ST. LOUIS, Missouri — When St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones took the stage for her second State of the City address on Tuesday night, many public officials, government workers, lobbyists and supporters in the crowd at Saint Louis University expected her to talk about her first two years in office.
Instead, Jones began her remarks turning back the clock nearly six decades.
"On October 12, 1964, two days before he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke for about 45 minutes to an integrated audience in this very room at what was then the West Pine Gym," she said.
Over the course of the next 45 minutes, Jones quoted the civil rights icon and borrowed from his themes of economic justice to tackle poverty and violence.
"Dr. King used the specific phrase 'economic justice' throughout this particular speech. He talked about how we still have a long way to go before economic justice is a reality," she said. "He noted as long as there is poverty, the temptation for crime deepens. That social isolation, economic deprivation, poverty and ignorance breed crime and the conditions for it, no matter what color you are."
"We can reduce crime by reversing poverty," Jones said. "Stemming the tide of crime is directly related to eradicating poverty."
The mayor mentioned crime or safety 38 times as she described the State of the City, and promised long term investments of pandemic relief funds would pay dividends down the road.
Instead of preaching the "fierce urgency of now," Jones sought to temper public expectations about a swift recovery and recalibrate what the next chapter of the city could look like.
"The kind of long-term, transformative change we’re working on doesn’t happen overnight," she said.
"We can't go back to the so-called golden era of St. Louis," Jones said. "Leaving the past behind hurts, but we also need to recognize that the St. Louis of the past didn’t work for everyone. It never worked for people who looked like me. And in many cases, it still doesn’t."
Jones measured her progress by highlighting long-term investments of federal pandemic funds in designing safer streets, offering down payment assistance and guaranteed basic income to low-income residents, and promised to eventually offer "permanent housing and wrap around services for our unhoused."
Her critics, including a Republican state lawmaker from south St. Louis County, said the speech didn't include any statements or signals that might deter crime or deliver more immediate consequences.
"Even with a windfall of funding from COVID relief and the Rams settlement, there is no plan to combat crime," House Republican Brad Christ said in a recorded video statement.
Christ, who proposed a state takeover of the St. Louis Police Department, and filed a bill to ban St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner from running again if she's eventually removed from office, directed parts of his criticism at "failed leadership" instead of aiming all of it at Jones directly.
"Instead of focusing [on] and prosecuting vehicle thefts, a crime spree affecting people across our region, the city is taking car manufacturers to court instead of the criminals who steal them," Christ said in an apparent reference to Gardner.
The recent rise in crime, which occurred during the pandemic across much of the country, has started to subside in many places. But the City of St. Louis, beset by a beleaguered prosecutor's office, has struggled to mount its comeback as nimbly as other regions have.
"The one-two punch of a shrinking workforce and COVID-19 put a strain on our city's overstretched workforce and our antiquated hiring system," Jones said.
She called on the city "to build a St. Louis that recognizes our diversity and adapts to the current post-pandemic reality."
However, that reality appears far more bleak than what she described. A recent study monitoring cell phone traffic in downtown St. Louis found the city has just 57% of the the foot traffic it had before the pandemic.
A similar study from the University of Toronto's School of Cities ranked St. Louis second-to-last among all major cities in the United States and Canada for its downtown economic recovery from the pandemic. Only San Francisco, a city with a massive population of remote workers, scored lower than St. Louis' recovery value of 38% over the last three-month period.
Over the next two years, Jones said her administration would cut red tape in government and expedite painstaking process for businesses seeking licenses.
While the mayor lampooned "relics" of local government, like typewriters, floppy disks, and old employee roster cards to illustrate a city government stuck in time, her critics said her speech glossed over other outmoded liabilities in the tax code that could blow a massive hole in the city budget.
"With the city facing a historic lawsuit for illegally collecting the earnings tax from non-city residents, and in a new era of remote work, there is no plan to reform the city's broken and antiquated tax structure for the 21st century," Christ said.
Jones pivoted to state politics and hammered Republican culture wars for control in classrooms and clinics.
"To Jefferson City, a 12-year-old receiving gender-affirming healthcare is a bigger threat than a 12-year-old with an assault rifle," she said. "To Jefferson City, a woman cannot be allowed to make her own healthcare choices. To Jefferson City, diversity is dangerous, history must be buried, and our centers of learning – our beloved libraries and schools – cannot be trusted."
"If Ruby Bridges was strong enough to endure racism, then our children are strong enough to learn about it," she said.
"What’s a bigger threat to our children: weapons of war on our streets, or history teachers, hardworking librarians and drag queens? Here in St. Louis, we reject these attempts to divide us, because we know our differences make us a better, stronger city," she said.
Jones closed her speech quoting Dr. King's plea to put unity over division.
"We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now," she said.
Jones said the city will open its arms to people who may consider moving to St. Louis, and announced the opening of a new Office of New Americans to welcome immigrants and refugees.
"You have a home here in St. Louis, and our city is better off because you're here," she said.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article cited Rep. Brad Christ’s official legislative biography and registered mailing address which claim he lives in St. Louis. While he has a St. Louis mailing address and says he's a St. Louisan, he lives outside of city limits in Sappington.