A love letter to St. Louis

St. Louis is my first love. I grew up in the Penrose neighborhood in North St. Louis City. My neighborhood was an ecosystem of Black-led structures— beautifully-worn, three-story, brick homes filled with family dynasties, Black educators and violence interveners. Our whole neighborhood convened for even the smallest of holidays. We shared everything, from toilet paper to babysitters. We fought each other. We cried together when young people died in our communities from gun violence. We pooled our resources to help Black mothers buy cars and much more. Even with young eyes, I know we had something that the rest of St. Louis didn’t have - a collective, struggling, loving community. 

Over time, the structures and systems that we depended on were intentionally divested from and ripped from us. Police replaced our community centers and public schools. Families escaped to North County. Violence grew, and decay started to set in. I also started to decline. Between the age of 17 and 21, I cycled in and out of the St. Louis City Justice Center and The Workhouse for small crimes of poverty. Unfortunately, many of the kids from my neighborhood walked down the same path I did. We went from sharing the streets to sharing the same jail cells. I literally celled with one of my childhood best friends. His first night in our cell I watched him violently shake from substance withdrawals. I stuffed paper into vent holes to keep him warm - there was no way I was going to let him go through that by himself. 

After my last stay in the city’s cage, I met a man that cared for me more than I cared for myself. I was rough and struggling through recovery, but I was so motivated to change my circumstances and my city. He invited me into a new community. They taught me new tools to deal with my loss, sadness, depression. They helped me gain employment. They introduced me to professional therapy. It was there that I learned that the harm I did to my community was a response to the harm that was done to me. I was sexually assaulted for many years of my young life. I did whatever possible to forget it. I learned that healing wasn’t easy and I wasn't alone. One out of every six men have been sexually abused as a child. This is a terrifying number considering that these harms are often unreported. At that time, I certainly didn’t know who to talk to or how process what happened to me. As I journeyed through healing, shackles literally and figuratively fell off of me. I was no longer a victim of violence but a survivor of it. At the same time the world was grieving the loss of Trayvon Martin. Racial violence and its victim (Trayvon) made worldwide news. His murder activated me to tear down the systems that killed Trayvon and tried to kill me, so we could build toward the beloved community we deserve.

In 2013, I started building with young men who were re-entering from long prison stays. I met them at probation and parole offices. I had nothing to offer but a relationship and access to the same healing networks that saved my life. I started with a group of 5 men some would’ve called “criminals.” I called them my brothers. We shared life together. I designed curriculum based on our experiences and worked with them to create plans for their healing process. I helped tie their ties as they prepared for their first job interview ever. As they healed, these men stopped hurting the people they loved. In 2014, we watched Ferguson, one of the greatest rebellions in human history, on tv screens in the same living room. That night we decided that we wouldn't sit back while Black men like us were shot by police and left to lay in their own blood for hours.  Together we took the streets and screamed “Fuck 12” in one voice. When we said “touch one, touch all” we meant it. 

Mike Brown’s murder exposed what we already knew - the criminal justice system isn’t just, it is violent. . 

I set my sights on the criminal justice system because I was determined to stop the harm that the state inflicted on us. I brought my proven model to Mission: St. Louis and helped develop their Job and Leadership training program based on the data I collected with our group. Five men grew into a 120/year. I experienced men re-engage fatherhood, develop lifelong skills, dump their drugs down toilets, surrender their guns, and show up to Board of Alderman meetings to advocate for bills they felt were harmful. In 2015, we knocked on doors, phone banked, and led protests. We held voter registration drives in the same neighborhoods they used to sell drugs in and rented vans to carry people to the polls. I started working with a grassroots organizing group Action St. Louis to grow Black political power in the region. I worked on mayoral and local campaigns, coordinated local debates of elected officials, and worked with national and local organizations to bailout Black women for Mother’s Day. Our healing journeys weren’t simply physical and emotional, they were political. 

In 2017, I started working at The Bail Project - a national organization that seeks to fight cash bail by providing free bail for assistance for individuals who are too poor to buy their freedom. I built our operations in St. Louis and opened new sites across the region. Collectively, since 2018, my sites have posted bail for nearly 4,000 people and supported their return to court - drastically diminishing the jail population in each jurisdiction. Together my staff reduced incarceration and interrupted the negative impacts of unaffordable cash bail while influencing policy reforms focused on pretrial detention using data from our operations. 

Also in 2018, The Bail Project and our partner organizations, Action St. Louis and ArchCity Defenders, developed a campaign to shut down a medium security jail called The Workhouse. The Workhouse was the same place that once caged me and many of my family members. Our strategy was and is rooted in abolition - the abolishment of the prison industrial complex. Our demand is to reinvest the operating cost into community support for the neighborhoods that have high rates of violence and incarceration. In July 2020, The Board of Aldermen and the Mayor voted unanimously to close the jail and shift the millions of dollars into the same streets that raised me. 

So we sit at a unique moment in St. Louis. Our city is ready for a radical alternative to policing, jail and prison. In fact, we have no other choice. We’ve seen the violence those systems create. 

The Freedom Community Center (FCC) is my love letter to St. Louis. Black people are entitled to freedom and joy. We deserve to play in the streets again. We deserve structures that are healthy and rooted in Black safety and progress not punishment and isolation. Structures and space that facilitate relationships, knowing that relationships are the greatest tools reduce harm and violence. We are all that we got; we protect ourselves. At FCC we will model alternatives to the criminal legal system that are based in power and healing because it’s what we deserve. And we are not settling for nothing less. 

Mike Milton 

Founder and Executive Director