“Syria, Syria, you’re not alone! Call St Louis your new home!”



On 13 September, hundreds of St Louis-area residents converged in a parking lot in the suburb of University City to demand that the US government raise the cap on the number of Syrian refugees allowed in the country – and settle at least 60,000 of them in St Louis.



The rally, which included speeches from religious leaders, Muslim activists and Syrians, culminated in a march through a University City’s business district, where the streets echoed with a recurrent cry: “Bring them here! Bring them here!”

“One of the things that makes this march so amazing is that this march is for Syrians, but not by Syrians,” said Faizan Syed, the organizer of the march. “It’s done by people of all different races, backgrounds and religions. All of them are coming together because they are witnessing the image of tragedy overseas. And when they witness that, they want to make sure they can do something about it.”

St Louis currently boasts a very small number of Syrian refugees. Since February 2015, St Louis’s International Institute, a refugee resettlement service, has sponsored 29 Syrians and says that approximately 20 more are expected in the coming months. Activists in St Louis are hoping this will change, and soon.

The outpouring of support for Syrian resettlement has come not only from St Louis’s Arab and Muslim communities, but from residents all over the area – a mass humanitarian initiative in a region known for violence and racial strife.

“I’ve had people ask: ‘If you’re not Syrian, why are you doing this march?’” says Syed, who is Pakistani American. “And I think that says a lot about the world we live in today. It is completely normal for someone from another ethnicity or background to hate you because they’re different than you. But when people love you because you are different, then people question that. This movement is something all of St Louis should be proud of.”

Photograph: Sarah Kendzior

St Louis has long history of refugee resettlement. Following the United States Refugee Act of 1980, the city took in Vietnamese refugees, many of whom went on to launch popular businesses and restaurants. In the 1990s, the city took in over 10,000 Bosnian refugees over a period of eight years. The majority settled in the abandoned and worn-down neighborhoods of South City, revitalizing them and creating a “Little Bosnia” that has become a St Louis point of pride.

Drawn by the success of the refugee community, Bosnians from other parts of the United States moved to St Louis, and the current population of Bosnians – including second-generation citizens – stands at around 70,000. The only city with a larger population of Bosnians is Sarajevo.

Syed envisions Syrian refugees revitalizing neighborhoods and building businesses in the same manner as their Bosnian predecessors. St Louis is a region of empty land and cheap real estate, making it financially easier for a refugee to build a new life.

“What destroys the economy is loss of population and people spreading out,” notes Syed, who works out of a mosque in St Louis’s economically battered north county. “From a business perspective, bringing the population in will have a very positive effect. The Syrians could move into north county, Ferguson even, because homes are very cheap. People are moving out of this area, and the population is declining. You’ll find homes here for 30, 40 thousand dollars. Why not bring in a population to fill those homes? This can have a rejuvenating cyclical effect.”

But Patricia Bynes, a Democratic committeewoman in Ferguson and one of the town’s few black politicians, is wary. While she expresses great sympathy for the Syrian refugees, she wonders if a region experiencing a crisis of its own is the best place for resettlement.

“People who live in the St Louis region have been through a lot of trauma,” she says. “And I question bringing a group of people who have been through even more serious trauma into an environment where we have still not dealt with our own. There’s a lot of animosity and anger, and we’re far from the point of healing.”

Part of the problem, says Bynes, is the allocation of resources, which have historically been denied to black St Louisans, many of whom live in neighborhoods blighted by decades of neglect. She says St Louis is adequately equipped to help Syrian refugees – but why is similar support not given to St Louis’s impoverished African American population?

“Resources exist to help with the Syrian issues we’re trying to tackle,” she says, referring to the numerous groups offering financial and social services to the refugees. “But the government also has the resources to address racism and classism and they’re not doing it.” Bynes added that the perception that St Louis officials prioritize the needs of non-black new arrivals over a long-suffering black local population could potentially increase tension in the region.

“For all intents and purposes, people in St Louis see things in black and white,” she says. “The black community will be very angry at the local government – not at the Syrians, but at the government. It will create a deeper and uglier division.”



Activists are calling for St Louis to welcome Syrian refugees. Photograph: Sarah Kendzior

Though black and white race relations dominate the region’s politics, another factor has influenced the likelihood of Syrians coming to St Louis – the Lebanese background of Mayor Francis Slay, scion of a local political dynasty.

At a surprise appearance at an International Institute press conference on the refugee crisis, Slay expressed his commitment to helping Syrians come to St Louis and noted that his own paternal grandparents immigrated from what was once Syrian territory. “We were considered Syrians then, too,” he told the crowd.

Some politicians believe that Slay may have the power to influence the White House cap on refugee resettlement, allowing more Syrians to come.

“If the four-term Lebanese mayor of St Louis can’t push the White House in the right direction, then no one can,” says Marie Ceselski, a committeewoman in St Louis’s seventh ward and outspoken proponent of resettlement. “If we have the resources in place, how could the White House possibly turn us down? There’s an overwhelming response of: ‘We want to do this, please let us do this.’ The Syrian crisis has been going on since 2011. We should have been asking for them to do this years ago.”

Syed shares Ceselski’s optimism that St Louis is a hospitable place for refugees, well equipped with the resources to take in the Syrian population. After a year marked by brutal violence and racial strife, he sees Syrian resettlement as an opportunity for St Louis to do something right.

“People are tired of overt racism in the public sphere,” he says. “The rhetoric in this country has become so anti-everyone. But that’s not how mainstream Americans are, including in St Louis. Mainstream Americans just want to go to work, live their life, live in peace, and they are sick and tired of this negative rhetoric. When you give people an opportunity to show the best parts of America, they will come up and they will shine.”