Photo by Mark Loehrer, courtesy of the St. Louis Speaks Facebook Page
Umar Lee and preservationist Michael Allen in conversation at La Mancha Coffeehouse in Old North St. Louis.
Umar Lee has never shied away from giving his opinion. Since this spring, he’s been doing it long-form on his podcast, St. Louis Speaks. Historian Mark Loehrer produces.
“With a podcast, you can sit down for 45 minutes, an hour, as long as you need,” Lee says. “You can really talk about issues, get to know people, get to know their stories. That’s what attracts me to podcasting.”
Lee has been making headlines of his own for years, from his actions during the protest movement in Ferguson after unarmed teenager Mike Brown was killed by a cop to his opposition to ride-sharing apps like Uber to his run for mayor.
With St. Louis Speaks, he’s trying to shepherd the conversation into civil and inclusive dialog about the city and region, using the podcast and an active Facebook page. Recent guests have included historian Michael Allen, St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger, and former city comptroller Virvus Jones.
“I’m trying to come at things from a nonpartisan perspective, give everyone a fair shake,” Lee says. He acknowledges that he has an easier time getting left-leaning guests to come on the show, but he’d love to chat with some conservatives.
He accuses most media, both traditional and social, of fostering confirmation bias, with people “sitting around reading the same shit and agreeing,” he says. “There’s a lot of podcasts and a lot of writing that I don’t even have to watch. I can tell you exactly what everyone’s going to say.”
His conversations are wide-ranging and rich with context.
“My interview style was really honed in my years as a taxi driver,” Lee says. “I would pick people up and get their life stories.”
Lee, who’s currently splitting his time between St. Louis and the Dallas area to attend to family issues, is a harsh critic of the city that he loves and calls home.
“Only hipsters have a problem with the high school question,” he says. “All I know is Provel. All I know is hearing gunshots. All I know is high humidity, all I know is a f_____-up public transit system. I’m proud to be from St. Louis—I’m proud to have survived St. Louis.”
Lee is a product of the systems he critiques, educated in Ferguson-Florissant and graduated from Job Corps, having spent his 17th birthday in jail.
“When I talk about these problems, it’s not abstract,” he says. “I’m not some square-ass dude. Anything bad that can happen in St. Louis has happened to me.”
It’s fair to say that hipsters, gentrifiers and urban leftist academic types stick in his craw.
“I’m not sitting in a coffee shop sipping a kale smoothie talking about a study from the Ford Foundation,” Lee says.
He says that too often “new media types” have a hyper-focus on downtown, the Central Corridor, Shaw, and similar spots. That focus leads to a lot being missed and overlooked.
“There’s a void,” he says. “We have so many interesting stories in the St. Louis region. We’re not just focused on the city,” he says.
Asking Lee who his dream guest would be shores up his bona fides—both as a media nerd who used to fall asleep with his ear pressed to the radio tuned to KMOX and a full-on St. Louis son.
“If I had a dream guest, in the media world I would say Bill McClellan,” Lee says. “In the St. Louis world in general, I would have to say, just as a kid that grew up in the 1980s—Ozzie Smith.”
