Genocide, Tax Evasion and Environmental Destruction: St. Louisans Protest ICL
On a rainy Friday, November 21, around forty-five St. Louisans gathered in front of the Creve Coeur offices for Israel Chemical Limited (ICL). With drones flying overhead in the gray sky, likely surveilling the protest on behalf of ICL, demonstrators came with a clear demand – ICL Out of St. Louis. Several speakers explained their three main issues with ICL – its record of environmental destruction, its production of materials used by the Israeli military to kill and maim Palestinian and Lebanese people, and its misuse of our governmental processes and institutions to evade local taxes.
Gracen Kunkel and Dan Pate addressed the protesters and press first. They welcomed the recent news that ICL has shelved plans to build a lithium battery materials plant at 401 Adelaide Avenue in North St. Louis.
“While ICL officials didn’t specifically mention it”, said Pate, ”I’m sure you all saw that before ICL came to this decision, the $200 million grant made of taxpayer dollars to start the facility had thankfully been cut. ICL had originally gotten this grant, which was supposed to be used for the environment, environmental justice, because they claim the proposed pollution facility would be an investment in North City and St Louis as a whole. As community members, we know this is not investment. This is invasion.”
“While we were elated to hear about this plant, we’re here today because the fight for environmental justice and the fight to end the acts of environmental racism like this are far from over. ICL has deep ties to people in power here in STL, like SLDC (St. Louis Development Corporation), the Planned Industrial Expansion Authority, and some of our state officials. Our city has given ICL over a million dollars in grants. ICL still owns the land between Adelaide and Kerry Avenue, and they still very much plan on operating (in) our city and poisoning communities and members, community members’ bodies, air, water, and soil at the south Carondelet facility, where they violated the Clean Air Act, where the EPA has documented elevated cancer levels. The Israel environmental protection ministry themselves called ICL the number one worst environmental offender, and ICL was forced to pay out one of the largest environmental payouts in Israeli history for the disaster they caused in occupied Palestine.”
“A quick search through the Department of Defense spending receipts shows that ICL was paid by our government to produce and help in the production line for white phosphorus that was used on refugee tents in Gaza,” said Kunkel. “We know this because the canister identification codes were verified by the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. There is bona fide proof of this.”
Mafaza Khan of the Not Another Nickel campaign was moved to act because of the white phosphorus issue. “So white phosphorus is a chemical that melts your skin tissue and even down to bone”, Khan said, “and we (have) strong evidence of white phosphorus being used in Lebanon and Gaza, supplied by the United States through ICL. For me, personally, learning about that was kind of what broke a lot of the illusions that I had previously held onto. I was raised to believe that I was living in a good place. I think, like most Americans, I was taught that this is a place that is an example of freedom, justice, equality, and self-determination.”
“For me, white phosphorus corroded every illusion I had about living in a civilized place, and it burned through my apoliticism entirely. That might be the only good thing white phosphorus has ever done. I would like to work towards a world that actually looks like the American dream that I was always sold, a world of justice, a world of self determination, a world of freedom and equality. And if that’s not the world we’re already living in, then we’ll have to build that world ourselves. So let’s get ICL out of STL,” concluded Khan.
Sierra Club organizer Maxi Glamour noted that while we were getting wet in the rain, people in Gaza were also suffering from rain, but without adequate shelter, trying to survive in tents. He pointed out that Israel had displaced these Palestinians with weapons from companies such as ICL and Boeing. “ICL, not in my backyard!” proclaimed Glamour. “We will not fund genocide. We will not fund chemicals to burn the skin off of children. We will not be complicit in war crimes. You cannot have our city, you cannot have our land. You cannot poison our waters. You cannot poison our sky. It is St Louis versus ICL, and I know who is going to win that fight.”
Zaki Baruti of the Universal African People’s Organization echoed others’ sentiments in opposition to environmental racism and he praised young people at the protest for standing up for justice and against imperialism. He urged folks present to run for elected office and take power. “We have to multiply numbers,” said Baruti. “We have to have righteous armies, because on the real side, evil is perpetrated every day as what is happening in Palestine and many parts of the world, including the embargo on Cuba, including the warships off of Nicaragua, including the war in the Sudan.”
