For the past month, Donnell “Malik” Sims has been working to shut down the Union Mart convenience store and gas station in North City’s Mark Twain neighborhood. Now, the Organization for Black Struggle member is hoping to enlist a new, and perhaps somewhat unlikely ally in the effort: Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway.
Hanaway is a tough-on-crime prosecutor, who was appointed Attorney General last year after stints in the state legislature and as a federal prosecutor. She advocates for tougher sentencing rules for people found guilty of crimes as well as treating more juveniles in the criminal justice system as adults. Sims, on the other hand, is a community activist who has long advocated for criminal justice reform. He grew up in the Pruitt-Igoe and Peabody Darst Webbe housing projects in St. Louis, got addicted to freebasing cocaine, and racked up a slew of theft-related charges. However, those charges are no longer on his record, as he successfully completed treatment court, a program that allows people facing stiff criminal penalties to get charges off their record if they get sober and turn their lives around.
“The system works if you work it,” he says. “Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future.”…