A screenshot from a previous Live with Lyda
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mayor Lyda Krewson has taken to Facebook Live several times a week to update viewers on the virus and to answer questions from constituents. Dubbed Live with Lyda, the sessions have a similar feel to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's briefings, which have gone viral. Except on Friday, Krewson broadcast the names of several activists—as well as the streets they live on—who had that day submitted to her proposals for redistributing the police budget.
Demonstrations calling attention to racism and police brutality, among other social justice issues, have taken place across St. Louis since late May, when Minneapolis man George Floyd died in police custody. On Friday, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a group protesting the Workhouse, a medium-security jail under fire for allegedly housing inmates in unsafe conditions, gathered at City Hall and presented the mayor with papers including their names, addresses, and plans to reallocate police funds. When a Live with Lyda viewer asked how the demonstration went, the mayor read the protesters' information aloud. The video has since been taken down, but a redacted version exists online.
As The Riverfront Times' Daniel Hill points out, these documents were likely considered public information, but anyone seeking them would have had to file a records request.
Still, St. Louisans took to social media to express their concern. A Change.org petition calling the mayor "a risk for the safety and well being of the general St. Louis population" and asking her to resign now has more than 5,000 signatures.
KSDK reporter Casey Nolen tweeted on Friday night that the mayor had sent him a statement apologizing to the St. Louisans she identified. In a screenshot, he shared the statement:
The mayor followed it up with an apology from her own Twitter account:
