Paul McKee keeps piling insults on the Black community.
The developer spurned a personal invitation to discuss the public outrage at his insistence to use the name Homer G. Phillips Hospital on a three-bed clinic by being a no-show at a City Hall meeting on Wednesday afternoon.
Community activist and co-chair of the Campaign for Human Dignity Zenobia Thompson said the gathering of more than 40 activists and officials expected to address McKee directly about the alleged misuse of Phillips’ name on the facility. She said they were disappointed, but not surprised.
Instead of facing his critics, McKee and his board issued a press statement by his attorney Darryl Piggee. Thompson deemed it as insulting.
“[Piggee] criticized folks about not caring about healthcare, which is insulting,” Thompson said.
“I know myself, and each and every one here, cares about the struggle for healthcare for African Americans.”
St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones said she wants the name immediately removed from the facility.
“We cannot allow a three-bed urgent care facility that does not accept Medicaid and Medicare to be named after one of our icons,” Jones said.
“Without the presence of the first Homer G. Phillips hospital, many Black doctors and nurses would not have been able to become those doctors or nurses.”
The Homer G. Phillips Memorial Hospital board of directors claim their decision “was made after careful consideration and consultation with many in the community and we believe it was the right one.”
It included the callous statement “we have no intentions to re-examine the naming of this hospital.”
Percy Green, an activist and founding member of ACTION, blames Piggee for McKee’s alarming misjudgment.
“I like to think that Darryl Piggee recommended to Paul McKee to name the ‘urban clinic’ [after] Homer G. Phillips, knowing that such an act would trigger the Black community,” Green said.
“Not only to protest the naming but his deceitful and deceptive racist method of acquiring Black folks’ property around where the new [National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency] facility is being built.”
Green said the community should keep up the criticism of Piggee.
“I think he should be exposed to alert other Black folks to not make the same mistakes. There are Blacks, who we have fought to get integrated into decent-paying jobs. When they get there, they sell out the community and act in the interest of their own prosperity.”
Green spoke of how this protest is not a push back against needed health care access.
“The protest is not related to any health care facility, but we’re talking about the naming of the health care facility,” Green said.
“It’s about misinformation versus misinformed, which goes for some of our Black officials; it doesn’t take a lot to confuse the community. I think it is very important for Blacks to be clear about what is being protested here.”
Community leaders present at the meeting also raised concerns about the amount of minority participation in the construction of the new medical facility.
The St. Louis Development Corporation (SLDC) has approved new rules governing the certification and compliance of women and minority-owned businesses for participation in the City’s Minority and Women Business Enterprise Program (M/WBE Program), which was expanded a decade ago.
Through the M/WBE Program, the City has established certain policies for the utilization of minority and women businesses in its purchasing and contracting practices. The policy sets out a goal of at least 21% certified African American-owned business and at least 11% certified women-owned business enterprise participation for contracts and purchases where City funds are expended.
Piggee stated workforce goals based on certified payroll was 25 percent, where the minority maximum monthly number is 23 percent.
“The goal of African American dollars was 21 percent, and the project achieved 32.52 percent,” he said in an email.
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