KC Defender Staff, Author at The Kansas City Defender

The Defender’s Abolitionist Freedom School Is Back — Cohort 3 Applications Now Open

By KC Defender Staff ● Defender People's Programs ● February 10, 2026

The Defender’s Abolitionist Freedom School is accepting applications for Cohort 3. The 14-week organizer, activist & Black study training program for Black people across Missouri and Kansas launches this spring. Applications close February 21st.

KC’S BLACK FARMS UNITE: Hamer Free Food Program Launches Amid Growing Food Apartheid

By KC Defender Staff ● Mutual Aid & Community Programs ● August 19, 2025

The KC Defender, KC Black Urban Growers, Ivanhoe Neighborhood Association, and every Black farm in the KC metro are launching the Hamer Free Food Program. Free CSA boxes from Black farms will reach elders and families near 31st and Prospect after Sun Fresh’s closure. Volunteer, donate, or partner to scale it.

She Spent 40 Years Collecting 20,000 Black Books. We Refused to Let Them Disappear.

By KC Defender Staff ● Kansas City ● June 26, 2025

How a 22-year-old, 40 organizers, and a newsroom fought to save Missouri’s oldest Black bookstore — and what comes next.

ICE Kidnaps Mother in KC: Family Shattered by a Green Card Trap

By Ryan S. & KC Defender Staff ● Immigration ● April 29, 2025

They lured Rosmery Alvarado into a federal building with a green card interview then snatched her and stuffed her in a white van. No warning. No goodbye. Just disappearance. Her family is left shattered—another casualty of a violent, fascist machine.

TOWN HALL: Kansas City’s Crisis of Black Food, Land & Survival — And How We Fight Back

By KC Defender Staff ● Agriculture ● March 20, 2025

Kansas City’s Black farmers and urban growers are leading the fight for food sovereignty. Join The KC Defender and The Kansas City Call for an urgent Town Hall to strategize, organize, and take action.

BREAKING: Kansas City Suspends Corrupt City Manager Brian Platt

By KC Defender Staff ● Politics ● March 6, 2025

Kansas City Manager Brian Platt has been suspended—just hours after The Kansas City Defender’s exposé on his corruption and abuse of power shook the city. This comes one day after a jury awarded nearly $1 million to a whistleblower Platt retaliated against. City Council will decide his fate on March 20.

B-REAL Academy Launches: A Radical Space for Black Study and Abolitionist Education

By KC Defender Staff ● Abolition ● February 25, 2025

The Defender’s inaugural Freedom School cohort brings together multiple generations of Black radicals, equipping them with organizing skills, Black radical history, and the tools to resist oppression.

KC Defender Hosts “Winter Grocery Buyout,” Distributes Over $5000 to Black Families at Sunfresh on Prospect

By KC Defender Staff ● Mutual Aid & Community Programs ● January 12, 2025

The Defender’s Winter Grocery Buyout, in partnership with Urban League of KC, served the people through revolutionary mutual aid at Black-owned Sunfresh. This intervention provided direct material support to our people while disrupting the criminalizing narratives about our community.

BREAKING: Missouri Governor Frees Eric DeValkenaere, the First White Cop in KC History Convicted for Lynching a Black Person

By KC Defender Staff ● Justice ● December 20, 2024

In a horrifying display of white descent into outright white supremacist, fascist totalitarianism, Governor Parson unleashes a convicted killer cop back onto our streets – proving once again that in America, a badge is a license to kill Black people with impunity.

The Kansas City Defender’s Annual Christmas Eve Grocery Buyout Returns

By KC Defender Staff ● Mutual Aid & Community Programs ● December 18, 2024

Our most ambitious mutual aid initiative returns this holiday season, providing direct cash support to Black families for fresh groceries and toys

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