Archbishop Burke, Noting Time Savings, Excommunicates 87.3% of Catholics in St. Louis

For a number of years now St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke has been very inefficient about driving people away from the Catholic Church by making demands and excommunicating members as individual incidents arise. For example, the ongoing issue of the last several years over control of millions in property and cash by the lay board of St. Stanislaus, supporting women as priests, and most recently pro-choice comments made by U.S. Citizen Rick Majerus — Majerus is an employee by Saint Louis University (Men’s basketball coach). SLU is not under the control of Burke, nor is it controlled by Catholics, per the Missouri Supreme Court. Burke, angered by the lack of people following the Pope’s instructions as channeled through him, took things to the next level — here is a statement released today by spokesperson and former TV anchor Jeff Fowler:

“I’ve had it with all of you sinners! I’ve done the math and I am excommunicating 87.3% of the Catholics in the St. Louis Archdiocese due to support for such things as killing babies, supporting homo marriage, researching human tissue, masterbation, women becoming priests, pre-marital sex, and the like. Doing this upfront, all at once, will save me considerable time. The rest of you, the 12.7% that remain, don’t even think about doing stuff as simple as laughing at a re-run of Will & Grace.

I want to become a Cardinal someday and get the hell out of here — this public defiance is not helping me at all. Of course, the priests who screwed up the lives of many of our youngest members will simply be transferred, not excommunicated.”

Of course, I’m just having a little fun with Burke. For those who are parody-challenged — I made up the above.

What must this guy be thinking? That he can just demand that a private employer (St. Louis University) will allow him to determine how and when an employee is disciplined for exercising his right to free speech when off the clock? Uh, hello — reality check please! Yeah, SLU is in the “Jesuit tradition” but to get those millions in public dollars for, ironically the new basketball arena, they had to convince the court that Catholic dogma didn’t rule the day at the university.

Getting Facts Straight this Election Cycle

Candidates, especially those seeking the Presidency, are prone to spout off facts and figures that support their position and make their opponent look bad.  How do we shift through all the BS and get right to the truth?  For me, I turn to the researchers at FactCheck.org.  Here is a summary of a recent item I just received from them following a recent debate between Clinton, Obama and Edwards:

In one of the liveliest debates of the 2008 presidential campaign, the three top Democrats slugged it out in Myrtle Beach, S.C. We noted some low blows:

• Clinton falsely accused Obama of saying he “really liked the ideas of the Republicans” including private Social Security accounts and deficit spending. Not true. The entire 49-minute interview to which she refers contains no endorsement of private Social Security accounts or deficit spending, and Obama specifically scorned GOP calls for tax cuts.
• Obama falsely denied endorsing single-payer government health insurance when he first ran for the Senate, saying, “I never said that we should try to go ahead and get single-payer.” But in fact he gave a speech in 2003 saying, “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer health care program.”
• Edwards misleadingly claimed, “I was the one who beat John McCain” in a recent CNN poll. The problem is that there is a more recent CNN poll, one that shows either Clinton or Obama beating McCain and doesn’t include Edwards.

FactCheck.org doesn’t leave it there — they dig deep into archives to find exact words and phrasing to illustrate exactly how a claim is taken out of context.  They look at claims in advertising and are equally honest when it comes to Republicans as well.  To see the full analysis of the above click here.  Now if only we had a similar group for state and local elections.

Boston’s North End, Once Slated for the Wrecking Ball, Perhaps the Best Urban Neighborhood in America

Last week I visited Boston and I specifically made a trip to the North End neighborhood. Before heading on the trip I re-read a portion of Jane Jacob’s classic 1961 book, Death and Life of Great American Cities. Starting on page 8 Jacobs talks about planners and architects and how they’ve learned how cities “ought” to work:

