ST. LOUIS — Hundreds of believers packed a strip mall storefront in Northwoods on Saturday afternoon to profess their faith in, and pledge their support for, the next career steps of a local ordained minister.
“I like to call it church,” community activist Ohun Ashe said at the outset of a rousing, standing-room-only service that stretched on for nearly three hours and ended with requests for financial offerings.
The tenets of this particular gathering were not rooted in any organized religion; the ecumenical grouping of Christians, Jews, Muslims, and agnostics instead raised their voices behind a progressive political cause.
Video screens displayed a rotating set of quotes from likeminded disciples, the Baptist minister Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a lesser known civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, revolutionary Communist activist Angela Y. Davis, and the first Black woman elected to Congress, former U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm.
Younger members of the congregation led the crowd in shouting chants made famous by Assata Shakur, a fugitive and member of the Black Panther Party who escaped prison in 1979 and fled to Cuba seeking refuge after being convicted for killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973.
"It is our duty to fight for our freedom," Ashe recited with the crowd. "It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains."
Halfway through the program, moments before the guest speaker was introduced to address the gathering, a talented musician stepped up to an electronic piano keyboard and leaned into the microphone to testify about Cori Bush.
“You probably don't remember,” Katarra Parson said in a quivering voice while fighting back tears, "but you told me back in 2022 that I had a lot to get out of me. And I've been working on that. I've been angry, Cori. And you give me the courage to lift my voice up."
Older women seated in plastic folding chairs reached into their purses to find something to wipe away tears as Parson sang "Rise Up," by Andra Day. The song's lyrics include a reference to the way Bush addresses Congress when she stands to speak.
"I've stood on the House floor as she gets up so proudly, saying with such conviction, saying, 'I rise for St. Louis,'" U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) told the crowd.
Tlaib, Bush's special guest speaker, is the only Palestinian American woman serving in Congress. She spoke about her own humble beginnings in Detroit, reminded the crowd about Bush’s past struggles with homelessness, and questioned whether her wealthier colleagues on Capitol Hill could serve their voters and mammon.
"The majority of our colleagues are millionaires, an income bracket that will never understand what it means to live check by check," Tlaib said. "They don't understand co-pay... Auto insurance in my city is keeping people in the cycle of poverty. They don't understand that."
Tlaib and Bush, both considered members of the progressive 'Squad,' have criticized the Biden administration's policy in Gaza. At Bush's campaign launch, they wove rhetorical threads between poverty and war, tying foreign policy expenses together with deficits in domestic programs.
Outside, a truck circled the parking lot with an LED screen flashing the words, "Can't afford healthcare? Sorry, gotta give some other country billions to bomb kids."
Inside, Bush explained why she opted to wear a black t-shirt with 'Ceasefire' in red letters as she addressed the crowd.
"I'm always trying to get a message across," Bush said of her wardrobe evangelism. "If I got a mic, if I have a TV camera, if I'm on the radio, I don't want to waste a minute because there's something somebody needs. And so it's something that needs to be said. And so if I can't use a mic, then I'ma use a t-shirt."
She claimed the moral high ground on foreign policy in the Middle East and compared her public protest to the Israeli military's ongoing bombardment of Gaza to other historic protests against deadly police use of force or slavery.
Bush, a registered nurse and ordained minister, launched her political movement in the aftermath of the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson. She lost her first challenge to 10-term incumbent Lacy Clay in 2018 before successfully ousting him in 2020.
In each of the last two election cycles, Bush said she usually only needed about $1 million to run the race that was set before her. This time, she predicts her opponent will significantly outraise her.
"What we've heard is anywhere between $2 million to $20 million right here in this race," she said. "They want to buy this seat."
The two-term Congresswoman is preparing to face a well-funded challenge from another one of Clay's prominent proteges, St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell.
In a skeptical sermon on the mount of money heading into her opponent's campaign coffers, Bush attempted to inoculate the audience against any outside criticism.
"When the ads come out, you gotta tell people, 'Oh, don't listen to that. That's a lie,'" Bush said. "When the ads come out, you gotta let people know, because there are so many people that won't know that that's not real. You gotta let them know when the mailers come out, tell them, 'throw that away.' When the radio ads come out, turn it off. It's up to us to make sure people know that that stuff is a lie, that it's fake."
