Michael E. McLemore II

I want to thank my family for celebrating my graduation for me this week. Lord knows I wouldn’t have done it myself. Also I wanna acknowledge all of the posts and messages I’ve received this week. Very much appreciated. We only getting started tho. More cool shit on the way! I’ll post all the photos and stuff once I get them. Thanks again and love y’all for all the continued support! ❤️

Happy Dr. Michael McLemore Day in the City of Saint Louis! Signed by the best administration in St. Louis City history! Thank you @mayortishaurajones

(20/20) 𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑛’𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢’𝑣𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑎 𝑔𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑙𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ? “They’re rare. You know, we try to smile or laugh to get through the day because psychologically it’s traumatizing to deal with the effects of the tornado every single day, all day. But we find those comedic moments every so often. We do see them in people celebrating and having a good time. Like, 314 Day is huge in St. Louis, so we did the photoshoot at the Arch with For The Culture STL and then went to dinner that night. It was a good time! They’re few and far between, but we have them, and it grounds us again. Like, ‘We were tipping too far one way, and now we can lock back into the work.’” @dr.mclemore , Electoral Justice Organizer, The People’s Response — Thank you to Michael for being so open and for sharing your story. To read it all and pass it along, follow the link. As we approach the one-year mark since the devastating tornado, there’s room to get involved anywhere. Volunteer, donate, and keep the stories from May 16th alive by reading, listening, and amplifying. /community/humans-of-st-louis-dr-michael-e-mclemore-iis-story HOSTL x #STLMade / @in_thestl

(19/20) 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑢𝑝 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑛𝑒-𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑀𝑎𝑦 16 𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑑𝑜, 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑑𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑓𝑎𝑟 𝑆𝑡. 𝐿𝑜𝑢𝑖𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑙𝑒, 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑒, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑖𝑛𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑣𝑒𝑑? “I want people to know how real and how dire the situation still is. We want people to stay as involved and active as they were last May. There’s always an opportunity to volunteer, whether it’s to clean up or provide whatever services we can for people still in need. Even today, there are still people living in tents on their properties. They haven’t had electricity all winter. They may have spent that season in hotels thanks to grassroots organizations or the city, but they’re still unhoused. Often, new programs are announced by the media to alleviate some of the stress in the wake of the tornado. Unfortunately, a lot of those aren’t funded. They’re in name only. And other previous programs are running out of funding now. So we have to find somewhere for people to live. Shelters might be great in emergencies, but they’re no place to raise kids. So the urgency to bring people back home has to be increased. And we have to put additional pressure on our local legislators to pass bills allocating more funds that go directly and only to home repair and reconstruction. Then people can at least get some normalcy back in their lives. Because these aren’t normal times that we’re dealing with. People may have been able to adapt and be flexible. But we want folks to be in more stable living situations. So reach out to your alderperson in support of allocating more of the Rams’ money towards the rebuild on the north side. And please join volunteer efforts. A million things are happening, whether you’re cleaning up, doing construction, planting trees to replace the shade canopy since we lost thousands of trees, or helping with some of these tarp programs…” @dr.mclemore , Electoral Justice Coordinator, The People’s Response HOSTL + #STLMade / @in_thestl

(18/20) “The @northsidemovementcenter is open to everybody. It’s for the community. It’s for the north side. We invite folks to come in all the time, especially in the neighborhood, because nearby residents see all these new people and faces lately. We’ll take neighborhood walks so we’re visible to more people. Neighbors ask about it, and we share: ‘Yeah, we’re @actionstl . These are all the campaigns we’re working on. Come see us. Come check out the building.’ We had a grand opening, invited as many neighbors as wanted to stop by, and it was a wonderful evening. Once people start working in the coworking space or rent space to hold events, I’m sure we’ll see even more activity here. We’ve gotten rave reviews, especially from people who used to utilize the space when it was a church, daycare center, or grocery store. People are saying they didn’t know it would turn out to be as nice or official or nearly as grand as it is. They’ll come in and take pictures and videos, and we’re glad they love it. Now we can bring more folks in to teach them about the work we do, and hopefully they join on. And it makes scheduling meetings so much easier. We don’t have to try to reserve space or go through all these hurdles, like time limits on how long we can use the space for. We’re here, and this is home now. We can hold longer meetings if things run over, we’re not rushed to get out, and we don’t have to move between buildings to set things up. That part’s been great.” @dr.mclemore , Electoral Justice Organizer, The People’s Response HOSTL + #STLMade / @in_thestl

