Under The Arch ArchCity Defenders & Action St. Louis

After emptying the notoriously hellish Workhouse jail in June of 2022, the City of St. Louis promised the community would decide what happens to the site and the land around it. It established a committee of people impacted by the jail to survey the community and put forward a proposal to re-envision the site, which has since been released. But this spring, the Jones administration ignored the community’s recommendations and announced plans to continue St. Louis’ history of disappearing vulne...

Picket lines are in the headlines. Recently, there’s been a surge of energy and attention on the labor movement, particularly union strikes. But at the same time, worker unionization is at an all-time low. This week, we ask: what’s the current state of the labor movement and what role does labor play in achieving equity for all? To answer our questions, we're joined this episode by Jeremy Al-Haj, founder and Executive Director of the Missouri Workers Center, who speaks about how to unio...

ArchCity Defenders and Action St. Louis present the premiere collaborative podcast, "Under The Arch." Your hosts Blake Strode, Executive Director of ArchCity Defenders, and Kayla Reed, Director of Action St. Louis, explore the issues facing our community and the people working to transform them. In this episode, Nick Speed, Founder & Executive Director of Ujima, joins us to talk about food apartheid, community engagement with environmental and food justice issues, and how local Black...

ArchCity Defenders and Action St. Louis present the premiere collaborative podcast, "Under The Arch." Your hosts Blake Strode, Executive Director of ArchCity Defenders, and Kayla Reed, Director of Action St. Louis, explore the issues facing our community and the people working to transform them. In this episode, our hosts speak with Invest STL CEO Dara Eskridge about the good, the bad, and the ugly of community development in St. Louis. Some efforts prioritize residents’ histories, resou...

ArchCity Defenders and Action St. Louis return with Season 5 of the premiere collaborative podcast, "Under The Arch,” where your hosts Blake Strode, Executive Director of ArchCity Defenders, and Kayla Reed, Director of Action St. Louis, explore the issues facing our community and the people working to transform them.To kick off our fifth season, we talk about an issue permeating our political landscape and personal lives: abortion. Blake and Kayla talk to Mallory Schwarz, Executive Director o...

For the final episode of Under the Arch season four, we wanted to end with a bang by bringing back one of our favorite guests: Congresswoman Cori Bush. Our hosts speak with Congresswoman Bush about her latest efforts to fight white supremacy on the federal level, including two bills introduced this summer: the Reparations Now Resolution and the End Solitary Confinement Act. We hear from Congresswoman Bush firsthand what each of these bills seeks to accomplish, why they’re imperative now...