Consider, for example, the orthodox planning reaction to a district called the North End in Boston. This is an old, low-rent area merging into the heavy industry of the waterfront, and it is officially considered Boston’s worst slum and civic shame. It embodies attributes which all enlightened people know are evil because so many wise men have said they are evil. Not only is the North End bumped right up against industry, but worse still it has all kinds of working places and commerce mingled in the greatest complexity with its residences. It has the highest concentration of dwelling units, on the land that is used for dwelling units, of any part of Boston, and indeed one of the highest concentrations to be found in any American city. It has little parkland. Children play in the streets. Instead of super-blocks, or even decently large blocks, it has very small blocks; in planning parlance it is “badly cut up with wasteful streets.” Its buildings are old. Everything conceivable is presumably wrong with the North End. In orthodox planning terms, it is a three-dimensional textbook of “megalopolis” in the last stages of depravity. The North End is thus a recurring assignment for M.I.T. and Harvard planning and architecture students, who now and again pursue, under the guidance of their teachers, the paper exercise of converting it into super-blocks and park promenades, wiping away its nonconforming uses, transforming it to an ideal of order and gentility so simple it could be engraved on the head of a pin.

This neighborhood, first settled in the 1630’s, didn’t fit with the mid-20th century notion of a city. Architects, planners and politicians had written off the entire area, and equally urban areas in cities all over the country, so they could be rebuilt in the new order. Jacobs continues:

Twenty years ago, when I first happened to see the North End, its buildings — town houses of different kinds and sizes converted to flats, and four- or five story tenements built to house the flood of immigrants first from Ireland, then from Eastern Europe and finally from Sicily — were badly overcrowded, and the general effect was of a district taking a terrible physical beating and certainly desperately poor.

Gee, that doesn’t sound so good. Perhaps the planners were correct, wipe it back down to bare earth and start over? Of course, at this point in the early 1940s, the country had been in a long depression with little money for the maintenance of housing stock.

When I saw the North End again in 1959, I was amazed at the change. Dozens and dozens of buildings had been rehabilitated. Instead of mattresses against the windows there were Venetian blinds and glimpses of fresh paint. Many of the small, converted houses now had only one or two families in them instead of the old crowded three or four. Some of the families in the tenements (as I learned later, visiting inside) had uncrowded themselves by throwing two older apartments together, and had equipped these with bathrooms, new kitchens and the like. I looked down a narrow alley, thinking to find at least here the old, squalid North End, but no: more neatly repointed brickwork, new blinds, and a burst of music as a door opened. Indeed, this was the only city district I had ever seen — or have seen to this day — in which the sides of buildings around parking lots had not been left raw and amputated, but repaired and painted as neatly as if they were intended to be seen. Mingled all among the buildings for living were an incredible number of splendid food stores, as well as such enterprises as upholstery making, metal working, carpentry, food processing. The streets were alive with children playing, people shopping, people strolling, people talking. Had it not been a cold January day, there would surely have been people sitting.

The general street atmosphere of buoyancy, friendliness and good health was so infectious that I began asking directions of people just for the fun of getting in on some talk. I had seen a lot of Boston in the past couple of days, most of it sorely distressing, and this struck me, with relief, as the healthiest place in the city. But I could not imagine where the money had come from for the rehabilitation, because it is almost impossible today to get any appreciable mortgage money in districts of American cities that are not either high-rent, or else imitations of suburbs. To find out, I went into a bar and restaurant (where an animated conversation about fishing was in progress) and called a Boston planner I know.

“Why in the world are you down in the North End?” he said. “Money? Why, no money or work has gone into the North End. Nothing’s going on down there. Eventually, yes, but not yet. That’s a slum!”
“It doesn’t seem like a slum to me,” I said.
“Why, that’s the worst slum in the city. It has two hundred and seventy-five dwelling units to the net acre! I hate to admit we have anything like that in Boston, but it’s a fact.”
“Do you have any other figures on it?” I asked.
“Yes, funny thing. It has among the lowest delinquency, disease and infant mortality rates in the city. It also has the lowest ratio of rent to income in the city. Boy, are those people getting bargains. Let’s see… the child population is just about average for the city, on the nose. The death rate is low, 8.8 per thousand, against the average city rate of 11.2. The TB death rate is very low, less than 1 per ten thousand, can’t understand it, it’s lower even than Brookline’s. In the old days the North End used to be the city’s worst spot for tuberrculosis, but all that has changed. Well, they must be strong people. Of course, it’s a terrible slum.”
“You should have more slums like this,” I said. “Don’t tell me there are plans to wipe this out. You ought to be down here learning as much as you can from it.”
“I know how you feel,” he said. “I often go down there myself just to walk around the streets and to feel that wonderful, cheerful street life. Say, what you ought to do, you ought to come back and go down in the summer if you think it’s fun now. You’d be crazy about it in the summer. But of course we have to rebuild it eventually. We’ve got to get those people off the streets.”

