Today the grassroots movement in St. Louis takes a leap forward with the launch of the Gateway Grassroots Initiative. This is the next wave of local activism in Saint Louis. The time for rallies has passed, it’s time to get on with the work of conservative activism.

We are looking for conservatives who want to stand up and get active in their communities.  The centerpiece of GGI is The Initiative Project.  It is an effort to get individuals to take personal responsibility for their lives and communities.   We want the grassroots to self-source the direction of their movement.  GGI is not an organization dedicated to telling grassroots activists what to do.  It exists to facilitate grassroots action. We have five levels of initiative: Individual, Local, Regional, State, and National, and we are looking for ideas at every level.  Initiatives will begin rolling out in the coming days, and weeks so keep your eyes out for how you can get involved.

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From KMOV.com:

A woman, who was participating in the OccupySTL protest, reported to police that a man sexaully assaulted her while she was in her tent. A St. Louis City Police Officer says the mayor could have prevented it.

Brian E. King, 38, was charged with 1st Degree Sexual Misconduct after police said he crawled into the victim’s tent and touched her breast. The assault happened on November 8th at the encampment that used to set up in Kiener Plaza.

A blogger from St. Louis posted a video of St. Louis Police Sgt. Gary Wiegert talking about how the mayor could have prevented the attack. In the video, Wieger says, “I believe if the mayor would allow the police department to do its job and take care of this problem and not allow these tents to be set up, this sexaul assault woudn’t have happened. This is what happens when politics gets involved with police work.”

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St. Louis City Mayor Francis Slay is receiving more complaints about the Occupiers in the city’s downtown Keiner Plaza area–not just from city boosters concerned about the city’s image, but tea party groups upset over the preferential treatment the city gave the Occupiers when it fleeced the tea party for use of the same space. Slay attempted to remedy that Tuesday by presenting the Occupiers with the choice of meeting a few requirements or eviction. Occupy members of Anonymous replied by hacking the Mayor’s website and making threats.

Apparently giving the Occupiers the equal treatment given to other groups–not even, they were offered a free permit!–is so offensive that they felt the need to respond this way.

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For the past few weeks, a small group of rag-tag occupiers have set up a shanty town in Keiner Plaza, the site of many St. Louis Tea Party rallies. They have done so without a permit and without insurance — things the city demanded of the St. Louis Tea Party before they were allowed use of the space. Demonstrators plug their laptops and space heaters into the park’s power outlets. Should an accident occur, the lack of insurance will place the city on the hook for liability. Yesterday in an interview with Mayor Slay’s spokesman Jeff Rainford, I learned that the city isn’t exactly keen to bring the group into compliance with the law.

The cost for renting out Keiner Plaza isn’t cheap, though not as expensive as permits for usage of federal park space. A letter to my STLTP Co-Founder Bill Hennessy detailed a list of actionable and monetary requirements before the city would allow an August 4th, 2011 Tea Party event to take place:

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Last Sunday a local chapter of YAF affiliated with Principia College organized a small and peaceful counter presence to the ongoing Occupy St. Louis demonstration at Keiner Plaza in downtown. According to the organizer the group of mostly collegians and minors was met with violent language, intimidation, and death threats. The police, says the organizer, were contacted after self-identified occupy participants called the school and left a message in the voicemail box of Principia’s main line. The school, we’re told, has the message and is reviewing its options with law enforcement.

The organizer details further via email:

As you know, on Sunday, October 16^th a St. Louis area chapter of Young Americans for Freedom staged a counter protest against Occupy St. Louis in Kiener Plaza in downtown St. Louis. The message was one of freedom, capitalism, and limited government. The conservative group was met with a remarkable amount of verbal hostility while at the protest, however it remained physically peaceful.

The night after the protest, two death threats were made against the group of students (which includes a minor.) These threats were made through the students’ school, one was sent as an email, the other was a phone call.

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Last night, President Obama visited St.Louis for a $25,000 plate fundraiser courtesy of Russ Carnahan and his family. Across the street from the fundraiser, on Lindell Drive near Forest Park, members of the St. Louis Tea Party stopped by to welcome him with jeers and boos, displaying signs showing their extreme dissatisfaction of his policies over the past two years. I had the opportunity to capture some images of the event of both the members of the St.Louis Tea Party as well as the handful of Obama supporters.

