, Brides and Los Angeles

Confidential.

Local style stars looked on with nods of approval as the garments came down the runway –among them, “Project Runway: Under The Gunn” finalist Shan Keith and “Project Runway” alum Michael Drummond.

Keith, a designer-turned educator, brought several of his students to experience the show. They looked on in awe as the stoic models gracefully traipsed down the runway that seemed to stretch the length of Union Station.

Houghton proved to be in a class all its own with

impeccable designs on garments made with such care they appeared seamless as they flowed off of the bodies that showcased them.

Houghton’s brainchild Katharine Polk was rightfully presented with the $25,000 grand prize award by the panel of judges that included Fern Mallis, founder of New York Fashion Week; designer Lisa Perry; Tomoko Ogura, senior fashion director at Barneys New York; Gary Wassner, CEO of Hilldun Corporation and chairman of Interluxe; James LaForce, co-founder of LaForce + Stevens; and Debra

Bass, fashion editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

A broader representation of color would have been a wonderful thing as mostly fair-skinned and ethnically ambiguous models made up the vast majority of black talent on the catwalk.

But the audience compensated for the lack of diversity on the runway – as did the posthumous recognition of local style icon and fashion educator Jeigh Singleton for his contributions to the St. Louis fashion community during the Saint Louis Fashion Fund Gala following the runway show.

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2015

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UAPO convenes National Black Political Leadership Conference A Throw Back to Modern Art in the Art Museum and in the Community

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the completion the Gateway Arch, one of the city’s most iconic modernist designs, the Saint Louis Art Museum’s St. Louis Modern exhibition, explores a dynamic period in the metro areas history (1935–65) when St. Louis-based architects, artists, and designers made innovative contributions to midcentury modern design.

Promoting ideas about good design (notably simplicity and functionality), many of the more than 150 objects in this exhibition helped make products more accessible to St. Louis consumers.

This exhibition has something for everyone to enjoy; and it is a terrific example of merging fine art and functional art. Visitors will see many familiar objects that are sure to spark memories of the past as well as a deeper appreciation of St. Louis history. St. Louis Modern includes furniture, glass, silver and other metalwork, textiles and industrial design objects as well as paintings, drawings, photographs, models for sculpture, and stained glass.

Modern design’s embrace of innovative materials and streamlined styling is captured by one particularly exciting object—a 1954 Chevrolet Corvette that is on view inside the Art Museum as part of St. Louis Modern. The Corvette was manufactured by talented craftsmen at the General Motors assembly plant at Union Boulevard and Natural Bridge from 1954 to 1981. There are several examples of stained glass on view in the St. Louis Modern exhibition, and one can also see magnificent examples of midcentury modern stained glass in and around the metro area, including the windows at the former Faith-Salem Church located on West Florissant Road in Jennings built in 1956.

During this postwar period, St. Louis architects designed modern buildings and homes with classical styling. One such commercial building was the Jefferson Bank and Trust Company located on the corner of Washington and Jefferson Streets which opened in 1956. The

angled and dramatic façade of the building along with its multiple drive-up banking windows would become known for the civil rights movement as much as for its space age “modernist” design.

Moving westward from St. Louis city to Richmond Heights was the birth of a neighborhood of homes steeped in the classical modern aesthetic. In 1945 Dr. Thomas and Georgia Rusan built their home and soon other Black professionals joined them in creating a unique neighborhood by and for African Americans.

Construction of modern spacious homes continued through 1968 and today nearly 30 homes make up the Bennett Avenue District which was added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 2008.

St. Louis Modern will be on view through January 31 with a variety of lectures and musical performances. Visit www.slam.org for a complete listing of programs.

Choice Picks Exhibition Talk: St. Louis Modern with exhibition curators Thursday, November 19, 11:00 am and Friday, November 20, 6:00 pm. Free

Cocktails and Conversations: Birth of the Cool: Jazz and Midcentury Modern Design Friday, November 20, 7:00 pm. $15 ($10 members)

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The latest in News, Sports and Entertainment!

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Calls for ‘Proportionate Political Representation,’ recruits black candidates American staff

At the recent National Black Political Leadership Conference in St. Louis, two black presidential candidates, Willie Wilson and Sedinam Kinamo Christin Moyowasifza Curry, were the featured luncheon speakers. This gathering of national, state and local leaders was convened October 30-31 at Greater St. Mark Family Church by the Universal African Peoples Organization (UAPO) headed by longtime human rights activists and founders, Zaki Baruti and Safiyah Chauvin.

Speakers and presenters included Congressman Wm. Lacy Clay; Malik Zulu Shabazz, president of Black Lawyers for Justice, Washington, D.C.; Omali Yeshiteli, chairman of African Peoples Socialist Party, St. Petersburg, Florida; Donnie Bradford, One Million Conscious Black Voters and Contributors, Jackson, Tennessee; Nana Remel Moore, Coming Together Stark County, Canton, Ohio; Naimah Latif, radio talk host and author, Chicago; Bill Goodin, community activist, Baltimore; Martin Casey, Fuller Products executive, Chicago: Monique Sigh Bey, talk show host, Kansas City, Kansas; Lionel Nixon, media specialist, Chicago; Cherry Montgomery, Friends of the African Union, Chicago; state Senator Jamilah Nasheed; state Rep. Tommie Pierson, a candidate for lieutenant governor of Missouri; state Representatives Kim Gardner and Rochelle Gray; Minister Donald Muhammad, Mosque 28; Rev. Clyde Crumpton, Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church; and Rev. Elston McCowan, Star Grace MB Church.