Here was a curious thing. My friend’s instincts told him the North End was a good place, and his social statistics confirmed it. But everything he had learned as a physical planner about what is good for people and good for city neighborhoods, everything that made him an expert, told him the North End had to be a bad place.

Boston’s North End, like St. Louis’ Soulard or Old North neighborhoods, were very overcrowded during the years of the depression when many people migrated from rural settings to urban centers seeking employment. Overcrowding, not to be confused with high density, can and did lead to many diseases. The older buildings often lacked modern plumbing which would have helped offset disease.  At the time the experts claimed the only thing to do was to clear cut the entire area — including all the streets and alleys — and start over from scratch.

In the 1950s Boston cut out a strip of the North End to create their overly popular Central Artery highway.  This highway project cut off the North End from downtown and the rest of the city.  The highway also became congested quickly which eventually led to the “big dig” project.   Despite being cut off from downtown, or perhaps because of it, the North End avoided the wrecking ball.
Boston, St. Louis and all older cities do well with their older street pattern and mix of uses.  As you will see, this is very compact, and not for everyone.  Of course, not everyone aspires to a 2-story Colonial ranch in the suburbs with a 3-car garage.  The inner core of our region, basically the entire City of St. Louis, should grow increasingly urban as it once was.

Here are a few of the pictures I took in Boston’s North End:

I’m looking forward to a return visit when the trees green up and more people are out and about.

A Realistic Look at the Question of Progress in the Area of Race Relations

Over fifty years ago, in April 1957, Dr. Martin Luther King delivered a speech to over 8,000 people at St. Louis’ Kiel Auditorium during a freedom rally. Given our state of race relations half a century later, I think looking back at part of his words on this day makes sense. Here are some excerpts from A Realistic Look at the Question of Progress in the Area of Race Relations, created from an audio recording and the papers of Dr. King:

I want to try to grapple with a question that continually comes to me. And it is a question on the lips of men and women all over this nation. People all over are wondering about the question of progress in race relations. And they are asking, “Are we really making any progress?” I want to try to answer that question. And if I would use a subject for what I plan to say this evening, I would use a rather lengthy subject: “A Realistic Look at the Question of Progress in the Area of Race Relations.”

There are three basic attitudes that one can take toward the question of progress in the area of race relations. And the first attitude that can be taken is that of extreme optimism. Now the extreme optimist would argue that we have come a long, long way in the area of race relations. He would point proudly to the marvelous strides that have been made in the area of civil rights over the last few decades. From this he would conclude that the problem is just about solved, and that we can sit comfortably by the wayside and wait on the coming of the inevitable.

The second attitude that one can take toward the question of progress in the area of race relations is that of extreme pessimism. The extreme pessimist would argue that we have made only minor strides in the area of race relations. He would argue that the rhythmic beat of the deep rumblings of discontent that we hear from the Southland today is indicative of the fact that we have created more problems than we have solved. He would say that we are retrogressing instead of progressing. He might even turn to the realms of an orthodox theology and argue that hovering over every man is the tragic taint of original sin and that at bottom human nature cannot be changed. He might even turn to the realms of modern psychology and seek to show the determinative effects of habit structures and the inflexibility of certain attitudes that once become molded in one’s being. (Yes) From all of this he would conclude that there can be no progress in the area of race relations. (All right, All right)