Adam Sharp of SharpElbows.net and Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit) among others.

Predictably, a pro-Obama counter-protest assembled, but the show of support for President Obama during his last visit in 2010 was much larger — a far cry from the amount of supporters that turned out for him this time around, shown by my photos from the event in 2010. (more…)

What lovely people.
Barack Obama’s supporters harassed and swore at the St. Louis Tea Party members Tuesday night in Forest Park.

His supporters chanted,
“F**k what y’all talkin about… F**k what y’all talkin about… F**k all y’all!… F**k all y’all!”
This comes from GeoJG:

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Recently, a woman I’ll call “Janet” met with me for more than six hours to discuss two court cases in which she’s involved. One is a Family Court case involving the welfare of a child, while the other is a Probate Court case involving the welfare of that child’s great-grandmother. Names and case-specific personal details in the stories below have been changed in order to protect the identities of the innocent people involved.

Unlike other middle-age Americans who find themselves caring for both young children and elderly parents, Janet’s status as a member of the “sandwich generation” is unique. Rather than simply care for her almost-seven-year-old granddaughter and her octogenarian mother at the same time, the 40-something woman who once earned six-figure income as manager of a high-end fitness center/spa in a posh St. Louis suburb finds herself fighting for both of them in separate cases at the St. Louis County (Mo.) Courthouse. After years of legal wrangling, she now finds herself on the verge of bankruptcy, having thrown everything she had into the effort to save the two most important people in her life.

“Sometimes I feel like that movie is my life,” said Janet, referring to “Changeling,” a 2008 film in which a grief-stricken mother takes on the Los Angeles Police Department to her own detriment after it stubbornly tries to pass off an obvious impostor as her missing child. Unlike the movie, however, Janet’s child isn’t missing; instead, her granddaughter is on the verge of being taken from her family permanently. In addition, her mother has, for the most part, already been removed from her life.

SAVING A GRANDDAUGHTER

Janet’s most-pressing concern is the fight to keep her granddaughter, a little girl for whom she’s been the primary caregiver during most of early life, from being placed up for adoption — possibly by total strangers. In less than 10 days, a court hearing could determine whether or not she succeeds in the fight that begun in earnest 15 months ago.

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From KTVI in St. Louis:

A witness on board a flight from St. Louis to Dulles Airport in Washington says two men who were originally thought to be behaving oddly on a plane at Lambert Airport Sunday night were indeed federal air marshals.

Ron Meyer says he was a passenger on board United flight #3681 Sunday evening. He says, originally, a flight attendant told the passengers the men were claiming to be air marshals but did not have any identification. However, according to Meyer, a pilot later said the men were indeed federal marshals. All passengers were taken off the flight and re-screened at the request of the pilot.

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Alert readers have reported that their flight, United Airlines 3681, from St. Louis to Washington Dulles had to make an emergency return to the gate as it prepared for take-off. According to local officials, it was found that two men who had boarded the plane as ‘federal air marshals’ didn’t have the proper credentials. Passengers were deplaned, all luggage was removed and re-scanned. All passengers were also re-screened. Passengers are now in the process of re-boarding. There is no word on the two ‘air marshals.’

BigGovernment has contacted security officials in St. Louis. We will report back what we hear. Interestingly, we understand that Oliver North is on the flight, as well.

An interview with one of the passengers is below:

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Today, Missouri’s Lt. Governor Peter Kinder called into The Dana Show to talk about his involvement in the lawsuit he filed on behalf of Missourians to block the implementation of Obamacare in our state and to respond to completely ridiculous claims made by Tammy Chapman, former stripper and Penthouse “Pet of the Month” from the early ’90s.