Other local leaders who conducted workshops included Michael McPhearson, Veterans for Peace/Don’t Shoot Coalition; Marlon Lee, Urban League; Jesse Todd, 18th Ward committeeman; Tory Russell, Don’t Shoot Coalition; Mike Hassell, Chosen for Change; Anthony Bell, 3rd Ward committeeman; Adolphus Pruitt, NAACP

Zaki Baruti of the UAPO with presidential candidates Sedinam Kinamo Curry (Green Party) and Willie Wilson (Democratic Party) St. Louis Chapter; Yaphett El Amin, Director/ MOKAN; Regina Dennis Nana, development anthropologist; James Steward, New African Paradigm Study Group; Benita Tops, real estate investment specialist; Eddie Hasan, Congress of Racial Equality; Stefan Bradley, director of African Studies at Saint Louis University; Reynaldo Anderson, professor at Harris-Stowe State University; Angela McCall, Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE); and attorneys Randall Cahill, McArthur Moten and Eric E. Vickers.

The purpose of the conference was to address the concept of “Proportionate Political Representation.” This concept simply means that blacks’ percentage of the population should be reflected in political representation and power.

UAPO is recruiting black candidates for the 2016 elections.

The UAPO also endorsed the proposal of Malik Zulu Shabazz for a National Blackout that is, to only spend money with black-owned businesses, starting with the upcoming Black Thursday holiday season.

A National Black Political Convention is being organized for the last weekend in March 2016.

For more information, call 314-477-4629 or visit www.uapo.org.

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2015

C8

Celebrity Swag Snap of the Week Promoter Kool-Aid celebrated his birthday with his longtime friends Southern Hip-Hop legends 8Ball and MJG Friday night at The Marquee. The duo performed classics from their catalogue of music that stretches back more than twenty years.

Danni and Artist Sherelle hung out in front of Sherelle’s paintings @ 1st Friday at the Gallery

Honoree Mo Spoon and DELUX Magazine’s publisher Keith Griffin chatted it up @ The DELUX Power 100 Reception Sunday @ Lumiere Live

Rhonda and Miraida @ the Inaugural Delux Inaugural Power 100 Reception Sunday @ Lumiere Live

Team DNA was in the building to support Nate for being named one of DELUX Magazine’s Power 100 Sunday @ Lumiere Live

Power to the 100. Return. The DELUX Magazine Power 100 reception was absolutely everything Sunday night at the Lumiere Live. I would need the whole Partyline to name them all off, but just know that it was more than just your regular mix of millennial leadership. It was definitely a good look or the city as the folks packed out the space and show love for the honorees. And Mike McMillan said it best when he pointed out that they were “loose” with their millennial window. I’m not gonna say names, but one or two were quiet baby boomers. But even still, I can see why they made the list – though I know there were some folks frowning because some folks themselves included didn’t make the 100 while others did. It was still splendid mix of young people doing big things for the city. All in all it was a fantastic look for Keith Griffin and DELUX as well for their first time out. Now you know me, so I have to dissect these outfits. Folks gave me so much to work with that it’s been impossible for me to decide a clear winner on the best dressed. Ebony from Cuetopia quickly comes to mind. She had a little too much going on at the top – and by too much, I mean not enough – but her ensemble was still everything overall all. It looked like she ran off of somebody’s runway. Ashley Mitchell and those bedazzled Red Bottoms…life. And a surprisingly dolled up diva was Jackie Robbins from the Rib Shack. I caught life from her red and black formal gown. Louise Thomas’ jumpsuit and Angela Brown’s black wrap gown deserve a nod as well. The fellas we reppin’ too. I don’t know where he gets them from but Abe from Star Power knows how to pull together some formalwear like nobody’s business. They’ll need a bigger location for next year –especially after all the buzz.

8Ball and MJG rock the Marquee. Since I’m on the subject of splendid mix I thought I would bring up the diversity that I saw in the building at the Marquee Friday night for the 8Ball and MJG show.

I was not expecting all the folks with 401k plans and corner offices to sneak up in that spot to hear the trap music founding fathers slay the stage. I won’t call you out, though. I also saw some texturizers, beaded cornrows and a finger wave shag. But the Used Jeans outfit took the cake. No, not as in previously worn – I’m referring to the denim brand from circa 1993. An age range of about 48-21 blended They were blended in the usual suspects in the club. Well, except for a duo who looked to be rookie undercover officers erroneously attempting to scout for informants – or members of a Beach Boys tribute band. I must say that as much as I’ve grown and matured, I’ll probably have to become a first lady at a church before my soul will be able to pass on an 8ball and MJG show.

8Ball was giving me a thugged out Barry White and MJG has fluffed up a taste, but hasn’t aged a bit. They didn’t take the stage until 2 a.m. as usual, but the folks still had a good time – even though the poor thing with the blue braids that was upset about her drink being spilled that she almost ruined it for everybody.

I was hoping she wasn’t anywhere near the man who accidentally bumped into her when they kicked into “You Don’t Want Drama,” , because they’re probably would have been some. I expected more show, but all in all they were true to form and gave me a taste of everything I needed as I strolled down trap memory lane.

Hip-hop’s generation next. The day after middle-aged hip-hop heads released their inner thug, their hip-hop hipster children set up shop for a full revue that showcased what’s next in hip-hop and R&B. Big Krit closed the show and I must say that every time I see him I wonder why he hasn’t caught on with the masses yet. Mimi Hood, Chip “Space” Price, Bronica Richardson, Asha Hornaday and plenty more folks who came through to see the Mississippi bred Rapper rip the mic at the Ready Room. It’s a good thing that most of the ladies up in there were natural because it was so packed and hot that there would have been a room full of wasted blowouts. In addition to Krit, I also caught life from newcomer BJ The Chicago Kid. He had a few songs that were so cute it made me wonder if he’ll be a major contender in the R&B game in a bit.

