Poll: Significant Progress Toward Racial Equality?

Today is the 48th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom:

The march was initiated by A. Philip Randolph, the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, president of the Negro American Labor Council, and vice president of the AFL-CIO. Randolph had planned a similar march in 1941. The threat of the earlier march had convinced President Roosevelt to establish the Committee on Fair Employment Practice and ban discriminatory hiring in the defense industry.

The 1963 march was an important part of the rapidly expanding Civil Rights Movement. It also marked the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln.

In the political sense, the march was organized by a coalition of organizations and their leaders including: Randolph who was chosen as the titular head of the march, James Farmer (president of the Congress of Racial Equality), John Lewis (president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), Martin Luther King, Jr. (president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference), Roy Wilkins (president of the NAACP), Whitney Young (president of the National Urban League).

I didn’t realize a march was planned to take place 22 years earlier, not sure a march in 1941 would have been as successful as 1963. Think about the milestones that took place between 1941 and 1963,  those in quotes are from CNN:

• 1948 – The Supreme Court rules the state cannot enforce restrictive covenants (Shelley v. Kraemer), the case originated in St. Louis in 1945.
• 1948  – “President Truman issues an executive order outlawing segregation in the U.S. military”
• 1954 – ” The Supreme Court declares school segregation unconstitutional in its ruling on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.”
• 1955 – “Rosa Parks is jailed for refusing to move to the back of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. A boycott follows, and the bus segregation ordinance is declared unconstitutional.The Federal Interstate Commerce Commission bans segregation on interstate trains and buses.”
• 1957  – “Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus uses the National Guard to block nine black students from attending Little Rock High School. Following a court order, President Eisenhower sends in federal troops to allow the black students to enter the school.”
• 1960  – “Four black college students begin sit-ins at the lunch counter of a Greensboro, North Carolina, restaurant where black patrons are not served.”
• 1961  – “Freedom Rides begin from Washington, D.C., into Southern states. Student volunteers are bused in to test new laws prohibiting segregation.”
• 1962 – “President Kennedy sends federal troops to the University of Mississippi to end riots so that James Meredith, the school’s first black student, can attend.The Supreme Court rules that segregation is unconstitutional in all transportation facilities.The Department of Defense orders complete integration of military reserve units, excluding the National Guard.”

For many the road to equality was simply taking too long.  The post-march period saw a change in strategy from younger activists who didn’t want to wait a lifetime for equality .

The poll question this week is the same as a January 2011 Associated Press poll: “Do you think there has been significant progress toward Martin Luther King’s dream of racial equality, or don’t you think so?” The answer choices are also the same:

• Has been significant progress
• Don’t think so
• Unsure

The poll is in the upper right of the blog, mobile users need to switch off the mobile theme to vote from your phones.

Poll: Should zoning laws allow kids to sell cookies, lemonade, etc in front of their homes?

The St. Louis region made the national news this month:

In Hazelwood, Mo., Carolyn Mills and her daughters, Abigail, 14, and Caitlin, 16, have sold Girl Scout cookies from their driveway for years. But after a neighbor complained that the cookie stand created too much traffic and was causing dogs to bark, city officials told the Millses that selling cookies there violated the city’s zoning code.

Hazelwood officials say scouts are allowed to sell cookies in the city but must go door to door or set up at a place like a grocery store parking lot (with the store’s permission). So while the front yard snack stand is one American tradition, the lawsuit is another. The girls urged the family to sue, and it did. (NY Times)

Other national coverage:

• Perez Hilton
• Huffington Post

But the lawsuit didn’t go far:

CLAYTON • A St. Louis County judge [Circuit Judge Maura McShane] has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the mother of two Hazelwood teens who were ordered last spring to stop selling Girl Scout cookies in front of their home.

In her dismissal, McShane wrote that the Mills first should have exhausted their appeals asking the city to reconsider barring cookie sales before taking the case to circuit court. (STLtoday.com)

This  recent history is to introduce the poll question this week: Should zoning laws allow kids to sell cookies, lemonade, etc in front of their homes? The poll is in the upper right corner of the blog. Results on Wednesday August 31st.

