Category Archives: Sports

Muhammad Ali’s Memorial Service – Tributes of Greatness

Dr. Kevin Cosby set the tone and delivered an outstanding and fitting eulogy to Muhammad Ali.

My brother and uncle attended the Muhammad Ali memorial service in Louisville yesterday. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend, but I was able to watch it thanks to Bounce TV's live coverage. Bounce TV is majority owned and operated by African Americans. We need more stations like Bounce to overcome the racial bias of white media.

World leaders, stars and regular people from all over the world of all faiths and stations in life were inspired and in awe of Mr. Ali's greatness not as a boxing champion, but as a person and humanitarian. Muhammad Ali's memorial included speakers of many religious faiths. Rabbi Michael Lerner's eulogy was a remarkable example of Ali inspired activism.

Lonnie Ali, Muhammad Ali's wife, displayed tremendous poise and strength with her remarkable tribute to her husband.

As I watched Muhammad Ali's memorial service, I couldn't help but be reminded of all the other great inspiring American Black men and women who transcended their circumstances or professions and helped changed the world such as Frederick Douglass, Mary McLeod Bethune, Booker T. Washington, A. Philip Randolph, Ida B. Wells, Dorothy Height, W.E.B. Dubois, Jessie Owens, Jackie Robinson, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Maya Angelo, Harry Belafonte, Michael Jackson, Thurgood Marshall, Paul Robeson, Barack Obama, St. Louisans (Annie Malone, Frankie Muse Freeman, my uncle Dick Gregory) and many others. As a people, we are capable of amazing feats and humanity, especially considering the history of our circumstance.

Billy Crystal Eulogy Speech at Muhammad Ali Memorial Funeral:

Bill Clinton Delivers Eulogy at Ali Funeral FULL Speech

Although, President Barack Obama couldn't attend the funeral of Muhammad Ali because his daughter was graduating the day of the funeral, President Obama paid a moving tribute.

Use Ali's example of intelligence, wisdom, courage, humility, and humanity to inspire you to see through the lies of history and stand up for yourself and others.

See our post, "Muhammad Ali: Humanity's Champion

Lessons St. Louis needs to learn from losing the Rams

The City of St. Louis has been in decline and denial for quite some time. If we don't make some changes, we soon may no longer be considered a world class city.

Even if you don't consider St. Louis to be a world class city, with the exception of a subway, you must admit that St. Louis has many of the things that make cities world class.

  • Major league sports franchises
  • Tourism destination
  • World Class Zoo
  • Forest Park (75th on the list of City Parks)
  • World Class Museums and Libraries
  • Great Universities
  • Great architecture
  • World Class Hospitals
  • Symphony Orchestra
  • Nationally known monument (Arch)

World class cities are also known for their modern skylines, locations that cater to wealthy locals and affluent visitors and an absence of visible signs of poverty. St. Louis fails the visibility of poverty test.

City leaders pursue this “world-class” vision to attract investment, for integration into the global economy, and to improve the quality of living standards. Too often, however, those benefits accrue only to the wealthiest and most powerful residents.

St. Louis is a city that seems aggressive and inhospitable to some of it's minority and low income residents and many would flee if offered half a chance to relocate elsewhere. St. Louis is one of the most racially segregated cities in the country and even before the Ferguson Protest had a racist reputation.

Many people don't realize or have forgotten that Missouri typically is categorized as both a Midwestern and a southern state. The region was split on Union and Confederate issues during the Civil War. A small region of the state is called Little Dixie for the influx of southerners that settled there.

In 1847, a book titled, "The Narrative of William W. Brown, an American Slave", was published. Below is a quote from that book.

"Though slavery is thought, by some, to be mild in Missouri, when compared with the cotton, sugar and rice growing states, yet no part of our slave-holding country is more noted for the barbarity of its inhabitants than St. Louis."

During the decades after the Civil War, St. Louis grew to become the nation's fourth largest city, after New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago. It also experienced rapid infrastructure and transportation development and the growth of heavy industry.

The period culminated with the 1904 World's Fair and Summer Olympics, which were held concurrently in St. Louis. As of 2014, St. Louis has dropped to 60 on the U.S. Census largest cities list. New York is still number one, Chicago is the still number three and Philadelphia dropped only slightly to number five.

The measure of a civilization is how it treats its weakest members. This is not a new concept, it has existed at least since biblical times; "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did to me" – Matthew 25:40.

The Ram's departure leaves a huge pile of unpaid debt on the old dome stadium. According to the the St. Louis Post, the city said it expected to lose about $4.2 million a year, at least in the “short run,” as tax revenue falls because of the team’s departure. The Riverfront Stadium Task Force has spent $16 million so far on planning for a new stadium.