Fox 2 says farewell to April Simpson. I must say that it came as a shock to me when Fox 2 gave the chop to longtime on-air personality April Simpson last week. Word on the curb was that it was because she was accused of being culturally insensitive towards an intern. I also heard that she wasn’t the only one who called the young man called him “Bruce LeRoy” because he actually looked like Taimak (yes, I’m that much of a “Last Dragon” fan that I know his real name off of the dome) and not because he was part black and part Asian. But I also got word that a co-worker encouraged the intern to take his concerns to human resources, which ultimately led to her being let go. Cultural insensitivity is never okay, but I really think they should’ve worked to resolve the issue before April was terminated. In my opinion it was the least they could do after she suffered through being pelted with hamburgers on national television, but that’s just me. I don’t have any clue about what went on behind the scenes over there – and there may be much more to it – but I do wish April the best.

Sound Engineer Wavy Wayne and his lovely wife Songstress Lydia Caesar following her performance Saturday @ 555 Washington

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Fannie’s fabulosity. I’m probably gonna catch all sorts of sideyes for saying so, but I’m going to suggest to each and every one of my more open minded folks to add a drag ball to your bucket list. I knew I would catch life after watching “Paris is Burning.” but I had no idea how much fun it would be in real life until I made my way to the annual Fannie’s Ball Saturday night at The Ambassador. Baby, those ladies had me really feeling like I wasn’t doing my womanhood enough justice by how they slayed in gowns and served with lipsyncing and seduction that you would have to see to believe.

Butter Love by LC and Savis Davis came through for the art and fellowship that goes down every month @ 1st Fridays At

Kevin Bush of the St. Louis Rams and Chuck came through for the Dirty South rap sounds of 8Ball and MJG @ The Marquee Friday Universal Motown recording artist BJ the Chicago Kid with Asha after he tore the stage down Saturday night @ The Ready Room

Jeanelle and Ebony got “crunk” to some classic hip-hop Friday night @ The Marquee

Mr. Larry and Mrs. Becky Blue were the epitome of a power couple Sunday night @ DELUX Magazine’s Power 100 Photos by Lawrence Bryant & John Scott

JOIN US FOR A UFC WATCH PARTY

SATURDAY, NOV. 14 Doors open at 7pm

Show your MetroPCS phone to enjoy the fight in VIP seating with free food and drinks for you and a guest. Limited space available.

11208 W. Florissant Ave.

Career Center

THE

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN

CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTER MANAGER Licensed and accredited Center with Head Start and Early Head Start. Must be highly motivated to lead and achieve. For immediate consideration, please forward cover letter and resume to: HR, St. Louis Transitional Hope House, Inc., 1611 Hodiamont Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63112.

WOMEN IN ACTION Train to be anything from an aircraft mechanic to a nuclear technician, a builder to a diver.

Take advantage of excellent advancement opportunities and potentially receive tuition for college Ready to become the woman you've always aspired to be? America's Navy has a place for you. For more information please contact us at 800-777-6289 or jobs_stlouis@navy.mil

MR. T'S CARWASH & DETAILING

Requirements: Master Degree preferred.

Qualifications a minimum of a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work, Counseling or Psychology Minimum One year previous experience a Substance Abuse or Mental Health Counseling.

Certifications (CADC, CRADC, CRAADC, RASAC 1/11) or licensure as a professional or provisional counselor or social worker required.

If RASAC 1/11, ability to obtain higher Missouri Credentialing Board certification within 6 month of hire preferred If interested please contact: or send resume

Full, Part-Time positions, background check.Steady work history for 3-5 years preferred. MUST apply in person at 314 N. Jefferson at Olive. Monday - Friday 9A to 5P. Two forms of I.D.

Part time evenings in O’Fallon & Wildwood, MO Monday – Friday Apply online at www.Janitron.com Or call us at 636-444-9055

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SENIOR LEADERSHIP OPPORTUNITIES supporting the Gateway Arch, its grounds and neighboring public space now and for decades to come.

CityArchRiver Foundation is currently conducting national searches for a DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT and DIRECTOR OF FINANCE. Learn more about these exciting leadership roles at www.csiapply.com.

EOE

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DRIVERS CO & O\Op’s: Earn great money Running Dedicated!

Great Hometime and Benefits. Monthly Bonuses. Drive Newer

Equipment!

855-582-2265

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Looking to move into a new space?

See Page D3

Director WESTEND CLINIC, INC. 5736 West Florissant St. Louis, MO 63120 Westendclinic45@yahoo.com Or Fax: (314) 381-0202

DISTRICT MANAGER Technical Support for Financial Aid

CLEANING SPECIALIST NEEDED!

D1

St. Louis Community College is a multi-campus district comprised of four campuses and six satellites serving 718 square miles of St. Louis city and county and portions of Jefferson and Franklin counties.

Position Duties and Responsibilities: •Manages the operations and maintenance of automated systems, report production, hardware, software, network, website, and processing systems for the office of financial aid. Implements system enhancements by design, creation and coordination •Collaborates with campus partners on technical strategy, shared data integrity, standards, and communications; produces and maintains files for data collection and data entry; assists with staff and campus community training; serves as liaison with various campus offices to ensure compliance needs are communicated and new initiatives are compliant with regulations •Manages various initiatives within the department including supervising Application Specialist, data collection and analysis for federal reports (Gainful employment, IPEDS, DH-14, FISAP, Experiment 6, and Shopping Sheet), survey reporting, monitoring of Return of Title IV, developing cost of attendance including survey pieces, and training Required Qualifications: Master’s degree and five (5) years of related experience.

