Violence in St. Louis

Yup. It's called "Kettling"

As arrests are made, protesters question the tactics used by St. Louis police

 

I used to drive around. A lot. In strange cities. Call me crazy. I swear one of the times I was in East St. Louis many moons ago, I ended up having to use a private toll bridge to get back across the river. Damnedest thing to pay some rando to cross a bridge.

Most uneasy I ever got was rolling through the Robert Taylor Homes area in a Lincoln Town Car, alone, at dusk.

 

Recovery is in the hands of The Best Fans in Baseball? It's doomed.

 

Racism did a lot to benefit the city of Detroit in the last 50 years.

 

Spent age 8 to 17 in the STL before moving far, far away for college.

My black friends from STL on Facebook: Talking about the protests and injustice.

My white friends from STL on Facebook: Pissed off that the U2 concert is cancelled because of the protests.

Segregated on race, segregated on economics, segregated on gentry -- more than just about anywhere else I've seen.

The long running question in St. Louis is "what high school did you go to?"

The answer often reveals a cross-section of demographic background, faith, what your parents do (manufacturing or office work) and what was considered a "good" college for someone of your high school.

I grew up within the school district of the area's wealthiest suburb - north of this suburb. I benefited from a stellar public education that rich people paid the taxes for, even as they sent their kids to the Joe Buck/Jon Hamm private school.

Our public school was 35% Jewish, 30% black, 10% Asian and 25% white. A melting pot of high achievers and ambition.

St. Louis has always had that element of racial unease that always felt about to pop. The L.A. Riots bled into STL in 1992 and I saw lifelong friends snap and join one side or the other. One of the moments of sadness that I carried was that, the week I graduated in 1992, our ceremony was so tense because of the riots that people who had been friends for years -- left that day and went off to college, still carrying that anger.

Perhaps that was my college motivation to never flunk out. Dreading the thought of going back to the Community College of Broken Dreams in St. Louis that so many of my older friends did after too much partying in Columbia or Lawrence their freshman year.

Looking back with 25+ years of life experience, I am amazed that we had informally segregated student lounges. Even these decades later, there are two sets of school reunions -- a black one and one for everyone else. This is just how it shook out, I suppose.

I was a bit of an oddity in that, as a white guy, I played basketball -- the school's only minority-majority athletic team -- and still catch up with that "family" every few years. I've talked with my friends in this circle about why they left after high school for places like Spelman, Howard, Morehouse, Southern, Grambling, Florida A&M. To a person, they all said they had to get the hell out of St. Louis.

Just as I did -- going far north to a Big Ten.

After they graduated from their HBCUs, almost all of them never went back to STL to live. They moved to Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, D.C., Baltimore -- and are all very, very successful in their fields.

St. Louis is a city where the people where the prominent families - think the Busch family, the Enterprise Car Rental family, etc - hold all of the power and the influence. They won't give it up easily.

With all of the money concentrated along I-64/US-40, you have two major sides of the metro that always feel slighted. North side (Ferguson) feels like the police and the power will bully them. South side (I-44/I-55) knows it'll never enter the power levers of the city, even as they keep voting for Trump.

When I see the protests, I can sympathize with the protesters. Many of them must feel trapped in a city that's brutally hot in the summer, incredibly violent north of Delmar and devoid of opportunities.

STL has a lot of pissed off people.

Happier I left. Happier I never went back.

 

The comments read like the semi-literate version of the illiterates highlighted by @bestfansStLouis

 

St. Louis's finest getting frisky again during a protest at the Galleria mall ...

 

"As long as those unwashed don't get four miles further west to Plaza Frontenac while I shop at Neiman-Marcus, I don't care."

Signed,

The truly rich of STL

 

So, is STL where the Civil War 2 going to break out into armed conflict? Sure doesn't look good.