ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — With Juneteenth set for this Monday, activists in St. Petersburg got an early start on the celebrations out at city hall Thursday evening.
Members from the group Faith in Florida hosted the event in an attempt to honor the city’s Black historic Gas Plant District by carving out a better future for neighbors. They called it the “Juneteenth Day of Action.”
People gathered on the steps of St. Pete City Hall playing music and sharing stories of the historic community.
“That’s where you could go and sit on the porch and meet all the neighbors and everybody was on the same page, everybody was friendly,”St. Pete native Alexa Manning, who grew up frequently visiting the community, said.
The Gas Plant District, which Manning says she knew as “Mango Alley,” was razed in the 1980s to make room Tropicana Field.
Now, activists are pushing for city leaders to use their current multi-million dollar redevelopment of the area to fix injustices of the past with housing reform.
“All we hear is that there’s not enough money and that workforce and affordable housing is not profitable for developers,” Bishop Manuel Sykes, who attended Thursday’s event, said.
At the event, members of Faith in Florida gathered signatures for a petition demanding that city leaders prioritize low-income residents in the redevelopment with mixed income housing.
“Keep us apart of this community. Stop selling us out,” Manning said. “Make things affordable so people can live here and still thrive here.”
To learn more about the Faith in Florida demands, click here.