Application Process: • All candidates must complete an online application at: http://jobs.stlcc.edu/postings/3595 EO/AA/VET/Disability Employer

THE

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN

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is looking for experienced car washers and detailers.Contact: Mr. T's Carwash @ 9845 Halls Ferry Rd. phone - 314-868-7676 ask for Mr. T or Reggie for more information.

WESTEND CLINIC, INC. has an opening for a full time Substance Abuse Counselor.

West End Clinic is dedicated to rebuilding lives.

Competitive salary, WEC offer employee’s health benefits, dental insurance, 401K Plan, Career advancement, training and development, and on – site supervised hours for certification and licensure.

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN

NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2015

“JANITORIAL”

FULL TIME OPENING

SUBSTANCE ABUSE COUNSELOR

•

THE

Bids & Notices

THE

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN

METROPOLITAN ST. LOUIS SEWER DISTRICT Notice is hereby given that the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District will receive sealed bids in the Purchasing Division, 2350 Market Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63103-2555 until 10:00am December 10, 2015 for Purchase of: PUMP Specifications and bid forms may be obtained from www.stlmsd.com - click on “MSD At Work”, then “Bidding on Projects”. The bid document will be identified as 6226 RFQ. If you do not have access to the internet, call (314) 768-6314 to request a copy of this bid.

Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

NOTICE TO CONTRACTORS

Plans and specifications will be available on November 9, 2015 from the St. Louis County Web Site (www.stlouisco.com), or by contacting County Blue Reprographics, Inc., 1449 Strassner Drive, St. Louis, Missouri 63144, (314) 961-3800.

DIRECTOR OF PROCUREMENT AND ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES ST. LOUIS, COUNTY

SEALED BIDS

SEALED BIDS

for Sealed bids for Drinking Water System Improvements, Washington State Park, Desoto, Missouri, Project No. X1426-01 will be received

by FMDC, State of MO, UNTIL 1:30 PM, 12/17/2015. For specific project information and ordering plans, go to http:// www.oa.mo. gov/fmdc/dc/ list.htm

for Lagoon Renovation, MaconTraining Site, Macon, Missouri, Project No. T1227-02 will be received

by FMDC, State of MO, UNTIL 1:30 PM, 12/3/2015. For specific project information and ordering plans, go to http:// www.oa.mo. gov/fmdc/dc/ list.htm

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Sealed bids for 2015 CRS Collector Overlay Program, St. Louis County Project No. CR-1654, will be received at the Office of the Director of Procurement for the County of St. Louis, County Government Center Administration Building, 41 South Central Avenue, 8th Floor, Clayton, Missouri 63105, until 2:00 p.m. on November 25, 2015.

BIDS & PUBLIC NOTICES D2

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN

1ST BID NOTICE A 1st Prebid meeting to discuss the renovation and opportunities for minority subcontractors, women owned businesses, disadvantaged business enterprises, city companies and residents, and section 3 businesses will take place in the near future. More information will be available soon.

Currently, Paric Corporation will be accepting bids for the renovation of the building located on 634 N Grand Blvd, St Louis, Missouri 63103. The building will undergo extensive renovations in the first quarter of 2016.

Once an office building and a theater, the building will now have 146 hotel rooms with a major tenant anchoring the first 2 floors. Almost the entire 161,000 square foot building will receive some form of restoration with special attention paid to the historic woodwork.

Bid information and plans will be available the in early January. Please contact Trena Bourne (636-561-9543) for more information.

LETTING #8595 IMPROVEMENTS TO RIVER DES PERES EXTENSION PARK Sealed proposals will be received by the Board of Public Service in Room 208 City Hall, 1200 Market Street, St. Louis, Mo. Until 1:45 PM, CT, on December 8, 2015, then publicly opened and read.Plans and Specifications may be examined on the Board of Public Service website http://www.stl-bps.org/planroom.aspx (BPS On LinePlan Room) and may be purchased directly through the BPS website from INDOX Services at cost plus shipping. No refunds will bemade.

A pre-bid conference for all contractors bidding on this project will be held on November 23, 2015 at 10:00 A.M. in Room 208 City Hall.

Bidders shall comply with all applicable City, State and Federal laws (including MBE/WBE policies).

All bidders must regard Federal Executive Order 11246, “Notice of Requirement for Affirmative Action to Ensure Equal Employment Opportunity”, the “Equal Opportunity Clause” and the “Standard Federal Equal Employment Specifications” set forth within and referenced at www.stl-bps.org (Announcements).

LETTING # 8596 CONCRETE AND BRICK REMOVAL/REPLACEMENT AND COMPLETE SIDEWALK INSTALLATION SP-98 Sealed proposals will be received by the Board of Public Service in Room 208 City Hall, 1200 Market Street, St. Louis, Mo. Until 1:45 PM, CT, on DECEMBER 1, 2015, then publicly opened and read.

Plans and Specifications may be examined on the Board of Public Service website http://www.stl-bps.org/planroom.aspx (BPS On Line Plan Room) and may be purchased directly through the BPS website from INDOX Services at cost plus shipping. No refunds will be made.

There will be a MANDATORY PRE-BID CONFERENCE on NOVEMRBER 9, 2015 at 9:00 a.m. in Room 208 City Hall (Board of Public Service).

Bidders shall comply with all applicable City, State and Federal laws (including MBE/WBE policies).

All bidders must regard Federal Executive Order 11246, “Notice of Requirement for Affirmative Action to Ensure Equal Employment Opportunity”, the “Equal Opportunity Clause” and the “Standard Federal Equal Employment Specifications” set forth within and referenced at www.stl-bps.org (Announcements).