(17/20) 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑠 @actionstl 𝑑𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑑𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒? “We’re proactively working, especially on the north side, to reach a lot of community members who are left out of a lot of these conversations. There aren’t many forums like this where people can learn like at our events. You’ll typically have a state legislator or alderperson hold a town hall where they provide updates, but it’s not really an interactive, informational kind of thing like we try to provide. Because we try to drive a lot of our actions by what the community feels. We don’t want to be in the same situation as politicians, where things are just happening to you but without you. So input from the community is the biggest difference we have. We’re not just bringing folks in to tell them what’s going on. We’re asking them, ‘How would you like to see this play out?’ Now we’re at the @northsidemovementcenter , 5939 Goodfellow, and soon we’ll also have coworking spaces available for people doing work in the movement. We have our gym space where we’re holding town halls and community events. We just had an event last month about the budget for the police board and what that increase will mean to St. Louis in so many ways. There was a breakout about how it would affect housing. There was a breakout for all the programs that would lose funding and city resources that would have to be cut. So we’re making sure people are informed about the details. Because you’re sold that this budget will increase the number of police in the city, and they’ll make it safer, when really the drop in crime is due to grassroots organizations like Show Me Peace and all their work funded by the Office of Violence Prevention. They mediate a lot of violent things before they even take place, compared to the police, who respond after the fact. Additional police surveillance or presence doesn’t necessarily make people safer. So we want to make sure people know…” @dr.mclemore , Electoral Justice Coordinator, The People’s Response HOSTL + #STLMade / @in_thestl

(16/20) “My doctorate is in public administration, and my dissertation was on increasing diversity in America’s service corps, like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps, because I did both as a super minority. So these are options people can take, rather than the military route, or because not everybody is immediately ready for college. Some take a gap year, and AmeriCorps is perfect for people who are 18 and still figuring out what they want to do. In AmeriCorps, we did conservation work, disaster work, unhoused outreach, we fought wildfires, and we all worked in jobs afterward with the skills we were taught. Then I was in Albania for 28 months with the Peace Corps. That was the first time people there had seen a person of color. So you’re teaching culture, and my main job was promoting civic engagement amongst the youth. And a lot of my kids are graduating from college, and doing so many things now. One student works with the European Union. Another works with the Red Cross after being inspired by learning CPR. A lot of success stories from working with them.” 𝑂𝑟𝑔𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑧𝑖𝑛𝑔’𝑠 𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒. 𝐻𝑜𝑤 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑓𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢’𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑡 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑃𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒’𝑠 𝑅𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑒. “I try to use those experiences and skills to really bring it all home. And I find myself using a different one every day to organize. Especially now, as we think about recovery, and all the ways people can have a part. With all the committee hearings happening, it’s like, ‘Hey, you have a powerful story. Come down to testify at City Hall and tell the alderpeople why the need for emergency funding is still so dire because of your situation.’ There are hundreds of stories where people are still in the same situation.” @dr.mclemore , Electoral Justice Organizer, The People’s Response HOSTL + #STLMade / @in_thestl

(15/20) “My current role doesn’t have as much to do directly with the tornado, but as the Electoral Justice Organizer at @actionstl a big part of what I do is political education so people are able to make informed decisions when they go to the ballot box. We had an election on April 7 about the St. Louis City Earned Income Tax: It’s a 1% tax, but it accounts for 36% of the city’s budget. And we have to vote on that every five years. It’s one of those things that’s important for us to retain. Because if we lose that pot of money, that’s more than one-third of our operating budget right there. It became a thing where there was no real support from conservative lawmakers to just do away with it. And it sounds good, similar to the income tax at the state level, where we’ll save money. But the reality is that we’ll start to see sales taxes on goods and services we’ve never had to pay before. Doing away with it would just increase the sales tax. Over time, you do lose more money because you’re having to spend more. But things like that are Missouri ballot initiatives that just came up. The initial petition process is another big one simply because it’ll require all eight Missouri congregational districts to agree on any different topic. We know people in St. Louis city aren’t gonna agree with people in Northwest or Southeast Missouri. But a single congressional district can sink good legislation right there. And it would make it so that whatever the lawmakers in Jefferson City say goes without pushback. Think about community-led petitions that have passed, like sports betting, marijuana, or the right to abortion, and they’ve ultimately made life better for everybody in this state. So a big focus of what we do is about people making informed decisions, getting them registered to vote, especially if they’re permanently displaced or have decided not to come back to the city. So we’re identifying people in those situations so they can still actively participate in upcoming decisions that will be happening. There are a lot of state-wide attacks on this region...” @dr.mclemore , Electoral Justice Coordinator, The People’s Response HOSTL + #STLMade / @in_thestl

(14/20) “Between almost $300 million going towards tornado demolition and removal versus the $16 million in the pot going towards the repair and construction, it’s disappointing that there’s such a massive funding gap. There doesn’t seem to be much urgency to fill that. It seems like the priority is on the aesthetics of recovery more so than the actual recovery itself. To say we’ve been able to clear all these condemned houses or make these areas more visually appealing for development, which, as we’ve seen, just leads to gentrification — especially in The Ville and The Greater Ville, which are both historically Black neighborhoods in St. Louis. So that’s a lot of history that can potentially be lost. And all we’ll have to show for it are monuments. It’ll be another Mill Creek Valley situation, where if you didn’t know it was there, you wouldn’t know except for the monuments. My biggest frustration has been the lack of urgency. It’s almost like the rebuild is optional for a lot of people. Or I hear people say, ‘Well, the north side looked like that before the storm,’ which is not true. St. Louis has a perception problem of what they perceive things to be and what the reality is. The perception is that St. Louis is one of the most dangerous cities in the world. The reality is that St. Louis has hit record lows in violent crime. It’s not even top 10 at this point. Like, the idea that the north side was just this crazy, bombed-out portion of the city that nobody could help, and any investment up there would be a waste at this point... Stuff like that. So we’re battling those types of perceptions and then battling those same perceptions coming from city leaders. That also makes recovery frustrating because the people who should be trusted the most are the ones holding things back.” @dr.mclemore , Electoral Justice Organizer, The People’s Response HOSTL + #STLMade / @in_thestl