Now you will notice that the extreme optimist and the extreme pessimist have at least one thing in common: they both agree that we must sit down and do nothing in the area of race relations. (Yes) The extreme optimist says do nothing because integration is inevitable. The extreme pessimist says do nothing because integration is impossible. But there is a third position, there is another attitude that can be taken, and it is what I would like to call the realistic position. The realist in the area of race relations seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites while avoiding the extremes of both. (Yeah) So the realist would agree with the optimist that we have come a long, long way. But, he would go on to balance that by agreeing with the pessimist that we have a long, long way to go. (Amen) [applause] And it is this basic theme that I would like to set forth this evening. We have come a long, long way but we have a long, long way to go. (Amen) [applause]

Now let us notice first that we’ve come a long, long way. You will remember that it was in the year of 1619 that the Negro slaves first landed on the shores of this nation. They were brought here from the shores of Africa. Unlike the Pilgrim fathers who landed at Plymouth a year later, they were brought here against their wills. Throughout slavery the Negro was treated in a very inhuman fashion. He was a thing to be used, not a person to be respected. (Yeah, That’s Right) He was merely [applause], he was merely a depersonalized cog in a vast plantation machine. (Yeah) The famous Dred Scott decision of 1857 well illustrates the status of the Negro during slavery. For it was in this decision that the Supreme Court of the nation said, in substance, that the Negro is not a citizen of this nation. He is merely property subject to the dictates of his owner. Living under these conditions many Negroes lost faith in themselves. Many came to feel that perhaps they were less than human. So long as the Negro accepted this place assigned to him, so long as the Negro patiently accepted injustice and exploitation, a sort of racial peace was maintained.

King goes through history and how, following slavery, an optimist would have advocated sitting back and waiting. King then reminds us of the lynchings and other issues that followed in the beginning of the 20th Century. He continually repeats that although much progress has been made, much more remains to be done. A long way indeed.

I’m about through now, but there is a warning signal, a signal that must forever stand before us. (Yes) I’ve tried to say that we’ve come a long, long way, and we have a long, long way to go. I’ve tried to suggest some of the things that we must do in order to go the additional miles ahead. My friends, I cannot leave you without saying that as we move on let us be sure that our methods are thoroughly moral and Christian. (Go ahead, Yes) [applause] This is one of the basic things confronting our nation. No matter what we suffer. I know it’s really hard when we think of the tragic midnight of injustice and oppression that we’ve had to live under so many years, but let us not become bitter. Let us never indulge in hate campaigns, for we can’t solve the problem like that. (No) Somebody must have sense in this world. (Amen, Yes) And to hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe. (Amen) We must not use violence. Maybe sometimes we will have to be the victims of violence, but never let us be the perpetrators of violence. (Amen) For if we succumb to the temptation of using violence in our struggle, unborn generations would be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness (Yes), and our chief legacy to the future will be an endless rain of meaningless chaos. (Go ahead) We must not use violence. (All right) Oh, sometimes as we struggle it will be necessary to boycott. But let us remember as we boycott that a boycott is never an end. A boycott is merely means to awaken within the oppressor the sense of shame and to let him know that we don’t like how we are being treated; but the end my friends is reconciliation, the end is redemption. (Yeah) Our aim must never be to defeat the white man or to humiliate him. Our aim must be to win his friendship and his understanding. (Go ahead) [applause] [words inaudible]

Oh, no matter how much we are mistreated there is still a voice crying through the vistas of time saying, “Love your enemy. (Yeah) Bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.” (Yes) [applause] And then, and only then, can you matriculate into the university of eternal life. (Yes) We must get a hold of this simple principle of love and let it be our guiding principle throughout our struggle.