LETTING # 8598 CONCRETE AND BRICK REMOVAL/ REPLACEMENT AND COMPLETE SIDEWALK INSTALLATION SP-100 Sealed proposals will be received by the Board of Public Service in Room 208 City Hall, 1200 Market Street, St. Louis, Mo. Until 1:45 PM, CT, on DECEMBER 1, 2015, then publicly opened and read.

Plans and Specifications may be examined on the Board of Public Service website http://www.stl-bps.org/planroom.aspx (BPS On Line Plan Room) and may be purchased directly through the BPS website from INDOX Services at cost plus shipping. No refunds will be made.

There will be a MANDATORY PRE-BID CONFERENCE on NOVEMBER 9, 2015at 9:00 a.m. in Room 208 City Hall (Board of Public Service).

Bidders shall comply with all applicable City, State and Federal laws (including MBE/WBE policies).

All bidders must regard Federal Executive Order 11246, “Notice of Requirement for Affirmative Action to Ensure Equal Employment Opportunity”, the “Equal Opportunity Clause” and the “Standard Federal Equal Employment Specifications” set forth within and referenced at www.stl-bps.org (Announcements).

Department of Public Works 6801 Delmar Boulevard, University City, Missouri 63130, Phone: (314) 505-8575, Fax: (314) 862-4349

REQUEST FOR BIDS 1.5, 2 and 3 cubic yard Side Loading Containers (120 TOTAL) The City of University City is accepting sealed bids for a combination of One hundred twenty 1.5, 2 and 3 cubic yard side loading containers.

The total amount of containers will include forty 1.5 cubic yard, fifty 2 cubic yard and thirty 30 three- cubic yard containers.

Sealed Bids: Sealed bids shall be submitted with an original proposal and one (1) copy to be received by 11:00 a.m. local time, Tuesday, November 17, 2015.

Submit responses (bids) to the Finance Department, Attn: Danella Lang, 6801 Delmar Blvd., University City, MO 63130. The envelope used for the submittal of bids shall be plainly marked with the following information:1. Firm name, address and telephone number, 2. Date and time offer was delivered or mailed, and 3. Marked: Response to Request for Bids for Side Loading Containers.

City Contact Information - Please direct all questions about the specifications to: Dennis Luckett, Sanitation Superintendent City of University City 1015 Pennsylvania University City, MO 63130

Telephone #: 314-505-8575

General Information Bid packages are available beginning November 2, 2015, by request at 314-505-8538 and online at www.ucitymo.org by clicking “Bids” under the Quick Links section. The City reserves the right to reject any and all proposals, to waive irregularities and/or informalities in any proposal and to make an award in any manner, consistent with the law, deemed in the best interest of the City.

Thanks Dennis Luckett Superintendent City of University City 314.505.8575

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•

NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2015

Concession Opportunity –Management Contract Echo Bluff State Park • Shannon County • Salem, MO The brand new Echo Bluff State Park is currently under development in Shannon County, Salem, MO. Located adjacent to the Current River in the area historically known as Camp Zoe, the new state park will have a lodge with 20 guest rooms including suites, nine cabins, casual dining, outside dining, a multi-purpose room, two meeting rooms, a fitness room and general store. The Park will also include 60 campsites plus ten walk-in sites, hiking trails, shelters, pavilions, tubing on Sinking Creek and other activities in an unspoiled natural landscape.

A pre-bid conference will be held at the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Lewis and Clark State Office Building in December. The date and time of the pre-bid conference will be announced in the bid package.

All interested parties should register on the official bidder list by contacting Denise Massman via telephone call, letter, fax or e-mail; or check with her for any additional information on this concession opportunity. Bid packages will be sent out to all interested parties registered on the official bidder list.

Denise Massman • Procurement Officer – General Services Missouri Department of Natural Resources P.O. Box 176, Jefferson City, MO 65102 Telephone: (573) 522-3299 • Fax to: (573) 526-1355 Denise.Massman@dnr.mo.gov www.stlamerican.com

NORTH COUNTY TRANSIT CENTER PROPOSED METROBUS SERVICE PLAN Metro announces four public information sessions and an online feedback opportunity for the proposed MetroBus transit plan to serve the new North County Transit Center. The transit center will open in spring 2016 at 3140 Pershall Road in Ferguson, Missouri.

Tuesday, Nov. 10 6-9 a.m. Riverview Transit Center Riverview Dr. at Hall Street, St. Louis, MO 63137 Wednesday, Nov. 11 2-6 p.m. North Hanley Transit Center 4398 Hanley Road, Berkeley, MO 63134 Thursday, Nov. 12 11 a.m.- 2 p.m. St. Louis Community College at Florissant Valley Student Center 3400 Pershall Road, St. Louis, MO 63135 Tuesday, Nov. 17 4-6:30 p.m. Trinity Catholic High School Library 1720 Redman Road, St. Louis, MO 63138 All are welcome. To request interpretation services, call 314-982-1406 72 hours prior to the session you wish to attend.

To find out more information about the new MetroBus service plan for North St. Louis County and to provide online feedback, please visit metrostlouis.org/northcounty.

LETTING #8597 CONCRETE AND BRICK REMOVAL/ REPLACEMENT AND COMPLETE SIDEWALK INSTALLATION SP-99 Sealed proposals will be received by the Board of Public Service in Room 208 City Hall, 1200 Market Street, St. Louis, Mo. Until 1:45 PM, CT, on DECEMBER 1, 2015, then publicly opened and read. Plans and Specifications may be examined on the Board of Public Service website http://www.stl-bps.org/planroom.aspx (BPS On Line Plan Room) and may be purchased directly through the BPS website from INDOX Services at cost plus shipping. No refunds will be made.

There will be a MANDATORY PRE-BID CONFERENCE on November 9, 2015 at 9:00 a.m. in Room 208 City Hall (Board of Public Service).