In the non-story, promoted by the non-journalists at the local alternative rag, Chapman made the claim that Lt. Governor Kinder pursued a relationship with her and “stalked” her while she was a stripper. In fact, she goes so far as to say he made her feel uncomfortable by continuing to visit the establishment and “ogling” her once she made it clear she didn’t want a relationship. I’m curious, did she also shout out from the stage to all the other men who would have liked to pursue a relationship with her that they too should stop ogling her while she was taking her clothes off? How rude of those men, there to look at naked women, ogling her! She goes on to say when Kinder happened into the bar 16 YEARS LATER, where she was then working (where the waitresses are sometimes serving drinks in their panties) she was so creeped out by him, she asked him if he remembered her, took a smiling picture voluntarily with him and told him she was looking for a place to live. Chapman makes the totally unsubstantiated and highly unlikely claim that Kinder offered her a room at his campaign funded condo-where he spends almost no time.

The most ridiculous part of this story is……well, basically the entire story. If they were going to write this article they should have titled it “Single Heterosexual Male Visits Strip Club, Pursues Woman Who Isn’t Interested.”

Ms. Chapman is quoted as saying “He uses his political business card to get women, he is not fit for public office.” So, we have come to a point in the political discussion where single politicians shouldn’t date or even attempt to date. They should not hand their business cards out and they should not be interested in finding or having a relationship of any kind. Because she says he found her attractive 16 years ago and might have tried to pursue her, makes him fully and completely unfit for office. Frankly, I find no evidence what-so-ever that he was a repeat visitor to said strip club OR that he had any interest in her at all. Pathetic.

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For about 100 years Progressives have been pushing their racist platitudes and policies beginning as far back as the segregation President, Woodrow Wilson. Others of that time period, like Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger, have promoted methods for actively decreasing the Black population through sterilization, and in turn, the voice of African-Americans. Over the years the liberal agenda has worked to coopt African-Americans into the Democratic Party through pushing a defeated message of “You can’t get by on your own,” and “only the Democratic Party helps African-Americans.” Despite their message of comfort, they have done everything they can, with the help of Major Media, to convince African-Americans that only the government can help them succeed. However, this could not be further from the truth.

It was President Abraham Lincoln from the Republican Party whose conservative values worked to free African-Americans from slavery. It is also conservative values that were at work in the 1960’s to push for civil rights and for African-Americans to have the right to vote. However, since then, liberals in Washington DC and the Media have continued the template of defeatism toward African-Americans in order to try to maintain voter influence over their population. This continues even today.

African-Americans have also reached their own breaking point with Washington DC and the Media’s continued attempt to speak for them. This was reflected in the 1-1.5 million African-Americans that voted for George W. Bush during his elections. More importantly, this was reflected in the 800,000 African-Americans who voted for John McCain over the Black presidential candidate, Barack Obama. It is this absence of representation for African-American conservatives that sparked the birth of the Move-On-Up.org social network 2 years ago.

After enjoying a growing population of their social network to over 800 members, on Saturday, August 13th, 2011 Move-On-Up.org held their first ever 3-day national conference at the Crown Plaza Hotel in St.Louis, Missouri. St.Louis has had a rich history in the civil rights movement and was also one of the last stops on the Underground Railroad before the Slave Free state of Illinois. St.Louis made quite a fitting location as African-Americans once again take a stand for freedom and conservative values against the liberal policies and promotions that destroy families, promote life-long welfare, selective, historical education, and much more. (more…)

Based upon research and exclusive documentation provided to Big Government, it’s believed that dated allegations of sexually aggressive behavior by former Penthouse Pet and stripper Tammy Chapman against prospective Republican gubernatorial candidate, Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, do not hold up under scrutiny. Along with that, it appears steps may have been taken to cover any tracks leading to who is behind the bizarre smear campaign.

Chapman has alleged Kinder is guilty of said behavior 16 years ago, as well as recently offering her a place to live. Kinder has dismissed the allegations as bizarre. In fact, evidence suggests it may be an intentionally false political smear propagated with the help of a somewhat prominent Democrat.

Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder has responded to a story in the local alt-weekly, in which a bartender and former stripper alleged she once cut off all contact with him because he was too agressive.(sic) “Like most people I am not proud of every place I have been, but this woman’s bizarre story is not true,” Kinder said. He accused his likely Democratic rival in the 2012 gubernatorial election, Gov. Jay Nixon (D), of making up “false stories about the past.”