She prepped her believers to shrug off doubts before they arise in the heat of the campaign and provided a pre-emptive rationale to explain her votes.
"If it ever comes a time when you just have to question Cori Bush, just know if it was the right thing to do, whether the media makes it sound like it was the right thing to do — because it was a thousand pages and somebody is putting out the first line of it," she said. "Know that your Congresswoman did whatever I did because you matter more than my reputation."
Bell launched his campaign at the urging of Democratic party leaders and donors shortly after Bush called for a ceasefire in Gaza, he said at a news conference in late October. He took aim at Bush's votes against a bipartisan infrastructure package, and her opposition to the Israeli military campaign.
Bell may end up having the upper hand in campaign finances, but his push to match Bush's loyal base will likely prove to be an uphill climb. If his supporters share the kind of fundamentalist fervor and zeal that Bush and her backers boast, then they haven't shown it publicly yet.
In this room, and in the eyes of her followers, Bush could do no wrong.
“She is a moral compass," President of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen Megan Green said. "And she is not just the moral compass of St. Louis; she is the moral compass of this entire country. She says the things that need to be said. She fights for the things that are right to fight for, even when it's uncomfortable, and even when she often has to step out alone. But thankfully, she has some 'Squad' members there."
To Bush, the word radical is no insult; but rather, an inherent instinct. The way she sees it, to the extent she and other Black Americans before her have suffered pain or oppression, she feels duty-bound to kick back in protest and opposition to a capitalist society that has exploited labor for low or no wages.
Bush argued the local share of American aid to the Israeli military effort against Hamas in Gaza could be better spent here at home.
"That $5 million that's being used to drop bombs on babies? Give us that money back," Bush said. "That money needs to be right here in St. Louis."
Bush appeared sensitive to the blowback she and Tlaib had received from within the Democratic party and addressed some of the tense divisions on stage.
"The phone rings and people want to scream and yell at you because the president may be mad," Bush said, or, "because this person may be upset, this organization. And so I just don't answer the phone anymore. I learned that trick."
She spoke wistfully about her past life of privacy, and described her entry into public life as a costly sacrifice.
"It would be so much easier for me to go back to being a nurse every single day, working as a nurse, which I loved," Bush told her supporters. "But that's not what my calling is right now. My calling is to be here, to serve you, to represent you."
In her autobiography titled, "The Forerunner," a nod to the Messianic messenger John the Baptist, Bush described suffering from poverty and traumatic violence, and said her encounters helped her understand the pain people feel around her. At her event on Saturday, Bush asked supporters to cast their cares upon her, for she cares for them.
"People literally come up to us and just start telling us their trauma and their pain, and that's OK too, because when you tell me that, then I need to do something with it," she said.
Doctrinal themes of hellfire and damnation weren't as noticeable in the official campaign messaging; not until you scanned the public social media posts of Neveen Ayesh, one of the passionate speakers who wrapped Bush with a hug and surprised her with a gift on stage.
On Jan. 6, Ayesh reacted to a web post from Congresswoman Ann Wagner (R-Missouri 2nd District) posing together with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Enjoy hell with your killer cult,” Ayesh wrote to Wagner.
"You belong in prison just as much as Joe Biden does you vile, disgusting, poor excuse of a woman," she said. "You have no integrity. No value for human life you hypocrite. God is bigger than all of you and you will have to answer someday."
In a phone call Sunday night, Ayesh said she stood by her remarks, which she felt were justified expressions of outrage over the civilian death toll in Gaza.
Bush took aim at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for bankrolling the effort to oust her, and gave her explanation of their opposition to her campaign.
"It's dark money. So you can't you ain't can't find out who they are if they take that money," Bush said. "They put it together and they use that to help oust anybody who does not stand 100% with Israel in the way that means that Israel has to be supreme. I believe in equality. Not supremacy.
"This is not about anti-Semitism," Congresswoman Bush said. "This not about whether I hate Jewish people or not, because I absolutely don't. What it is about is white supremacy. It is about one group being greater than another group, and we tear that down no matter where we see it."
"I will never say that these folks are the greatest and they can never do no wrong," Bush said of the Israeli government. "I will never, ever say that."