If not for my patriarchal socialization, I might weep now. And yet, I do cry. I cry for my people. I grieve. And I write.
This is for my comrades. For those who dared with me to believe.
I am overwhelmed with gratitude to be among you — to witness your unyielding love, your revolutionary spirit, your imagination, your unwillingness to settle for the world as it is. Even in an electoral loss, I am inspired. Even now, I am re-affirmed. We dreamed aloud together. We declared the jail obsolete. We exposed the lie. We opened a crack in the narrative.
And though the new mass human caging facility tax passed, the people are not defeated. Because we dared to imagine a world where our children are free. A world where we walk our neighborhoods and greet each other like family. Where education is sacred. Where art flourishes. Where transit is public and robust. Where conflict is resolved in community — not by cages, not by cops, not by cruelty. This world — one rooted in care — is not some far-off utopia. It is the world that makes sense. The world that is common, decent, practical.
But we were born here, in this nation-state baptized by bondage. In a time where torture, isolation, surveillance, and cages are accepted as necessary. As normal. We forget how unnatural it is to cage a human being.
But let us remember: this system, at its nucleus, is the enslavement of human beings. It is the stripping of autonomy. The dismemberment of spirit. It is a ritual of destruction — physical, psychological, spiritual.
As I think of the people who will now be locked away in cold, steel boxes — the ones we couldn’t save this time — I wonder: what does it mean that we are willing to spend a hundred times more to build torture chambers than to fund schools, feed families, or heal the wounded?
What breaks me most is the complicity of our own people — and not out of malice, but desperation. Because they too are trying to survive this unrelenting terror. The violence we call “crime” is first born as poisoned food, as eviction notices, as schools with no heat, as unlivable wages, as mothers sobbing in hospital lobbies without care. The violence is in the conditions. And so survival breeds what we criminalize.
And in that desperation, people reach for anything that resembles safety — even if it means turning to their captors. Even as the Kansas City Police Department went under federal investigation. Even after they killed Donnie Sanders, Ryan Stokes, Cameron Lamb, and Malcolm Johnson. Even as they freed Eric DeValkenaere. Even as Blayne Newton, a serial killer in a badge, remains on the KCPD after ruthlessly murdering three people. Even with the blood still fresh.
Despite all this — the murders, the lies, the cover-ups — we are told these men “protect and serve.” We are taught to depend on them. To fear each other. To welcome their surveillance. And so we believe, against our own interest, that white men with guns are necessary for peace in Black communities, and that mass human caging facilities to lock up Black youth are the only way to keep our neighborhoods safe.
And not just white men. Any cop.
Fred Hampton told us: “You got pigs that are Black. You got pigs that are white. Hell, you got some pigs that are Black and white.” They beat Tyre Nichols to death with their Black fists in blue uniforms. We must not confuse pigment with protection.
The jail, like the police, was born of the plantation. It is not a broken system. It is working precisely as designed — to extract, to isolate, to discard.
It is not merely a building. It is a logic. A technology of capture. A cancer that metastasizes through our neighborhoods, devouring every organ of life. A tapeworm that feeds on the nutrients of our communities — our youth, our resources, our hope — and leaves us starving for the very things it promises to provide: safety, stability, peace. It does not heal. It feeds. It fattens on our suffering and calls it “justice.”
Ask yourself: what is the function of jail?
It does not cage Trump. Or Elon. Or the serial killers in the KCPD. Or ICE agents who abduct our neighbors. Or the CEOs and billionaire corporations who poison our air and water and kill millions. Or the politicians who lie and steal and deal death in legislation.
No, it cages the poor. The unhoused. Those with mental health conditions. The traumatized. The Black. The brown.
The jail has become the one-size-fits-all answer to social collapse. It has swallowed the roles of therapist, doctor, social worker, school, shelter. And now, the jail replaces community itself. A warehouse for those our society refuses to love.
So to be clear: if the jail only functions to cage the most vulnerable, and not those who cause the most harm, then we must understand the jail not by its stated purpose, but by its actual function.
Its function is to maintain a caste system. To protect capital. To preserve racial order. To crush political dissent.
The politicians. The contractors. The corporations like JE Dunn — they profit from this parasitic arrangement. They manufacture the crisis, then sell us the solution. First, they strip our neighborhoods of nourishment — no jobs, no schools, no housing, no youth programs. Then, when survival breeds violence, they flash our pain across the headlines, pathologize our behavior, and call us criminals. Then they tell us we need police. Then they build the jails. Then they siphon what little wealth we have left to pay for it.
This is not policy but war.
And still…still… I believe. I believe in the vision. I believe in us.
Because the world we seek is already here — glimpsed in stolen moments. At the Standup KC uprisings, the Decarcerate KC campaign meetings, KC Tenants’ historic rent strikes, Sunrise KC’s prophetic climate vision, the wisdom and continued advocacy of the Urban Council and Black revolutionary elders, the Lyrik Institute, in open mics at BLK&BRWN. In jail support. In Black joy. In mutual aid. In the fire of our resistance. In our grandmothers’ prayers. In the dreams of the youth.
We carry a conviction that cannot be defeated by a vote. A madness, divine and necessary. A clarity that pierces through centuries of chains.
The world we are building — brick by brick, poem by poem, act by act — is coming. Not because they gave it to us, but because we are relentless about its manifestation.
We lost the vote.
But we will win the world.
ABOUT DEFENDER EDITORIALS
This article is part of The Defender Editorial Series, our official opinion section.
At The Kansas City Defender, we distinguish between reporting and editorial writing:
- Our reporting is rooted in data, documentation, and on-the-ground sourcing. It exposes injustice, centers Black voices, and holds power accountable.
- Our editorials and opinion columns are explicitly framed pieces. They go beyond the what/where/when to offer cultural context, political analysis, and movement-grounded perspective. They’re written not from above or outside—but from within our communities, our struggles, and our visions for liberation.
We proudly acknowledge that our editorial and opinion writers are often the same people who report our stories. We believe there is no contradiction between rigorous journalism and unapologetic moral clarity.
We are not neutral. We are with the people.
