Frustrated residents gathered in south St. Louis Wednesday night, calling for action over delays in recovery efforts following last year's deadly tornado.
The grassroots town hall on Cherokee Street provided a forum for people to grieve their losses from the May 16 tornado and voice their anger about the government's response. Speakers praised the efforts of neighbors and grassroots organizers, saying they have helped mitigate tornado impacts on the ground since the day of the storm.
Many of the calls came from advocates who asked south St. Louis residents to step up and help those in north St. Louis impacted by the storm.
WyKeshia Atkins is a fellow with Action St. Louis who was displaced by the tornado. Atkins told the crowd her family lived in several hotels between May and September waiting on funds to fix her property.
She said she got involved to challenge the narrative that north St. Louis residents are getting "handouts."
"I am hoping to just raise awareness for individuals that are in this area, and also to have more allies in the fight," Atkins said. "Because it will be a fight."
She said her strongest memory of the tornado was finding her father-in-law in his kitchen — and his leg on the other side of the house.
"I'm literally climbing through the tree," Atkins said. "I look across the street, and I see my neighbors on the second floor of their house with their hands on their head. Their whole front of their house is missing."
Atkins and other speakers criticized the city's guidance not to "self-deploy" to clear debris immediately following the tornado.
LJ Punch helped organize Wednesday night's event. He co-founded 314Oasis, a one-stop mutual aid group for tornado-impacted residents, within days of the tornado. The group operates four pop-up outreach locations throughout north St. Louis that provide case managers, rental assistance applications, food, warming stations and community support services in one spot.
Punch said the group aims to streamline recovery efforts in neighborhoods where residents are still unhoused or living in damaged homes nine months after the storm.
"People don't have a single door that they can walk in and get their needs met," Punch said. "They have to literally fight (and) advocate so robustly for themselves to get anything. That's been a shared experience, no matter where you live."
Punch, who lives along the Delmar Divide in the West End neighborhood, said he has seen an "astonishing" difference in the speed and quality of recovery efforts on either side of the divide. He said he hopes this event is a wake-up call for residents in south St. Louis.
"People probably cannot conceive the unreal conditions people in St Louis are facing right now related to this tornado, which compounded decades of divestment," Punch said. "They can't imagine seeing a kid, right, who is standing there asking for gloves and a heater so that their bedroom is not 45 degrees at night."
Cami Thomas organized the event in the Benton Park neighborhood in collaboration with 314Oasis. She lives in the Hyde Park neighborhood on the city's north side but previously lived in Benton Park for several years. She hopes this event will break what she calls the "invisible information embargo" between the city's north and south sides.
"The way that information is segmented and siloed in St. Louis is not something unique to this May 16 tornado," Thomas said. "It's one that we've accepted as a community and as a city, that it is okay and acceptable to not know what our neighbors a few miles away are going through."
Thomas said bridging knowledge gaps between the city's segregated neighborhoods could bring much-needed attention and resources into tornado-impacted neighborhoods and prepare St. Louis residents for future disasters.
"If the rest of the city understood what the North Side understands, which is how badly they have actually failed with this tornado recovery, there would be a different social and political movement going on here in St. Louis," Thomas said. "We want to have this event (to) kind of break that wall and just let people know what's going on."
Copyright 2026 St. Louis Public Radio