Chants of “No justice, no peace, no racist police,” could be heard last Thursday afternoon during a march led by the WashU Undergraduate & Graduate Workers Union calling for changes to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department’s collective bargaining process.

Students and other St. Louis community members gathered together at 4 p.m. on the Medical School Campus before walking about four miles to City Hall. Speakers focused on achieving more transparency and equity in the bargaining process, with local activists and government leaders, including a representative from the Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression, emphasizing the need to reform the current policing system.

“I think it was kind of symbolic that it went from Med campus to City Hall because it’s bringing us to City Hall, it’s showing our commitment to go beyond just our school from now on,” senior Jessica Yu, a member of WUGWU, said.

This past summer, amidst nationwide protests calling for police reform, WUGWU made advocating for police abolition one of its main goals. According to Executive Chair Trent McDonald, WUGWU “believes in bargaining for the common good, and police unions have used their militant organizing only for their narrow self interest.”

Rory Mather

WUGWU marches for living wages and free childcare during a Sept. 2019 action. The group’s efforts to fight for a $15 minimum wage for campus workers included vigils, protests and occupying Brookings Quadrangle, Mudd Field and the area outside the Chancellor’s house.

WUGWU collaborated with the Black Law Students Association, White Coats for Black Lives and a St. Louis advocacy group called Expect Us, among other organizations, to organize the protest. The march was directly aimed at pushing for reforms within the SLMPD at a time when the St. Louis Police Officers Association (SLPOA) is renegotiating its collective bargaining agreement with the City of St. Louis.

WUGWU Campaign Committee Chair Grace Ward said that the union’s role is “connecting the labor aspect to the larger racial justice push behind trying to influence the police contract.”

“We are a fundamentally anti-racist organization, so we take anti-racist work as one of our key ongoing goals both at Wash. U. and in the city writ large,” Ward said. “As another labor organization, WUGWU identified [SLPOA’s renegotiation of the agreement] as a point of interjection to attempt to push the city to influence the contract negotiation process with measures that would counter police brutality.”

CAPCR has created a list of proposed reforms for the SLMPD, such as ending seniority considerations in the force and ensuring that the Ethical Society of Police (ESOP), an “almost exclusively African American” organization, receives “equal access to information and benefits” as do members of SLPOA.

CAPCR also recommends the expansion of who has authority to investigate “violations of police policy” so that “police would no longer simply be policing themselves.” The final recommendation is for a “more open process that allows for public input concerning CBA negotiations.”

According to Yu, WUGWU believes that the CAPCR’s recommendations are a good start but do not go far enough. While the steps laid out by CAPCR call for reform, many members of the student movement go further by calling for police abolition.

“Yes, we want to defund the police, but we need to abolish them,” junior Jasmine MacFarlane, a chant leader at the march and a member of WU Students for Abolition, said. “People will want to do reforms, and reforms only ever make the system bigger.”

MacFarlane said a goal of the student leaders is to push people to demand a say in the contracts that the police unions create.

“The main focal point of why we were organizing, why we were trying to get people together, was to push people to fight and advocate for community oversight,” MacFarlane said.

Ward also emphasized the importance of local community action.

“I would just hope that for Wash. U. students, this localizes their larger concerns about social justice,” Ward said. “It’s easy, I think, to be a student at Wash. U., undergrad or grad, and kind of ignore the city and the localized issues of the city, so one goal would really be to have people focus those concerns and that energy here in the city and at our University.”

Although turnout was lower than expected, event organizers said they were satisfied with the energy of the demonstrators.

The march lasted for about four hours, but people were chanting and singing and playing drums the entire time, MacFarlane said.

“Nobody was discouraged, which I thought was amazing,” she said. “It was great to see how politically active the students at Wash. U. are.”

“I just hope that we continue to do the hard things and not just the easy things when it comes to this, because it’s only gonna get harder,” BLSA President Cass Oliver said. Oliver pointed to donating, protesting and researching as ways for people to more fully engage in the Black Lives Matter movement rather than just carrying out performative actions on social media.

Marlene Kanmogne, a medical student and a member of the University’s branch of White Coats for Black Lives, an organization of medical students dedicated to racial justice, expressed how attending the march had personally impacted her.

“I think the act of marching and chanting is very powerful,” Kanmogne said. “It’s that act of letting your voice be heard and trying your absolute hardest to kind of let the community know, ‘Hey, we’re here and we’re gonna fight for you,’ but also, ‘Hey, you’re welcome to come join us in this fight.’”

This type of community spirit emerged when students from Saint Louis University and Harris Stowe University joined marchers along the way, answering the chants of “Out of the classroom, into the streets.”

While organizers appreciated the arrival of students from other schools, the presence of the SLMPD was a less welcome surprise for some at the march against that very department.

Police cruisers cut in front of the cars that demonstrators were driving to carry supplies like food and water, and to offer transportation for marchers, Yu said. “That was a point of interference from them.”

“I’ve been to protests and yes, there’s usually a good number of police, but I was so surprised at how many police were there,” MacFarlane said. She added that while there were “no bad confrontations” between the protestors and the police, it seemed like the police were trying to stop them from going to certain roads.

“They were basically just following us, and they were ahead of us and on all sides of us as we were walking,” MacFarlane said.

Overall, leaders of the group expressed optimism with how the event itself went and what they see as the future of the movement.

Yu said she left the march recognizing the passion that University students have for advocacy.

“Wash. U. students are willing to take up intersections, to take up streets, and that was something some of the organizers were talking about… that they didn’t think Wash. U. students would have the guts, would have the courage to go into the streets,” Yu said. “But I think this shows that there are at least enough to do that, to take the streets, so I think that was great.”

“It was empowering to know that we have numbers,” MacFarlane said. “People are willing and ready to fight for the things and change they want to see.”

An Expect Us leader closed the night with the call: “We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

Editor’s note: This article was updated to clarify WUGWU’s involvement in the demonstration.