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January Program Meeting – “The Simple Arithmetic of Defeating GOP Extremism”
Guest Speaker
Charles Jaco
Journalist. Author.
Columnist for the Northsider/Southsider newspapers.
Host of The Jaco Report
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Tuesday, January 14th
6:30 p.m. – Doors Open/Social Time
7:00 p.m. – Meeting Starts
Daniel Boone Branch
St. Louis County Library
300 Clarkson Road
Ellisville, MO 63011
Please Bring a Friend!
Membership Not Required
Intrepid Winter Adopt-A-Highway Crew
Our own version of the “Fantastic Four” completed our mile of Clarkson Road in a record time of 40 minutes with rain and snow. Thank you, Mike Kean, Maureen Jordan, Sue and Paul McCool!
Letter: Don’t drag dogs down to the Republicans’ level by Andy Wolff (Chesterfield Township Democrats Member)
Upcoming Meetings & Speakers
Doors open at 6:30 p.m. – Meetings begin at 7 p.m.
December 10, 2019 – Guest Speaker – Aisha Sultan, Writer, Daniel Boone Library, Room 1
January 14, 2020 – Guest Speaker – Charles Jaco, Journalist, Daniel Boone Library, Room 1
February 11, 2020 – MO Attorney General Candidates – Guest Speakers – Elad Gross and Rich Finneran – Daniel Boone Library, Room 1
March 10, 2020 – MO Democratic Presidential Preference Primary Election Watch Party – location TBD
April 9, 2020 – (THURSDAY) – Chesterfield Township Caucus – Delegate Selection – Daniel Boone Library – Room 1
May Program Meeting – Are We Better Together? City-Council Merger – What now?
Guest Speaker – Tony Messenger
Metro Columnist
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Our meeting will feature Pulitzer Prize winning journalist – Tony Messenger who will provide an overview of the Better Together City-County merger proposal. Mr. Messenger has written a number of columns on the issues and presented the pros and cons as more information has become available to the public.
Tony Messenger is the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s metro columnist, a position he’s held since Sept. 2015. Previously, he had been the editorial page editor from July 2012 to Sept. 2015. He joined the P-D in 2008 as a capital correspondent and political columnist in Jefferson City.
He began his career at a small weekly newspaper in Colorado, where he was born and raised. He has worked in Colorado, Arizona, Nebraska, South Dakota and Missouri at weeklies, dailies and magazines.
Tony Messenger Columns on “Better Together Plan”:
Messenger: Better Together plans to file a new initiative petition — Stenger won’t be king
Messenger: Better Together is a tax cut Trojan horse, St. Louis municipal leader says
The City-County Governance Task Force recommends the creation of a new class of local government in the State of Missouri called a metropolitan city that embodies four core principles:
- A unified approach to government economic development
- A unified approach to public safety
- More efficient use of tax dollars
- Maintained community cultural identities and a structure that supports more equitable access and delivery of government services to everyone
Source – Better Together Website
Tuesday, May 14th
6:30 p.m. – Doors Open/Social Time
7:00 p.m. – Meeting Starts
Room 1
Daniel Boone Branch
St. Louis County Library
300 Clarkson Road
Ellisville, MO 63011
Please Bring a Friend!
Membership Not Required
April Program Meeting Report – “Mr. Smith Goes to Prison”
On Tuesday, April 9th the Chesterfield Township Democrats membership meeting featured a presentation by Jeff Smith, Ph.D., former Missouri State Senator and author of Mr. Smith Goes to Prison. Jeff gave a personal view on the realities and first-hand experience of life in a federal prison in Kentucky. The presentation was given to about 35 guests and members and gave those attending his perspective on the state of prisons and the state of prison reform as well as the complete lack of efforts in the prison system to prevent recidivism. If you missed his talk to our group, check out this YouTube video of a presentation he made at the Clinton School of Public Service. At our March meeting we heard from Samantha Stangl, M.S.W. who represented the Clark-Fox Family Foundation working toward prison reform in Missouri. The combination of these programs gave our membership and guests a comprehensive view of both state and federal prisons.
Additionally, we had announcements about showmeintegrity.org. This is a bipartisan group working to preserve the provisions of Amendment 1, Clean Missouri that was passed by Missouri voters last November. The group is lobbying the MO state house to prevent passage of legislation that would overturn the voter’s referendum. Jim Moore briefly presented portions of the “People, Poverty and Public Policy” highlighting senate bills, and SB 4 and MO house bill 183 which mandate work requirements for those MO citizens on Medicaid. He also discussed SB 208 that will repeal the circuit breaker tax credit for seniors and the disabled who rent and HB 584 that will allow online sales tax to be used to reduce highest income tax bracket (originally from 1938). Details and more information on Jim’s presentation can be found on the CTD website.
The Chesterfield Township Democrats continue to grow and consistently host informative and timely presentations about politics at the state and national level. Please join us on May 14th when our guest speaker will be local journalist Tony Messenger. Stay informed and be a part of progressive, positive change.
America’s Prison Crisis – April Meeting
Guest Speaker – Jeff Smith, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Missouri Workforce Housing Association
Former – Executive Vice President of Community Engagement & Policy
at Concordance Academy, a St. Louis-based nonprofit
that provides comprehensive re-entry services
to individuals returning to the community after prison.
“The fall from politico to prisoner isn’t necessarily long, but the landing, as Missouri State Senator Jeff Smith learned, is a hard one.
In 2009, Smith pleaded guilty to a seemingly minor charge of campaign malfeasance and earned himself a year and one day in Kentucky’s FCI Manchester. Mr. Smith Goes to Prison is the fish-out-of-water story of his time in the big house; of the people he met there and the things he learned: how to escape the attentions of fellow inmate Cornbread and his friends in the Aryan Brotherhood; what constitutes a prison car and who’s allowed to ride in yours; how to bend and break the rules, whether you’re a prisoner or an officer. And throughout his sentence, the young Senator tracked the greatest crime of all: the deliberate waste of untapped human potential.
Smith saw the power of millions of inmates harnessed as a source of renewable energy for America’s prison-industrial complex, a system that aims to build better criminals instead of better citizens. In Mr. Smith Goes to Prison, he traces the cracks in America’s prison walls, exposing the shortcomings of a racially-based cycle of poverty and crime that sets inmates up to fail. Speaking from inside experience, he offers practical solutions to jailbreak the nation from the financially crushing grip of its own prisons and to jumpstart the rehabilitation of the millions living behind bars.” – St. Martin’s Press