– Steve Patterson

This Week’s Poll Closed Due to Self-Selection Bias

I’ve never closed a weekly poll before, I’ve always let them run Sunday to Sunday.  But on Monday I decided to close this week’s poll. Why? When the number of votes after 36 hours exceeded the typical number of votes for an entire week it was very clear I was not getting the perspective of my usual reader. The poll had zero value with such a highly biased sample:

Self-selection bias, which is possible whenever the group of people being studied has any form of control over whether to participate. Participants’ decision to participate may be correlated with traits that affect the study, making the participants a non-representative sample. For example, people who have strong opinions or substantial knowledge may be more willing to spend time answering a survey than those who do not. Another example is online and phone-in polls, which are biased samples because the respondents are self-selected. Those individuals who are highly motivated to respond, typically individuals who have strong opinions, are overrepresented, and individuals that are indifferent or apathetic are less likely to respond. This often leads to a polarization of responses with extreme perspectives being given a disproportionate weight in the summary. As a result, these types of polls are regarded as unscientific.

There have been many weekly polls in the last couple of years where the results differed from my personal viewpoint, but that was the viewpoints of the readers.

That said, here are the results from the first 36 hours of the poll:

1. Should be repealed 47 [40.87%]
2. Don’t like the law, but I do like having more smoke-free places 10 [8.7%]
3. So glad we are finally a smoke-free city! 23 [20%]
4. Great, but we need to remove exemptions so all employers are smoke-free 33 [28.7%]
5. Other: 2 [1.74%]
6. unsure/no opinion 0 [0%]

Those who want to repeal the ban make up the single biggest group, but nearly half like the law (48%).  Here were the two other answers:

1. i like it, leave smokers some places tho
2. In America, smoking cigarettes is freedom. Stop infringing on my freedom!

Ah yes freedom! The freedom to make others smell your addictive habit. The freedom to make anyplace smell like an ashtray simply from the toxins contained in your clothing. The freedom to fill the bus or light rail train car with smoke. The freedom to be completely inconsiderate of others around you.

Most likely I will never do a poll about smoking again.

– Steve Patterson

Poll: Thoughts on St. Louis’ Smoke-free Law [UPDATED]

As of January 2, 2011 most businesses in St. Louis are now smoke-free. Now that we are past the halfway point in the year I’m curious on your thoughts. When the law was debated in 2009 many opposed the law on principal. Some are still fighting the law.

Do you feel differently about the law now? Should we repeal or expand? The poll is in the upper right corner of the blog.

– Steve Patterson

Update @ 7pm on Monday August 15, 2011:

This week’s poll has been closed after only a day & a half, the pro-smoking forces had caused more votes than a typical week.

I First Arrived in St. Louis 21 Years Ago Today!

It was twenty-one years ago today that I first drove into St. Louis from Oklahoma City.  My college friend Mary Ann and I were on our way to Washington D.C. where were going to be roommates. Our first stop was her mom’s house on Lemp. I was just 23.

The buildings along I-44 got my attention immediately. Exiting I-55 onto Arsenal and then turning right onto Lemp I was blown away but what I saw.  I was less impressed by what I smelled, the wind was blowing the hops smell from the brewery that direction.

The next day, a Sunday, her mom and a gay couple she knew gave us the grand tour of St. Louis. If I wasn’t already sold based upon what I saw upon arrival, I was by the end of that day. I had my first concrete from Ted Drewes, saw the Central West End along Euclid & Maryland Plaza, Forest Park, etc.

I decided I would not be moving to D.C., St. Louis would be my new home. I removed most of my stuff from Mary Ann’s Civic wagon and placed it in her mom’s basement. We drove to D.C., I still wanted to see it.  After a few days I took the train to Chicago, my first time there, and caught a train into Kansas. From there I got a bus to Oklahoma City.

I loaded up my car that I had left at my parents’s house and drove up I-44 again. The last 21 years I’ve had a love-hate relationship with St. Louis. I nearly moved away in 1994 & 1999. Both times I got sucked back in. I’m glad, because I don’t think I would have enjoyed Portland or Seattle as much as St. Louis.

Tonight the author of For the Love of Cities, Peter Kageyama, will give a free presentation tonight at the Regional Arts Commission (RAC) 6128 Delmar, 6pm-7:30pm.  How could I miss such an event on such an important anniversary?

– Steve Patterson