Chapman made the assertions below in her initial claim. The claims were initially raised three years ago when Kinder ran for Lt. Governor but were mostly ignored by the media for lack of substance. It appears a recent cellphone photo of Chapman and Kinder together, one requested by Chapman and taken with her cellphone in a restaurant where she was waitressing at the time, may have provided what appeared to be a valid news hook to re-assert the old attack.

Chapman tells Daily RFT, Kinder was obsessed with her nearly sixteen years ago, when she was a young stripper … to the point that she cut off all contact. … “He became very aggressive with me,” she says. “I couldn’t tolerate what he was making me do.” Alarmed by his conduct and the letters he was writing, she told him not to come in any more. “I was willing to give up the money he gave me,” she says simply.

Chapman alleges that while she gave the state senator private dances, he would grab her by the shoulders and aggressively try to force her head into his lap. “He’d pull me down to his groin — really, really hard, to the point that it hurt me,” she says

She saw him four years ago at an NRA convention: Their eyes locked, and Chapman confided to a companion that this was the creepy guy she’d told him about. But the two never spoke.

As for that famous photo, she’s mystified as to how it got out. She took it, she says, and she e-mailed it to him before deleting it. Kinder, she says, is the only person she e-mailed it to; she has no idea how it wound up being sent to Riverfront Times.

Chapman says she’s speaking out because she’s disgusted by Kinder’s behavior, both in the mid-’90s and today. “He uses his political business card to get women,” she says.

She adds, “He is not fit for public office.”

Yet, according to sources it was Chapman who actually approached Kinder at the restaurant and requested to have her picture taken with him – a man she now claims physically hurt her years ago.

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Remember the story of sisters Caitlin and Abigail Mills, the St. Louis-area girls who were told to close their cookie stand by local bureaucrats who insisted they were violating city ordinances? Well, the girls — 16 and 14, respectively — are back in the news and headed to court.

On Thursday morning, according to attorneys Dave and Jenifer Roland at the Freedom Center of Missouri, St. Louis County Judge Maura McShane will hear arguments on Hazelwood’s motion to have the Mills’ cookie stand case thrown out.

I reported the basics of the case in a post April 8:

Each February and March for the past six years, Caitlin Mills, 16, and Abigail Mills, 14, have put a card table in front of their home in Hazelwood, Mo., and sold Girl Scout cookies to drivers passing by. This year, however, the city of Hazelwood notified their mother, Carolyn Mills, that the girls’ cookie stand violated city ordinances and must be shut down.

Despite much national media attention, including coverage at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, city officials have, according to the Mills’ attorneys, “dug in their heels.”

In a media advisory today, the Rolands said the City of Hazelwood “has enlisted four high-priced attorneys to fight to ensure the government’s power to prohibit these icons of American childhood, and those attorneys have asked the court to dismiss the Mills family’s case.”

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“I couldn’t beat them; I didn’t have the resources they had. They had all the money in the world and the backing… I’m just an average man.” — Kenneth Gladney

The trial of the two men who beat Kenneth Gladney almost two years ago came to a close Tuesday afternoon. After two days of testimony, the jury deliberated for forty minutes before Perry Mollens and former St. Louis mayoral candidate, the Reverand Elston McCowan, were found not guilty. McCowan and Molens were members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) when the attack occurred.

On the first day of the trial, Gateway Pundit noted that union supporters were out in force to intimidate Gladney. In the courtroom, the defense planned to turn the court fight into a he-said, she-said because the prosecution did not have video of how the fight started. The defense also argued that McCowan and Molens had a right to self-defense, but that rests on the belief that Gladney instigated the confrontation.

The implication that Kenneth Gladney started the fight is simply absurd. McCowan and Molens are each over six feet tall and weigh north of 200 pounds. Gladney is a cancer survivor who’s about 5′ 6″ and weighs about 130lb. Furthermore, Gladney was there selling buttons. He wanted to make a few bucks. In April of 2009, he was selling Obama paraphernalia. Like most merchants, he sells what the people want and he doesn’t pick fights with his clientele, so it’s absurd to assert that he instigated a fight with McCowan.