Bidders shall comply with all applicable City, State and Federal laws (including MBE/WBE policies).

All bidders must regard Federal Executive Order 11246, “Notice of Requirement for Affirmative Action to Ensure Equal Employment Opportunity”, the “Equal Opportunity Clause” and the “Standard Federal Equal Employment Specifications” set forth within and referenced at www.stl-bps.org (Announcements).

Email your ads to

E-BIDS

E-bid for St. Louis Community College Bid No. B0003478 for a contract for the Used Textbook Buyback Program will be received until 2:00 P.M. (local time) on December 3, 2015 at the Dept. of Purchasing, \300 So. Broadway, St. Louis, MO 63102, and immediately thereafter opened and read. Bid documents can be accessed on our website at www.stlcc.edu/purchasing or call (314) 539-5227.

EOE/AA Employer.

METROPOLITAN ST. LOUIS SEWER DISTRICT Notice is hereby given that the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District will receive sealed bids in the Purchasing Division, 2350 Market Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63103-2555 until 11:00 a.m., December 16, 2015 to contract with a company for: Service, Roof Replacement at Missouri River Treatment Plant, Per Specifications.

Specifications and bid forms may be obtained from www.stlmsd.com (MSD at Work, Bidding on Projects). The bid document will be identified as 6224 RFQ. If you do not have access to the internet, call (314) 768-6313 to request a copy of the bid.

Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

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CITY OF ST. LOUIS BOARD OF PUBLIC SERVICE REQUEST FOR QUALIFICATIONS for PROFESSIONAL SERVICES FOR PARTIAL CONDITION ASSESSMENT OF THE WATER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM VALVES (LPZ), CITY OF ST. LOUIS – WATER DIVISION, STATE REVOLVING FUND PROJECT. Statements of Qualifications due by 5:00 P.M., CT, DECEMBER 1, 2015 at Board of Public Service, 1200 Market, Room 301 City Hall, St. Louis, MO 63103. RFQ may be obtained from website www.stl-bps.org, under On Line Plan Room, or call BPS at 314-622-3535.

25% MBE and 5% WBE participation goals.

The project is financed through the Missouri State Revolving Fund, established by the sale of Missouri Water Pollution Control bonds and federal Capitalization Grants to Missouri.

NOTICE TO CONTRACTORS

Notice is hereby given that The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District (District) will receive sealed bids for Maline Creek/Riverview Drive Demolition under Letting No. 11656-013.2, at this office, 2350 Market Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63103, until 02:00 PM on Tuesday, December 15, 2015, at a place designated.

Bids will be received only from companies that are pre-qualified by the District’s Engineering Department for: DEMOLITION CLASS I & II – St. Louis City license required

CITY OF ST. LOUIS BOARD OF PUBLIC SERVICE

Plans and Specifications are available for free electronic download. Please go to MSD’s website and look for a link to “ELECTRONIC PLANROOM.” Plans and Specifications are also available for viewing or purchase at Cross REQUEST FOR QUALIFICATIONS for Rhodes Reprographics located at 1710 Macklind PROFESSIONAL SERVICES FOR PARTIAL Avenue, St. Louis MO 63110. All bidders must CONDITION ASSESSMENT OF THE WATER obtain a set of plans and specifications in order DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM VALVES (HPZ), to submit a bid in the name of the entity submitting the bid.

CITY OF ST. LOUIS – WATER DIVISION, STATE REVOLVING FUND PROJECT. The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is an Statements of Qualifications due by 5:00 P.M., Equal Opportunity Employer.

CT, DECEMBER 1, 2015 at Board of Public Service, 1200 Market, Room 301 City Hall, St. Louis, MO 63103. RFQ may be obtained from website www.stl-bps.org, under On Line Plan Room, or call BPS at 314-622-3535. 25% MBE and 5% WBE participation goals.

Visit us at www.stlamerican.com today!

The project is financed through the Missouri State Revolving Fund, established by the sale of Missouri Water Pollution Control bonds and federal Capitalization Grants to Missouri.

NOTICE TO CONTRACTORS Notice is hereby given that The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District (District) will receive sealed bids for Florissant I/I Reduction under Letting No. 11748-015.1, at this office, 2350 Market Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63103, until 02:00 PM on Friday, December 11, 2015, at a place designated.

Bids will be received only from companies that are pre-qualified by the District’s Engineering Department for: SEWER CONSTRUCTION – St. Louis County drainlayer’s license required Plans and Specifications are available for free electronic download. Please go to MSD’s website and look for a link to “ELECTRONIC PLANROOM.” Plans and Specifications are also available for viewing or purchase at Cross Rhodes Reprographics located at 1710 Macklind Avenue, St. Louis MO 63110. All bidders must obtain a set of plans and specifications in order to submit a bid in the name of the entity submitting the bid.

The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

NOTICE TO MINORITY & WOMEN'S BUSINESS ENTERPRISES TARLTON CORPORATION, 5500 West Park Ave., St. Louis MO 63110, is seeking qualified Minority and Women's Businesses for the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District, DC-02 and DC-03 Sanitary Relief (Brentwood Blvd. to Conway Road), Phase 1 (Contract Letting 10021-015.1) project for subcontracting opportunities in all work areas as defined by the contract drawings and specifications. All interested and qualified Minority and Women's businesses should contact Kevin Oakley at 314-633-3300 to discuss subcontracting opportunities. All negotiations must be completed prior to 1 p.m. on December 9, 2015.

Non-mandatory prebid will be held on November 24, 2015 at 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at 2350 Market St., St. Louis MO. The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District has established a MBE 17% (African American) goal of 17.0% utilization for non-building construction contracts in the amount of $50,000 or more.

AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

vmedina@stlamerican.com

METROPOLITAN ST. LOUIS SEWER DISTRICT Notice is hereby given that The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District (District), the Owner, will receive sealed bids for Infrastructure Repairs (Rehabilitation) (FY2016) Contract B under Letting No. 11868-015.1, at its office, 2350 Market Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63103, until 2:00 PM, local time, on Tuesday, December 08, 2015. All bids are to be deposited in the bid box located on the first floor of the District’s Headquarters prior to the 2:00 p.m. deadline. Bids may, however, be withdrawn prior to the opening of the first bid. BIDS WILL BE PUBLICLY OPENED AND READ IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE BID DUE DATE/TIME AT 2350 MARKET STREET, AT A PLACE DESIGNATED.

The Work to be performed under these Contract Documents consists of: The work to be done under this contract consists of the rehabilitation of approximately 113,517 lineal feet of sewers, varying in size from 6" to 42" diameter, utilizing cured-in-place pipe (CIPP) methods.

The project is within the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District Boundaries, inside the city(ies) of St. Louis City and various municipalities in St. Louis County in the State of Missouri.

The work will be performed in various quantities at various sites.

All prospective bidders must prequalify in the Cured-In-Place Pipe category, and be certified prior to the Bid Opening. Prequalification forms for obtaining said certification may be obtained from the Owner at the above mentioned address. All bidders must obtain drawings and specifications in the name of the entity submitting the bid.

This project will be financed through the Missouri State Revolving Fund, established by the sale of Missouri Water Pollution Control bonds and Federal Capitalization Grants to Missouri. Neither the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, its divisions, nor its employees will be party to the contract at any tier. Any Bidder whose firm or affiliate is listed on the GSA publication titled “List of Parties Excluded from Federal Procurement or Non-Procurement Programs” is prohibited from the bidding process; bids received from a listed party will be deemed non-responsive. Refer to Instructions to Bidders B-27 for more information regarding debarment and suspension.

Nondiscrimination in Employment: Bidders on this work will be required to comply with the President’s Executive Order 11246.

Requirements for bidders and contractors under this order are explained in the specifications.

Plans and Specifications are available from free electronic download.

Please go to MSD’s website and look for a link to “ELECTRONIC PLANROOM.” Plans and Specifications are also available for viewing or purchase at Cross Rhodes Reprographics located at 1710 Macklind Avenue, St. Louis MO 63110. All bidders must obtain a set of plans and specifications in order to submit a bid in the name of the entity submitting the bid.

The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Visit our award winning website @www.stlamerican.com CLICK CLASSIFIEDS

Real Estate & Rentals

THE

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN FOR RENT

Employed FURNISHED w/KIT

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314-772-4563

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NORTH ST. LOUIS 2BR $550/mo + $550 Dep 1 BR $450 + $450 Dep

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HOUSE FOR RENT

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2, 3, 4 & 5 BR

FURNISHED ROOMS FOR RENT North City cable, shared bathroom and kitchen, washer & dryer $100 - 150/wk.

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314-323-9335 ROOMS FOR RENT $400/mo + Key Dep $50 314-657-7071

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Large 3BR 2BA 8101 Gardener, 2 BR, Remodeled Kitch, family room,central air, Liv, Din, 2 Car Garage, Very Nice Neighborhood Clean, Stove $775 +Dep. $625/mo+ Dep, Near Lucas & Hunt & Sec 8 OK Halls Ferry

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D3

NORTH CITY 1 BR apt. stove, fridge, very clean & quiet.

Minutes from major grocery store plaza, Senior citizens Discount $450/mo + Dep

HOUSE FOR RENT

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Back yard Carriage house for rent, 1 bed room, full basement. $500.00 mo. 1st and last mo. 5834 Saloma Ave. Prefer singe person or couple

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314-583-8764

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APTS. & HOUSES FOR RENT

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FOR RENT NORTH COUNTY

•

THE

Please call 314.773.6674 Rent based upon 30% of adjusted income.

PT Bosley Estates is now accepting applications from Seniors 62+

2BR Available TODAY for qualified applicant 62+ and/or disabled Sec. 8 housing avail, income restrictions apply. ADA. Pet friendly, gated, near Metro Link 5708 Kingsbury Place St. Louis, MO 63112

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PUBLISHER’S NOTICE: Advertised herein is subject to the Federal Fair Housing Act, which makes it illegal to advertise any preference, imitation, or discrimination because of race,color, religion, sex, handicap,familial\status, or national origin, or intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination “We will not knowingly accept any advertising for real estate which is in violation of the law. All persons are hereby informed that all dwellings advertised are available on an equal opportunity basis.”

Call Vida at 314-289-5406 to place your rental/real estate ad today!

SERVICE DIRECTORY 314-289-5406 MEDICARE & MEDICAID ACCEPTED

Montford Point Marine Association

Hearing Aids

Dental

Ladies Auxilary - St. Louis Chapter

Come join us for a meet and greet.

Health Insurance {ACA}

HAIL DAMAGE AUTO REPAIR!

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Call us today to learn about our no money out of pocket hail repair option and free rental car while your car is being repaired.

* You may qualify for a SUBSIDY *You may have a Zero or very Low monthly premium *In person or virtual enrollment available *Health coverage you & your family deserve

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Co-pay

$1000/year Dentures, Partials, Crowns, Root Canals & Other Dental Services

Glasses

For more

information, please call

As low as $15/Pair Co-pay

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Call 1-800-733-1912 to see if you qualify.

Fall Clean-up

Man & His Truck Light Hauling Yard Work, Moving & Gutter Cleaning REASONABLE 314-583-6971

Need a quote for an ad?