While the City was actively offering welfare to a billionaire and spending millions in taxpayer money putting together a stadium plan for Stan Kroenke, the Ram's owner, who neither asked for it nor wanted it; they were vigorously fighting to close down a homeless shelter that actually provides services and cares for "the least of these."

I'm only fifty years old, but while I was growing up, it was common knowledge that you didn't go into certain neighborhoods. I was in high school between 1979 and 1983. During that time, there were not a lot of places that welcomed black kids. On the weekends, many of us hung out in Forest Park, but then the rules were changed and we were forced out. Another popular hangout was the St. Louis Riverfront, which then had the nation's only floating McDonald's; but again the rules were changed and eventually the McDonald's Boat located to another city.

I see that same pattern repeated again, mall and other areas now have special curfews and other restrictions that often seem to be enforced more rigorously against black kids.

Surprisingly with institutions such as St. Louis University, Washington University, UMSL, Harris-Stowe University, St. Louis Community Colleges, Rankin Technical College, Webster University, Fontbonne University, Missouri Baptist University, St. Louis area is home to many poorly performing public schools.

How is it possible, with the number of institutions of higher learning in and around St. Louis, that our schools are not among the best in the country? In a word, exclusion.

Whether there was a concerted efforts such as those proposed by the Team Four Plan or unconscious bias, educational, economic and employment opportunities have routinely been suppressed and restricted in certain areas. Around the neighborhood where I live, street lights and traffic lights including the intersections of MLK at Sarah and MLK at Euclid have been non-functioning for years. It is now common knowledge that even our court system has been guilty of predatory practices targeting people of color.

Decreased educational, economic and other opportunities lead to oppression and exacerbate inequality. Oppression and inequality leads to crime, which eventually visits the oppressor. The communities of both the oppressed and oppressor are negatively affected. Outsiders see this, often more clearly than we do.

Our airport is no longer a hub for any major airline, companies have specifically told us they won't locate to St. Louis because our schools are below par, we don't stack up against other cities, decades ago we lost our basketball team (The Hawks) to Atlanta and we have now lost two football teams. To add insult to injury,  the Rams are returning to the city they previously left to come to St. Louis.

For decades, the St. Louis region neglected or excluded certain groups of people and for a while, other groups benefited. However, as was noted in an earlier post, what you quietly allow to happen to others, will eventually find its way back to you.

When you allow the oppression of a group of people, it opens the door for oppression of additional groups. The education of blacks was neglected, now the education of all Americans lag behind compared to the rest of the world. Drug users were vilified and criminalized when they were mostly black or brown, but whites are now the largest growing group of drug addicts.

The economy of blacks was artificially suppressed for decades, now manufacturing and other high paying mostly white jobs are being sent overseas. The Congress has already pass legislation that will reduce some union pension by more than half and the U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to deal unions a major setback again effecting mostly white workers.

As mentioned in the post, first they came, if you want to improve your own conditions, don't let the rights and privileges of others get abused. Even President Obama mentioned this during his last State of the Union speech last night. Hopefully St. Louis will finally heed this message and begin to help those truly in need rather than those truly in greed.

St. Louis Flooding and Stadium Projects

Welfare for millionaires and billionaires look ridiculous when the St. Louis area is experiencing record-setting flooding and the need for assistance is great.

Thousands of people in and around the St. Louis area will be affected by flooding. Many will lose their possessions and homes, others will be out of work and some businesses may closed down completely unable to reopen.

Public dollars should be reserved for public need! This is when public tax dollars are most needed, in emergency and catastrophic situations. However, since so much public money is tied up in pledges to private projects of millionaires and billionaires, many of those truly in need will find scarce resources available to them.

Levees are in danger of failing and I suspect some of them have not received the attention and allocation of public money they should have received because we were more concerned about providing subsidies to the rich.

To add insult to injury, the proposed stadium would be located even closer to the river, adding to future flood damages that will have to be paid for by tax payers.

Flooding affected almost every major artery into St. Louis; highways 44, 55 and 70 have been partially closed because of flooding. Even before flooding, MoDot had already expressed they didn't have the necessary funding to do required maintenance and repairs. Major roadways and highways will certainly be damaged by flood water adding additional repairs to MoDot's strained budget. SeeList of area roads closed due to high water

As I've stated previously, paying hundreds of millions of dollars for private projects for the rich do not make sense. Some ordinary hard-working people will lose everything they own and unfortunately many of them will discover that there are no available public funds to assist them; because we have committed so much to make certain that wealthy sport franchise owners get their share of public money through a reverse Robin Hood tax scheme.

I wonder if the governor, legislators and aldermen who fought so hard for stadium financing will fight as hard to find public money to assist those the ordinary people, that elected them into office, who are affected by the flood.

