Alt Editorial

I want to thank the St. Louis American community newspaper for publishing my platform as part of their endorsement process. You can read that here.

Unsurprisingly, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch did not publish a word I said. You can read my responses to their questions below.

“Thank you Mr. Robberson and members of the St. Louis Post Dispatch Editorial Board for the opportunity to address you. I reviewed the questions that you sent me about my candidacy for Missouri State Senate and was quickly reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letters from the Birmingham Jail, specifically the passage on the white moderate. If you are unfamiliar, it goes like this:

“First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

I live my life by this passage, continually pushing myself, although not always perfectly, to not be the white moderate that Dr. King so admonished and rather to prefer justice to order.

In a time of mass civil unrest in our country demanding racial justice, I find the line of questioning for this Senate race disappointing as it centers on order over justice (contrary to Dr. King,) demonstrating an assumption that the way things are now are the way they always have to be, rather than fighting for a better future and a better vision.

I. ON TOP PROBLEMS (Identify the two or three top problems in District 5 that you believe the state Legislature isn’t addressing)

The 5th Senate District has its fair share of problems not adequately addressed by our State Legislature. Even before COVID-19, the 5th Senate District struggled with poor health outcomes, having Black infant and maternal mortality rates that rival developing nations, a result of generations of disinvestment in our Black community. COVID-19 has further shown a light on all the pre-existing racial disparities in our community, as it has disproportionately impacted our Black community, with outcomes that have been exacerbated by our State’s inaction on Medicaid expansion and efforts to limit access to reproductive healthcare. The next Senator must fight to protect Medicaid expansion and ensure that our Planned Parenthood stays open.

Additionally, we are a City that struggles with too much violence, yet we stay committed to the same failed public safety strategies that value arresting people and locking them up. We fail to acknowledge the role that cutting taxes for the wealthy and well-connected has played in gutting our social safety nets, creating the conditions for violence. When Aristotle said “poverty is the parent of revolution and crime,” he was right. We need less bills like Senate bill 600 that was recently signed into law and will intensify mass incarceration, and more resources going into impoverished communities.

Last, in the 5th Senate District we fail our children early and often. From lack of access to prenatal care to food deserts resulting in inadequate nutrition, we fail our kids. From poor lead remediation to the fact that Missouri remains the last state in the nation to not have a Quality Improvement Rating System to help parents understand the level of quality of their daycare and early childhood programs, we fail our kids. And with state laws that allow for tax breaks for developments in stable areas to rob our public schools of needed dollars, we fail our kids. The thing is though, we’re not just failing our kids in the 5th Senate District, we’re failing them in every corner of our state. It is in this mutual interest that we can change trajectories.

II. ON CONVINCING REPUBLICANS (How would you convince a Republican-dominated House to address these issues?)

And how do we get these things accomplished? Through inside-outside organizing. We need elected officials who are accountable to social movements, and who will carry the demands of these movements within the halls of power; elected representatives who will work hand-in-hand with organizers on the outside who are putting pressure on our political systems to change, so we can actually change. At the present moment, the current efforts to privatize our airport are stalled in large part because of the ability of progressives, recognizing that we lack the numbers inside of the political system, to build a coalition outside of our political system to make support for such proposals politically untenable for others within our political system. This type of acumen for how to move power and set agendas from a minority bargaining position is a sorely needed skill set in the Missouri General Assembly.

When I ran for President of the Board of Aldermen this Editorial Board opted not to endorse me even through you said I was “calm, thoughtful and well-spoken,” because I wanted to close the workhouse and redirect funds from perpetually unfilled positions in our police department into hiring social workers to address the root causes of crime. Instead, you endorsed a man who couldn’t even stay for the entire interview without storming out in anger.

A year and a half later, the Board of Aldermen voted unanimously to Close the Workhouse, and we have the largest social movement in our nation’s history taking place right now, calling for divestment from an ineffective arrest and incarcerate model of public safety and into social services, such as social workers, that actually support people in our city and address the root causes of crime.

I guess we could say I was ahead of my time. The truth is, though, that we need leadership who can set out a different agenda and vision for our City, State, and Country, and who knows how to assemble the outside coalitions necessary to force changes within our political system. We need leadership that has the courage to take the demands of social movements and echo them into the halls of power until they become mainstream, and eventually public policy.

III. ON BEING LIBERAL (Since the tendency of many GOP lawmakers is to paint Democrats as liberals, what would you do to counteract that label in order to advance your agenda?)

