Attorney Laninya Cason, a native East St. Louisan now living in Belleville, said she welcomes the raised consciousness of and for Black people across the country.
She also applauds a national dialogue on excessive force and institutional racism. However, she's bothered that the same level of concern isn't being expressed for St. Clair County Black communities, which she believes suffer among the most egregious civil rights inequities in the nation.
"I don't see anybody addressing them in this heated time," she said in an interview June 24, pointing to failing educational systems in East St. Louis and surrounding communities the most obvious examples.
"There is an educational divide. We have some of the lowest test scores, if not the lowest, in the state, but the school district (East St. Louis) has a $100 million budget with about 15,000 kids last I checked. We get money because we are impoverished, but where does the money go?"
Cason places some of the blame on Black leaders for not negotiating better structural changes, and instead "hanging their hats" on a "new program" or "toy drive" that have no cumulative benefits for the children.
She also views these problems through a political lens.
Cason, who has run for judicial office as a Republican, is a former Democrat who served as an associate judge in St. Clair County from 2003-2015. As a Democrat, she enjoyed favorable ratings among the local bar, but when she had a falling out with leaders of the local Democratic Party she was not re-appointed. She switched political parties, and three times when running for elected circuit court seats in St. Clair County as a Republican, her ratings from the local bar - which evaluate things such as legal ability, temperament, fairness - plummeted. She lost elections in 2018, 2016 and in 2012.
She said that since aligning with Republicans she has been told by Black leaders that they could not support her because she was a Republican, "despite the fact that I was pushing a Black agenda for justice and equality."
"Really? Really?" she said.
"A lot of our Black leaders have not been aggressively promoting a Black agenda in our own communities. When deals are made they are self aggrandizing, not for the community as a whole. Our votes are very important to the power structure. It is a well oiled machine and those at the top of the machine pretty much come to Black leaders and give them jobs, their families jobs, those sorts of personal benefits."
Cason is angered by the lack of basic services in the communities of East St. Louis, Alorton, Washington Park, Centreville and Cahokia.
"There is not one hospital," she said. "We have an aging population. The kids don't have a viable education. There is not a sit down family restaurant. There is nothing."
She said Black professionals have left those communities.
"We spend our money in neighborhoods of White communities, enriching them, and where we are sometimes not welcome," she said.
"Most property in East St. Louis is either owned by the county, state or federal governments, or slum lords.
"There is no new housing. No one is buying. Property taxes are sky high...Where are our businesses? Where is our Walmart? Where is there a White Castle? Where is Taco Bell?
"We have 26,000 residents and no hospital. But if you drive 40 miles to east to a little town in Nashville they have a full service hospital, a community of 5,000."
Another thing lacking in East St. Louis and surrounding communities - no civil rights attorneys, Cason said.
She noted that every "major entity" in minority communities is represented by White lawyers.
"Those White lawyers don't hire black lawyers. What makes predominantly Black communities so appealing to White lawyers? And what makes White lawyers so appealing to a citizenry made up of 99 percent African Americans? The answer to that is control and money. They stay in power and they control votes and the temperament of the Blacks, and they pay well."
Cason added, "Black lawyers matter."
If answers begin with holding Black leaders - law makers, judges, clergy, the NAACP - accountable for delivering change, what does Cason recommend?
"We need to come together as a community, not as adversaries," she said. "Who are we fighting but each other? For the sake of our kids and posterity we need to figure out what we need as a community in order for our votes to matter...Our votes should not be just given away for a pork chop and a couple toys at Christmas, turkeys and money at election time."