This means that through this period we will need leaders on every hand and at every scene who will stress this. (Yes) This is a time for sound and sane leadership. (Yes sir) This is no period for rabble-rousers, whether the rabble-rouser be white or Negro. (That’s right) We are grappling and dealing with the most complex, one of the most weighty and complex social issues of the centuries. (Go ahead, Go ahead, sir) This problem is deeply rooted in the emotions, deeply rooted in the customs and traditions of the South. And we can’t solve the problem with misguided emotionalism. (No, no, no) This is a period for sane, sound, rational leadership. (Yes) We must be calm and yet positive at the same time. We must avoid the extremes of hot-headedness and Uncle-Tomism. (Yes, That’s right) Oh, this is a period for leaders. Leaders not in love with publicity, but in love with humanity. (Yes sir) Leaders not in love with money, but in love with justice. (Yes) Leaders who can subject their particular egos to the greatness of the cause. (Yes, yes, yes)

While many injustices still exist in the world it is important to remember that race relations have progressed in the last 50 years, but we do have a long way to go. Today in St. Louis we have considerable work to be done. The population in St. Louis is less than half what it was when King gave his speech here in 1957 and for a variety of reasons a large section of our city is written off as being too poor and too black. Attracting middle class blacks to these area, much less other races, is a challenge.
The big issue in the news of late is the issue over the demotion, and then resignation, of Fire Chief Sherman George. Mayor Slay has been vilified in the news over this issue and a recall has started. For those who are not regular readers let me make this clear — I am not a fan of Mayor Slay or his administration. I look forward to the day when I can put the “former” before Mayor Slay. That having been said, I don’t think Slay wanted to get rid of Sherman George because he is black. George was appointed by a prior Mayor. Slay wanted to get rid of George because George wasn’t a yes man to the Mayor. I’m not going to delve into whether or not George failed his duties by not promoting within the ranks or if he was within his power to pass on the score based promotions. George could have been of any race (including white) and as long as he wasn’t promoting Slay’s boys, allowing Slay to increase his power base, then there was going to be a stand off. This latest issue has much to do with the next race for Mayor, just over a year away in 2009. You see, the next Mayor will have considerable influence in the drawing of local ward boundaries.
Discrimination is more subtle than it was decades ago, but it does still exist. However, this also means that racism can be read into things which are not really about race. In politics, at all levels, power is usually the root of the problem — not racism. Local leaders, be they black or white, use the same tactics of playing to supporters and working to consolidate their power structure. Those with more supporters and/or more money, wins. Opposition gets screwed. Players switch sides when a political ship is sinking. Black politicians play this game as well as any white politician. This is not to say that all politicians, black or white, play games. I’m just saying that the nature of political power structures is open to all races. Anyone who thinks that all the white aldermen have the same political interests would be foolish. Ditto for black aldermen. Power struggles exist within races at all political levels. Power and money is the key. Or is it money and then power?

Race is often used, I’m afraid to say, when it would play well with the media and constituents. The same can be said for immigration. This political tactic unfortunately makes race & immigration relations worse, not better. Local leaders, black and white, seem to look out for their own self interests and not of the greater city and of the common citizen. We need leaders like Dr. King who would be able to cut through all the political grand standing and clearly show us the path to be taken. Locally, I don’t see that leadership emerging. Like half a century ago, however, “this is a period for sane, sound, rational leadership.”

Bill Would Make Plaza Square Apartments A Housing Conservation District

Plaza Square, the urban renewal era apartment complex listing on the National Register of Historic Places, has been having some issues of late.  Elevators not working properly and so on.  The city seems to have an answer, make the complex a “housing conservation district” as exists in much of the city.  Such a district requires inspections each and every time a tenant changes apartments unless that change happened within the 12 months since the last inspection.  This would be the first such district in downtown St. Louis.
While I support efforts to ensure the overall public safety, this measure, Board Bill 328, seems to target a single property with two owners of record.  The Blu condo project, part of the original Plaza Square complex but under separate ownership for many years, is excluded from the proposed district.  In fact, the proposed district is an island all to itself — not an extension of an adjacent district.

My guess here is that this is a legal move to force the property owner into selling out the property to someone else.   Maybe that is best in the long term but in the short term such targeted use of our laws seems punitive.  BB328 was introduced in October by Ald Young (D-7th) but it hasn’t gotten far.  Next Thursday (1/24) at 1pm the Public Safety Committee of the Board of Alderman will take up this bill.  This meeting is open to the public.