It's been a ride, huh? I'm not going to a full deep dive on this because it's not strictly relevant to STUN and its legislative goals, but I wanted to talk about it a little just because of how crazy it's been.

This Saturday, Springfield tenants and allies gathered in Resurrection Church to turn up the pressure on City Council to pass a Right to Counsel in our city. The event was titled Our Rights, Our Homes, Our Future, in reference to a few of the things that a Right to Counsel would protect. City Council has been sitting on an RTC proposal without action for over a year and a half, and STUN has had enough of their stalling.

Recent celebrations include a key victory for our friends and colleagues in the Rosewood-Cedarwood Tenants Union this month, as tenants facing eviction were granted an injunction allowing them to stay in their homes while their lawsuit proceeds, as well as Missouri voters passing NO on Amendment 4 in the state election.

This month on The Art Room, Karl highlights a book on housing at the Schweitzer-Brentwood Library.

This month we're getting ready to turn up the pressure on City Council to push forward on Right to Counsel with a major town hall on August 29th. The theme is Our Rights, Our Homes, Our Future, because that's what Right to Counsel represents. RTC has been one of STUN's policy priorities from the beginning, and through our efforts last year we succeeded in getting a proposal to City Council's Community Involvement Committee. Unfortunately, it's been there ever since, and Committee Chair Callie Carroll has shown no intention of letting it get any further.

The efforts to spread the word about the August 4th election, and the disastrous amendments on the ballot, are well underway. STUN is just one of many area organizations collaborating on the Get Out the Vote campaign, including many of our frequent partners like Missouri Jobs with Justice and the NAACP. The campaign kicked off on July 18th, with a rally at the Drew Lewis Foundation, as part of the statewide John Lewis Weekend of Action, inspired by the late civil rights activist's directive to "get in good trouble".

STUN ended the month strong with a solidarity event at the library's Hatch Auditorium to kick Springfield's activist community into action. Titled "kNOw Your Ballot" and hosted by Angela Frantz of Abortion Action Missouri, the event was a collaboration between STUN, Abortion Action Missouri, Missouri Jobs with Justice, the League of Women Voters of Southwest Missouri, and Springfield NAACP, focused on the legislative items up for a vote in the upcoming elections in August and November.

This article was originally published in our January 2025 newsletter. It is included again here as a refresher for the topic. Where more recent data is available, Editor's Notes have been added to update the original text. The data referenced in the article is sourced predominantly from the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel.

This month Springfield voters rejected a bad deal for our city, for a second time. City Council wanted to raise the city’s hotel tax in order to renovate the Springfield Expo Center into a more robust convention center.