Email your text to vmedina@stlamerican.com

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www.stlamerican.com

D4

Religion

ST. LOUIS AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2015

Naval Academy Gospel Choir plays the Rock

The U.S. Naval Academy Gospel Choir performs 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14 at St. Alphonsus Liguori “The Rock” Church, located at 1118 N. Grand Blvd.

‘When we sing, we honor those who have served our nation’ American staff The U.S. Naval Academy Gospel Choir will travel to St. Louis to present a “Salute to America’s Heroes,” concert Saturday, Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. The concert will be held at St. Alphonsus Liguori “The Rock” Church, located at 1118 N. Grand Blvd., St. Louis.

The concert is free and open to the public.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

The U.S. Naval Academy Gospel Choir, under the direction of Karla Scott, is an upbeat, inspirational musical ensemble comprised of midshipmen of various races and creeds and reflects the diverse interests and ethnicities within the Brigade of Midshipmen. The choir regularly travels

throughout the U.S. and abroad to represent the naval service through their unique musical talents and passion to praise through song. Their ten-day trip to Korea in March 2011 garnered international acclaim from ambassadors and state department officials.

“We are looking forward to bringing our midshipmen to the St. Louis area to give the gift of music to our friends in the wonderful city,” said Karla Scott, Gospel Choir director.

“When we sing, we honor, through our music, those who have served our nation. All of our midshipmen will be serving our country as officers in the Navy and Marine Corps upon graduation and commissioning from the Naval Academy.”

In addition to the Saturday night concert, the Gospel Choir will visit several area high schools for assembly performances.

Midshipman 1st Class (senior) Anthony Mayes, a Metro Academic and Classical High School graduate, St. Louis local, and Gospel Choir president said, “I am truly excited about the opportunity to be able to perform in my home town area with the choir, and especially to be able to present an assembly performance with the choir at my alma mater, Metro Academic and Classical High School.”

The U.S. Naval Academy today is a

prestigious four-year service academy that prepares midshipmen to be professional officers in the naval service. More than 4,400 men and women representing every state in the U.S. and several foreign countries make up the student body, known as the Brigade of Midshipmen. Midshipmen learn from military and civilian instructors and participate in intercollegiate varsity sports and extracurricular activities. They also study small arms, drill, seamanship and navigation, tactics, naval engineering and weapons, leadership, ethics and military law.

Upon graduation, midshipmen earn a federally funded Bachelor of Science degree in a choice of 23 different subject majors and go on to serve at least five years as commissioned officers in the U.S. Navy or U.S. Marine Corps.

For more information on the Naval Academy Gospel Choir, please visit www. usna.edu/music. For more information about the Naval Academy, visit www.usna.edu or our Facebook page.

Washington Tabernacle celebrates 113th anniversary

Washington Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church, 3200 Washington Ave. (at the corner of Compton), will celebrate its 113th church anniversary on each Sunday during November. The celebration will be held during morning worship service beginning at 10: a.m. The anniversary theme is “Onward with Christ.”

The celebration continues with: Sunday, November 15. Children, Youth and Young Adult Day. Guest speaker: Rev. F. Willis Johnson, Wellspring United Methodist Church. Musical guest: Leslie Johnson, psalmist.

Sunday, November 22, Harvest Homecoming Sunday. Guest speaker: Pastor Earl Griffin, Greater Mt. Vernon Baptist Church Sunday, November 29, Rededication Sunday. Guest speaker: Rev. Dr. Cassandra Gould, Quinn Chapel AME Church.

All services are free and open to the public. For more information you may contact the church at (314) 533-8763 or visit www.washtabmbc.org.

The Message

Be not dismayed

Most of us would agree with the concept that the one sure thing that we know about life is change. The comparison to a roller coaster seems appropriate, a frightening one at that. Life is full of twists and turns and inevitable ups and downs with people coming and going and emotions frayed at the proverbial last nerve because of it.

Life takes your plans and destroys them in favor of its own. It’s enough to make anyone skeptical about life’s purpose. We question everything we hold dear.

As Christians, we know free will is supposed to have something to do with what happens to us as we each choose or don’t choose, decide or don’t decide. Our fate is wrapped in the outcome of each. We often find ourselves caught up in quagmires of discontent due to situations we created by simply making the wrong choices.

That’s why I find the subject of change in scripture so fascinating. “In paths they have not known, I will guide them.” Isaiah 42:16 clearly indicates that when you attempt or are forced to changed your life, seek God, because divine help will be needed. It’s a spiritual requirement.

Joshua 1:9 lets us know that from the moment we begin to consciously expand our awareness of God, we must take Him everywhere we go or, risk losing Columnist ourselves to our own devices, much James like the Israelites in the desert. “Be not Washington dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with you wherever you go.”

The easiest thing to fall prey to in this life it appears is all of the stuff, the temptations, the tragedies that will surely come our way every day, particularly as Christians. We live in a materialistic world framed in 30-second sound bites, news of instant wealth and the constant pursuit of more. Fantasy and instant gratification are but a click away.

If you have no spiritual fallback position, you will get caught up in defining yourself by how much you have, what you can buy and what pleasures you can exploit.

And don’t forget to buy a gun to protect it all from those who have no qualm about taking it from you. Under these circumstances life can make you feel inadequate and anxious as it constantly challenges you and changes your outlook about it. More, you see, is never enough.

Now this spiritual awareness that I mentioned gives perspective to all of this change and disruption. The Bible promises peace and peace of mind. “My presence shall go with you and give you rest.” Exodus 33:14.

Focusing on God actually brings clarity to the soul and order to life’s chaos. Peace of mind abounds in the hearts of those who know and seek the truth.