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NOT GUILTY- SEIU GOONS CLEARED IN GLADNEY BEATING!

I just spoke with Kenneth Gladney and his wife outside the courtroom. Here is their first reaction—

“I couldn’t beat them; I didn’t have the resources they had. They had all the money in the world and the backing… I’m just an average man.”

Video of first reaction after the verdict:

** It was the prosecutor’s first jury trial.

The Kenneth Gladney beatdown case continued this morning in St. Louis County Court.
After a health care town hall meeting in August 2009 St. Louis native Kenneth Gladney was beaten, kicked and called racist names by Rep. Russ Carnahan’s SEIU supporters. Gladney spent the night in the hospital after the beating.

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What a shock. Another violent bomb-planting leftist…

Democratic strategist and bomber– Milton H. “Skip” Ohlsen III. (P-D)

Top local democrat Milton Ohlsen III was indicted today for planting a bomb in a parking garage that injured a local attorney.

The democrat hid his identity behind balloons after planting the bomb.

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From Reboot Congress:

MORE (Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment) and other leftists held meetings in 2010 to plan their strategy for squatting on properties in the St. Louis area. The video above introduces some of their leaders. A future video will outline MORE’s longterm strategy to acquire residential property through extralegal means like squatting.

Who or what is MORE, you may be wondering. When ACORN was put out of business, the local chapters re-branded themselves. St. Louis’s ACORN chapter became MORE. Even after the re-branding MORE still has ties to communist organizations.

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“I think we need the freedom to have barbecues,” said Cynthia Davis during a telephone interview Sunday.

If you think it sounds crazy for Davis, a former state representative now serving as chair of the St. Charles County (Mo.) Republican Party, to stake her claim on the right to have a barbecue without government interference, you don’t know the half of it!

On Saturday, Davis hosted her “First Barbecue of the Spring” on the lawn in front of the Back to Basics Christian Bookstore which she owns and operates with her husband, Bernie, and several of her seven children in O’Fallon, Mo. On the menu of food items offered to invited guests was dangerously-delicious meat from T-Bones Natural Meats, suspiciously-sumptuous cakes from Susie G’s Specialty Cakes and — OMG! — chips and salsa from Chevy’s Fresh Mex®.

Though several dozen people attended the early-afternoon event, Davis did not expect Rick Etherington, an environmental public health specialist from the St. Charles County Health Department, to be among them. But he showed up, explaining that he said there in response to the health department receiving calls about the barbecue on Thursday and again on Saturday.

Davis and others at the event agreed that Etherington was polite and only doing his job. It appears, however, that he was being used by someone as a pawn in a thinly-veiled effort to shut down Davis’ event and, in turn, hurt her chances of winning a seat on the board of the St. Charles County Ambulance District during elections April 5.

The ambulance district? I know, it might seem unimportant, but keep reading and you’ll understand why the matter caught my attention.

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Two months after 85-year-old Dolores Sherman announced her name would appear on the ballot April 5 as a candidate for a seat on the St. Peters (Mo.) Board of Aldermen, the first-time office seeker posted a video on YouTube containing some stinging accusations and calling for an external investigation of an incident that involved a state trooper visiting her home.

Before viewing that video, however, it would probably be instructive to view the video below that appeared in a Jan. 11 post on this blog. It offers an overview of Sherman’s candidacy announcement Jan. 11.

Now, fast-forward to the video Sherman released March 9, a five-and-a-half-minute effort that highlights her appearance at the Board of Alderman meeting April 22, 2010.

At the popular video-sharing site, the video is accompanied by a lengthy description, an excerpt of which appears below:

This video clip shows that some members of the St. Peters (Mo.) Board of Aldermen didn’t take Dolores Sherman seriously when she spoke during the “Citizen’s Petitions and Comments” of their meeting April 22, 2010. Almost a year later, they might be having second thoughts.

On Jan. 11, 2011, Sherman announced she is running for one of two Ward One seats on the board in the City of St. Peters (Mo.), the city in which she says she was prosecuted more than five years earlier for a crime she didn’t commit.

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