I suspect that low-interest loans that must be paid back will be available, but many flood victims will not receive the same sort of non-repayable subsidies that is proposed to be given to the wealthy.

How Did Your Alderperson Vote on Stadium Financing?

Below is video of the  December 18, 2015 Board of Aldermen session that voted 17 to 10 to approve stadium financing. The actual vote process begins at 2:16:50 in the timeline. See how your alderperson voted.

The law making body of the City of St. Louis is the Board of Aldermen. There are twenty-eight aldermen, one from each ward in the City and a President. The Board of Aldermen meet every Friday except during summer recess and on holidays. At these sessions, the Aldermen present the First Readings of a resolutionor new board bill and discuss issues raised in these pending bills.

You can now view recordings of the Full Meetings and the Committee Meetings on YouTube.

St. Louis Stadium Corruption

On December 10th, in reaction to proposed stadium financing, St. Louis Alderwoman Megan Green made the following statement:

“The deal cutting, bribery, and [corruption] at City Hall will never cease to amaze me", she later referred to the situation as “legalized bribery,” and stated, “And just because something is legal in MO doesn’t mean it’s ethical”.

See the article:  St. Louis alderman alleges 'bribery' and 'corruption' in stadium vote.

I was not very familiar with Megan Green, so I did some light research; including searching news reports about her, reading her personal website, Facebook,  Linkedin  and Twitter accounts. Some news articles about Ms. Green are listed below:

Below is a video of her explaining her background, last year, when she was a running for office.

Below is another video of Ms. Green responding last year to crime and the Ferguson protests.

My research didn't reveal any thing I could cite as negative. Megan Green appears to be intelligent, committed and open minded. So far, I like what I see and Ms. Green seems sincere and genuine.

Today the post dispatch reports, Lewis Reed considering reprimand of St. Louis alderman over stadium flap.

The Post article mentions that neither the St. Louis Police or FBI have substantiated the allegations. Unsubstantiated allegations do not mean that corruption did not occur. One of the primary reason for the existence of Court.rchp.com is St. Louis' Culture of Corruption.

Reed reportedly stated, "She clearly has lied about this," …. "Something needs to happen. The board, universally, is really upset about it". However, without proof that she lied, statements about her lying are equally unsubstantiated. The irony is that Lewis Reed endorsed Megan Green during her candidacy.

Is it really unreasonable to believe that corruption surrounds a billion dollar project? Unless this alderwoman has a history of lying; which I find no evidence of, I see no reason not to take her at her word.

I don't personally know Mr. Reed, he seems to have integrity and I have mostly liked what I have seen and heard about him publicly and I have voted for him in the past. Although, he may honestly believe everything is being done ethically and legally, I'm not ready to totally dismiss Ms. Green's statements.

Corruption may not always be obvious and can come in many forms including:

  • Outright monetary bribes
  • Campaign financial support
  • Employment opportunities
  • Travel or other perks
  • Book deals with large advances
  • Hugh public speaking fees
  • Appointment to higher office or corporate boards
  • The list could go on and on

Maybe I'm biased, I don't believe it is smart or in the public interest to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of public money on a private stadium, especially when a perfectly good stadium already exists. St. Louis has infrastructure in disrepair, crime, homelessness, and variety of other issues public money would be better be spent on.

Mizzou Protesters, Great Job!

It was refreshing to witness the moral courage displayed by Mizzou football players as they supported Jonathan Butler's hunger strike and the other peaceful protesters standing up against racial discrimination. Their example is having ripple effects on college campuses all around the country.

The root of racism is money! Exploitation based on racial oppression is very profitable. Threat of economic reprisal is an effective tool, often used to further oppress those who would dare complain about their conditions.  Many people who disagreed with the protest commented that the football players should have lost their "free ride" scholarships.

Mizzou's football program earns $31 million per year in revenue. Players bring years of developed talent, endure grueling practice sessions, and risk serious injury during each game. Since Mizzou earns almost 344K per player after scholarships; "free ride" is the wrong term, "exploitation" is the better description. Those football players understood their collective power.

Oppressed people can be easily exploited and the oppressor will reap enormous economic benefits and advantages. Oppressors will not voluntarily stop, the oppressed must take action!  The oppressor will use any resource at their disposal to continue the status quo. They will hire spies, spread rumors and attempt to discredit protest leaders to divide and conquer.

Historically, just about every effective protest has  been economically disruptive or violent. When football players joined forces with protesters, it threatened to inflict serious financial harm to Mizzou and resulted in immediate action. Similarly, the Ferguson protest resulted in rapid policing and court reforms because the City of Ferguson, St. Louis County and the State of Missouri faced serious economic threats of property damage and other astronomical cost.

People are rediscovering their sense of community and hopefully that will continue. United we stand, divided we fall; and the strategy is always to keep us divided.