Aboltion Archives – The Kansas City Defender

The 1% earnings tax helps keep Kansas City running and policing in place

By Mili Mansaray ● Aboltion ● April 7, 2026

The measure would preserve one of the city’s biggest revenue streams and a budget model where public safety still overwhelmingly means police.

Latest in Aboltion

23 Organizations Launch Campaign to Stop KC’s World Cup Jail Before It Opens

By Ryan S. ● Kansas City ● March 31, 2026

Kansas City wants to welcome the world. It’s building a cage to do it. But a rapidly growing movement says the fight is far from over.

Local KC Leaders Gleefully Celebrate $317M Investment in Caging Black and Brown People, Note Facility ‘Designed for Future Expansion’

By Ryan S. ● Abolition ● March 30, 2026

Officials celebrate ‘justice with dignity’ vision for building specifically designed to strip people of both

The Company That Built Guantanamo Bay Is Now Building Kansas City’s World Cup Jail. A Coalition of 23 Organizations Are Fighting Back

By Ryan S. ● Abolition ● March 27, 2026

The contractor building Kansas City’s World Cup jail has been sued for human trafficking, found liable for poisoning over 100,000 people, and built the detention camp where the U.S. tortured prisoners for two decades. Decarcerate KC and 24 partner organizations are launching a campaign to fight it.

We Write to Wage War: The Radical Black Press As A Liberatory Technology

By Ryan S. ● Editorial ● March 16, 2026

For 199 years, the radical Black press has been the infrastructure beneath every major turning point in Black American life. In an era of AI and social technologies, what is the role of the revolutionary Black Press today?

BREAKING: Platform Ventures Backs Down From ICE Detention Center Sale After Weeks of Mass Organizing and Protest

By Ryan S. ● Justice ● February 12, 2026

The people won. For now.

KCPD Holds Taxpayers Hostage While Shielding a Killer in Blue

By Ryan S. ● Justice ● February 5, 2026

The department has received $1.2 billion since 2022. Now it claims it can’t afford basic services while an officer who has killed three people remains on patrol. A Kansas City Defender investigation.

Abolitionist Architecture: How Black Designers Are Building a Liberatory Future

By Ryan S. ● Arts & Culture ● December 2, 2025

The newly appointed president of the National Organization of Minority Architects, Bryan C. Lee Jr., sits down with The KC Defender’s Executive Editor Ryan Sorrell to discuss why, in an age of fascism, building a blueprint for liberation means reclaiming the spaces where Black life can flourish

FOOD IS FREEDOM: Hamer Program & Black KC Farmers Continue Free Food Deliveries as SNAP Cuts Loom

By Ryan S. ● Agriculture ● October 29, 2025

The evening the food boxes arrived, a Black neighbor wept.

Wyandotte County Jail Cops Brutally Execute Black Man Then Engage in Coverup

By Ryan S. ● Justice ● September 15, 2025

Charles L. Adair, a 50-year-old Black man, was arrested on traffic warrants and brutally killed less than 24 hours later inside the Wyandotte County jail. An autopsy shows jail cops violently knelt on his back, breaking bones and suffocating him. Officials lied to the public, covering up his brutal killing with a fraudulent press release that blames Adair’s death on him being an alcoholic.