—It was Juneteenth weekend in St. Louis, and the new mayor was leading the celebrations: She hopscotched from cookouts to charity runs, grooved to classic R&B songs and proclaimed that her city would be among the nation's first to pay reparations to the descendants of enslaved people.
Two weeks later, Tishaura Jones spent a quiet weekend with her family. In the process, she became the first St. Louis mayor in decades to skip the city’s Fourth of July parade, an event long sponsored by a group with a dubious racial record. St. Louis would need to have some “tough conversations,” Jones said, before she felt comfortable joining the party.
The tale of the two weekends in many ways encapsulates the young tenure of St. Louis’s history-making mayor: The 49-year-old unapologetically embraces her Black identity, champions progressive policy ideas long dismissed as fringe and doesn’t seem to mind who she might alienate along the way.
Beyond committing the city to paying reparations — a move made in concert with 10 other mayors — Jones has closed a medium-security prison, known as the Workhouse. The facility had become infamous for its poor and unsanitary conditions.
She has cut $4 million of police funding, and shifted it to social services. She has pressed the city council — known as the Board of Aldermen — to deliver $5 million of federal aid directly into the hands of the city’s most vulnerable, and threatened to veto any aid legislation that doesn’t fulfill that mission.
“It’s the number one way we can help people,” Jones said in the City Hall interview. “There aren’t that many problems that giving people more money won’t fix.”
Two weeks later, Tishaura Jones spent a quiet weekend with her family. In the process, she became the first St. Louis mayor in decades to skip the city’s Fourth of July parade, an event long sponsored by a group with a dubious racial record. St. Louis would need to have some “tough conversations,” Jones said, before she felt comfortable joining the party.
The tale of the two weekends in many ways encapsulates the young tenure of St. Louis’s history-making mayor: The 49-year-old unapologetically embraces her Black identity, champions progressive policy ideas long dismissed as fringe and doesn’t seem to mind who she might alienate along the way.
Beyond committing the city to paying reparations — a move made in concert with 10 other mayors — Jones has closed a medium-security prison, known as the Workhouse. The facility had become infamous for its poor and unsanitary conditions.
She has cut $4 million of police funding, and shifted it to social services. She has pressed the city council — known as the Board of Aldermen — to deliver $5 million of federal aid directly into the hands of the city’s most vulnerable, and threatened to veto any aid legislation that doesn’t fulfill that mission.
“It’s the number one way we can help people,” Jones said in the City Hall interview. “There aren’t that many problems that giving people more money won’t fix.”
