A Miami fund bought a 126-year-old downtown building, quietly signed away the right to demolish it, then asked Kansas City for permission to demolish it anyway and build a 20-story data center. A leading legal scholar reviewed the paperwork The Defender obtained and called it by its name. This week, Kansas City said no.
Born behind prison walls, carried across the diaspora, Black August is the month we count our martyrs and sharpen ourselves. McKay gave us the vow. Missouri and Kansas gave us the battleground.
Black entrepreneur and widely beloved Promoter Brian "Bizzy" Benton founded 816 Day in 2017. Now in 2026 KCTV5 calls the event "inaugural." Black Kansas City has a lot to say.
Voters in a Black and brown majority county are finding their completed ballots back in their own mailboxes, sealed and uncounted, four days before the Kansas primary. The county printed a retired post office box on the return envelope and the Postal Service stopped delivering to it. Nobody will say how many votes it hit.
A delivery to a Black women-founded brokerage in the West Plaza took a violent turn when the driver, frustrated that no one answered within seconds, was recorded using a racial slur at the front door. The company's founder says she wants answers from FedEx.
Kansas Republicans overrode their own governor to pass the Halo Act, a moving 25-foot arrest zone around every agent in the state. In Olathe, ICE is already using it to trap the people who film them, with local police finishing the arrests.
Somewhere between a gerrymander and a Twitch stream, American politics broke open in Kansas City. Young people are staging leftist insurgencies all across the country while millions watch live, and nobody who drew the maps saw them coming.
Three days after City officials stormed their buildings and ordered families out within 24 hours, the Health Department suspended the Chicago slumlord's rental license. The union that forced the reckoning says he cannot rent another unit until he fixes what he broke.
On the eve of the semiquincentennial, we are republishing the speech I gave on July 4, 2020, at the Anti-Independence Day Rally in Westport, steps from a building that held Black people enslaved in its basement. Then we are going to talk about the cookout.
In nine days, ICE's occupying force disappeared neighbors from gas stations, doorways, and a fruit stand while Kansas City sold the world a party. This is the full record of the manhunt, and what the community built to fight back."
Community support is the lifeblood to the sustainability & growth of our urgent work among Black youth. Will you help us by becoming a Defender?
Your new monthly donation goes 24x further right now