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KC Defender's Latest Articles
Feeding and Clothing Black Students: KC Defender Free Clothing Program Returns in Time for School
Through our People's Programs, we have distributed thousands of free items to Black families across Kansas City. This Saturday's People's Drop Off gathers clothing and hygiene essentials so our children walk into the classroom whole.
Kansas City’s Black Abolitionist Freedom School Is Working, and It Just Graduated a New Class of Organizers
B-REAL Academy, the only abolitionist freedom school of its kind in the region, just graduated its third cohort, the largest and youngest yet. In one year since its launch it has held students from ten to eighty-one in the same room, in a city that is emerging as a new national organizing hub.
The People’s Free Store Comes to 31st & Prospect: KC Defender Distributes Hundreds of Free Clothing & Hygiene Items to Black People
They call this corner a crime hotspot. They never tell you the state sent tanks down this same street in April 1968 to crush the Dr. King assassination uprisings. Fifty-eight Aprils later, our Defender Mutual Aid Team came back with clothing, hygiene, and political education for the people the state abandoned.
The Defender’s Abolitionist Freedom School Is Back — Cohort 3 Applications Now Open
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