I was the kid that was bullied. Being bullied taught me to never let others define me, and I think this is a very good lesson for politics too. No matter that name I’m called, or label I’m assigned, I know what my values are. I know that to consistently hold my values I must simultaneously stand for racial justice, economic justice, environmental justice, reproductive justice, immigrant rights, and our LGBTQIA+ community or, in fact, I stand for none of it. When our values are actually our values, we do not get to decide when we put them on and take them off.

I also don’t consider myself a liberal. I am progressive, a Democratic Socialist, and I’m not afraid to define it and own them with integrity..

IV. ON BEING PROGRESSIVE (Is the Democratic Party helped or harmed by embracing the causes of the party’s progressive wing?)

I am proud to stand with the wing of the party that is bringing the Democratic Party back to our roots. The progressive wing of our party is encouraging us as Democrats to have the courage to once again be the party of the New Deal, The Great Society, and that took us to the moon. In today’s terms this means that we must value housing and healthcare as human rights, which, with 5.2 million people kicked off of their employer-based health insurance since the start of the pandemic and a looming eviction crisis, do not seem like such radical ideas anymore.

Our party needs visionaries, and it needs people who will stand up to the monied interests that control our politics at the expense of everyday working people. I’m proud to represent the viewpoints of the majority of the people in my generation, as well as those of the next generation.

V. ON COMPROMISING (Would you be willing to compromise on hard-and-fast political positions in order to advance legislation that gets you closer to your goal?)

The problem with our current political environment is not a lack of willingness to compromise. Instead it is a willingness to compromise one’s values in order to “get things done.”

Compromising one’s values has cost the City and Democrats a Congressional district, normalized the adoption of abortion bans, and set the precedent that companies that poison poor kids with lead should have a cap on the damages they pay to these kids. These types of compromises are not in the best interest of residents of the 5th District.

The compromises that can be made are ones that still advance us toward our ultimate goals. For example, at the Board of Aldermen I was instrumental in getting our minimum wage ordinance across the finish line. I wanted a $15 an hour minimum wage. Our workers deserve that, and at the end of the day, even though negotiations yielded only an $11 an hour minimum wage, I supported that bill. I also know that without elected officials like me working within the system to echo the demands of social movements such as the Fight for $15, we would not have even gotten to $11.

If it were not for seemingly radical demands created by social movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement, the labor movement, the Women’s Suffrage movement, and the Stonewall Riots, or more recently the Black Lives Matter Movement or the Fight for $15, as well as the partnership of these movements with allies working within the system, we would not have made the gains that we have today.

We need voices on the left that can counterbalance conservative voices that have moved the Overton window to the right. When it comes to efforts pushing to close our last remaining abortion clinic in the state — located in the 5th Senate District — or rolling back non-discrimination protections, such as what happened with SB43 which put a travel ban on our state — or cutting $150 million from our already underfunded education system as Governor Parson is proposing, there is no further room to compromise.

VI. ON WORKING WITH REPUBLICANS (Name at least three Republicans in the Legislature you believe could serve as political allies)

That is not to say that there is never the possibility to work across the aisle. I believe that we have to work to find common ground when we can and fight like hell for our values when we cannot. Representative Shamed Dogan’s bill to curb racial profiling is most worthy of support, so was Senate Bill 631, sponsored by Senator Dan Hegeman, to expand absentee voting during the pandemic. If I were a Senator, I most certainly would have supported Senator Andrew Koenig’s bill to allow the Missouri Department of Public Safety to store rape kits from victims who do not immediately choose to press charges, an issue that, as a survivor of sexual assault, is very important to me.

I think we look for common ground when it exists and we build relationships across the aisle on those mutual interests, but we can’t do that at the expense of the values of the people of the 5th Senate District.

VII. ON WINNING STATEWIDE (Why do you believe the Democratic Party isn’t doing better in gaining statewide representation, and how could you help improve that record?)

Democrats will begin to win statewide when we are seen to have the strength to stand for something and appeal to the needs of people who have been left behind in our State. As someone who has taken some unconventional stances before they later became mainstream, I’ve learned that people will forgive you for having public policy differences with them as long as they know that you are coming from a genuine place, a place where you were truly acting in their best interest, rather than at the behest of special interests. Winning will require standing firm on our values, while also defending the structural reforms made through CLEAN Missouri, which reduces partisan gerrymandering to create a more level playing field in our state.

IN SUMMARY

I have done my best to honestly answer the questions posed. I pledge to continue to hold true to my values and hope that the Editorial Board will see the merits of investing in and following the lead of our next generation of political leaders, even if some of our stances and tactics might make the Board uncomfortable at this time, for is in this uncomfortableness that we grow. At the end of the day, as State Senator, I must represent the values and the interests of the residents of the 5th Senate District, and with so many injustices within the 5th Senate District, I must continue to value justice over order.”