(13/20) “Joplin’s one of the tornadoes that’s often referenced in the Midwest. Back then, FEMA was on the ground running to help fix things, whereas when @fema got here a month after the fact, employee roles kept changing day to day. They’d arrive, start going door to door, and try to get people signed up for relief. But eventually, they weren’t able to do that anymore, and they had to get set up at the hubs because folks had transportation and mobility issues to sign up. That led to a lack of FEMA applications. So on top of everything else that groups like ours were doing, we also had to go door to door to communicate the situation with FEMA and do our best to provide transportation solutions to connect those dots for people. The reliance on the state to step in was vastly different. And with whatever the city government’s doing now, they’re moving at a snail’s pace as far as putting any real allocation towards recovery. The philanthropic side also really wants to help with the recovery process. They want to see the city create a plan that kicks into recovery first before they put anything in. So in a lot of situations, we’re at a standstill where the rebuild isn’t happening at all. And the big focus is on funding, demolition, and debris removal. Which ultimately makes the situation look better, but it doesn’t bring our people home.” @dr.mclemore , Electoral Justice Organizer, The People’s Response HOSTL + #STLMade / @in_thestl

(12/20) 𝑇𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑢𝑠 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝐴𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑆𝑡. 𝐿𝑜𝑢𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑃𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒’𝑠 𝑅𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑖𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑎𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑡ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑑𝑜. “In the direct aftermath, we lined up resources, interacted with folks who were impacted, and conducted surveys of what people were experiencing and what they needed. It was a really big effort. We’d share techniques and stories with people in similar situations, like, ‘My tarp isn’t holding up. Is there anything I can do to mitigate the water damage?’ Over at my place, when it came to handling rain getting into the house, my family used an inflatable pool and a water pump to catch as much rain as we could. Like, last summer definitely wasn’t a drought with all the rain we got. Later on, we worked on helping people receive donations and heard about tornado-related situations from people who weren’t directly impacted. We learned how they knew what to bring to the hub in the form of donations was through us sharing videos to bring ‘This, this, and that.’ And how people were literally at Walmart and Sam’s Club waiting on those social media updates to grab things and run them up to the hub. People even came from states away to drop off donations. It was a beautiful thing. I was proud of the ability we had in mobilizing as many people as we did. We’re talking 10,000 volunteers in six weeks. That’s unheard of. What group can move that many people to want to volunteer? The trust we built with the community over the years was also a major factor in people coming to get resources from us. Honestly, so many stayed locked in with the recovery process, versus the inactivity from the governmental side.” Dr. @dr.mclemore , Electoral Justice Organizer, The People’s Response HOSTL + #STLMade / @in_thestl

(11/20) “I was familiar with @actionstl and @fortheculturestl from my previous work with the city government. And whenever I could charge my phone, I’d see their updates from setting up the hub at the O’Fallon Missouri YMCA. Well, one of my colleagues who was helping clean up at my house was also going to The Y, and he got contracted to start working there, which was great. Meanwhile, my focus was on my place in those first few weeks to get the house to a place where the contractors could continue with what we needed done. But knowing how bad the tornado wreckage was, and since I wasn’t employed, I was also looking for ways to help out. I thought, ‘My friends are up here at The Y. I’m gonna go over there, too. I’ll just go up there for the day to help out with things I know about. They can plug me in anywhere.’ And it became a situation where I just never left. After a week, they were like, ‘You’re here all the time. Do you just wanna be 𝑡ℎ𝑒 job?’ And I said, ‘Yes! I absolutely do. Because you know we just lost reelection.’ We had to define my position to have something for me to focus on after the initial tornado response. Because I’ve worked on political campaigns in the administration and during internships, my position became the Electoral Justice Organizer. So it was a perfect fit all around because I’ve been able to use my past professional experiences in what I do now. Just being up there the first day, I knew, ‘This is where I want to be.’ Because it’s not a governmental agency. These were just regular, everyday people learning on the fly how to respond to a lot of disaster relief-related things. They didn’t have a large sum of money from a government agency to respond, but they could move people. And that turned out to be the biggest thing that assisted in helping with recovery and relief efforts to be as successful as it was.” @dr.mclemore , Electoral Justice Organizer, The People’s Response HOSTL + #STLMade / @in_thestl