Let me tell y’all about your beloved city and its love for a good Black woman witch hunt. The latest:
Rumor has it that the soccer and baseball gods—and maybe even The Gateway Arch Foundation— of this city want a piece of the hotel tax pile pie (already only 4/15 of 3.25%) that is and has been earmarked specifically for the arts in the St. Louis region since 1985. MO state, after residents in KC voted “no” to extend taxes for a new Chiefs stadium and will now see the team move across the bridge to KS, has decided they will audit the Regional Arts Commission (RAC) off of an alleged, auspiciously-timed whistleblower claim that there has been some misappropriated funds within the arts-forward org. Since that announcement a couple weeks ago, there have been some “ooooohhhh, look at this!” kinds of claims to get the community riled up against Ms. Cooksey and The RAC administration.
But let me say this publicly so y’all can hold me accountable to it: Unlike Tishaura Jones, who I was a staunch supporter of and knew only peripherally; and unlike Kim Gardner and Cori Bush, both of whom I supported wholeheartedly but didn’t know personally at all—I KNOW Vanessa Cooksey. And I will go to bat for her.
I know how brilliant she is, how thoughtful she is, how meticulously she has moved as CEO of one of the most visible and publicly scrutinized foundations in this region. I know that leading anywhere as a Black woman in this country—especially in a role responsible for millions of public dollars; especially in a state where you have a Trump-minion governor and in a city with a complicit, jelly-back mayor who likes to play in people’s faces—a Black woman like Cooksey—regardless of how punctilious she is and has been—like some deep-cover mission-mercenary program, she was destined to become a target of the character assassins of the public sector.
Just today,
Stltoday.com, published a write up in accusatory language complete with RAC expenditures within normal margins for any org of its size that caters to the greater community. But because the goal is to cast doubt, these unscrupulous journalists speculate and use tone to create unease about this person and this org that have both—through their commitment to funding and providing platforms of visibility and technical support—made this region a competitive, arts-focused destination again—no longer the Missouri metropolitan Cinderella, often passed up for the fun, artsy sister-city, Kansas City.
As a literary artist whose stories don’t get written without the support of foundations like RAC, I won’t sit idly by and watch this administration take down a foundation that has made us a better, more colorful community. As a Black woman who’s witnessed and grieved the slander and character-slaughter of iconically brilliant Black women in once-impossible positions of power and stature, I won’t let Ms. Cooksey think for one second that she stands against these vampires alone.
If you are an artist in Greater St. Louis, or a resident or visitor who has benefited from the arts in our region—or if you’re just tired of these white supremacist tactics targeting everyone else except their toxic own—I want to hear from you, cause I’m about to be outside…