Stan McCoy delivered a message on behalf of Sealli Moyenda of the Northside Independent Neighborhood Association, noting that “ICL still owns the land that the battery factory will have been built on, and nothing precludes them from utilizing another source to build a battery factory or some other toxic factory on the site they own . . . . So this may be a victory for the North Side residents of St Louis, the ICL can’t build this toxic factory, but we must continue to put pressure on ICL and even the city to relinquish that land back to the people, so we, the North Side residents, can determine what is to be built on that Land that will benefit the entire North Side Community.”
Former St. Louis Alderwoman Tina Pihl was there for two main reasons – she saw the siting of the proposed plant on the northside as environmental racism, and she is sick of the system giving out tax abatements in the City of St. Louis. “They were using ordinances that were old”, said Pihl, “and I know, as an Alder, we are passing legislation with old ordinances and with projects that have changed drastically, and we should be going back and creating new ordinances that are for the present times and also have the community input. And that is not what happened with this particular property. So what you’re talking about is they’re taking advantage of a tax abatement to build a project that had nothing to do with original meaning given for the abatement. And it happens, this is not the only project. It happens all the time.”
Lauren FIlla agreed with Pihl’s assessment, in a conversation with her and Pate after the protest. According to her, ICL’s property has 90% tax abatement and personal property taxes for 10 years, plus 15 year real estate tax abatements, and the city also forgave $500,000 worth of a loan that was given to Green Street Real Estate Ventures in order to facilitate the sale to ICL. The original ordinance granting the abatement was passed to benefit Green Street and had nothing to do with the proposed lithium battery factory.
“It’s easier to open a dangerous chemical facility and a data center in St Louis than it is to open a homeless shelter,” said Filla. “These babies just steal from the community. I mean, they steal from the public school system. It’s money that could be going towards city services, toward housing, towards food programs, and it’s basically just being forgiven to attract these so-called investors that we think are actually invaders of the community.”
Filla added that “the Good Jobs First report found that $260 million have basically been taken from St Louis public schools over a 10 year period because of these abatements. And that’s this campaign. Now that our primary goal of shutting down this facility with urgency has been achieved, we want to take on this whole process that allows these corrupt abatements to continue to attract and enable and reward polluters.”
Pate pointed out that, “SLDC has not done a study that proves that their abatements have worked to the benefit of the city.”
Pate explained that in April of this year, he filed a public records request for the emails of St. Louis Development Corporation Deputy Executive Director Rob Orr, using the city’s online “Sunshine Request” portal. He was trying to get to the bottom of the incentives for the ICL lithium battery materials plant that until recently, was slated for construction in North St. Louis. “(Orr) was going around town acting like a private industry broker for Green Street, trying to get them deals to sell their land. If you remember the LinkedIn controversy when Bob (Clark) from Clayco wanted to buy the site in North City, and (Former SLDC Chair) Neil (Richardson) suggested that, no, we’re not going to do the concrete strategies in North City. And Rob Orr suggested, hey, Green Street has a bunch of land for sale up in North City. It was this parcel he was trying to suggest that they should buy. And eventually, a deal got made between ICL and Green Street. That was after Green Street was unable to achieve an alley vacation in South City to do the construction for the plant down there, so they moved it to North City. I believe that it was Rob Orr that negotiated that deal, but I’ve been waiting for about 130 days for a sunshine request that I filed in April that they still have not provided any of the emails that I’ve requested for the different two week periods leading up to the November 2024 and December 2024, Planned Industrial Expansion Authority meeting which they authorized the tax abatement and they designated ICL as the developer.”
Pate added that with the return of Otis WIlliams as the head of the SLDC, “It’s Groundhog Day all over again. There’s less and less transparency, less financial analysis, and less emphasis on community input into the projects they’re trying to slam through – everything they can with as little community engagement as possible. That’s their goal. SLDC is set up to facilitate development, not to evaluate development, and the Board of Aldermen leans on them to evaluate it’s a bass ackwards tail wag dog situation.”
The rally and press conference was endorsed by the Eco-Socialist Green Party of Eastern Missouri, Northside Independent Neighborhood Association, Universal African People’s Organization, International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, Jewish Voice for Peace St. Louis, Veterans for Peace Chapter 61, Party for Socialism and Liberation St. Louis, Green Action WashU, the Anti-imperialist Collective, and the Not Another Nickel campaign.
