Aboltion Archives – The Kansas City Defender

No Charges. Black Missouri Teen Saveion McConnell Was Unarmed, Charged With Nothing, and Gunned Down by a Cop Who Shot at Him 9 Times. The State Just Ruled His Slaughter Legal.

By Ryan S.

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September 15, 2026

Four and a half months after a Lafayette County deputy rammed nineteen-year-old Saveion McConnell with a patrol car and then fired nine rounds at him on the shoulder of U.S. Highway 50, Johnson County Prosecutor Robert Russell announced Tuesday that no crime was committed. Saveion had no weapon. Witnesses say his hands were in the air.

Missouri Begins the Medical Torture of Trans People in Its Prisons. The People It Caged Are Fighting Back

By Ryan S.

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Abolition

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August 10, 2026

Da'Shae Breeze learned to write at Maya Angelou's desk. Now she writes to The Defender from a solitary confinement cell as Missouri strips away her medical care. She spoke to us from inside state prison, alongside Jessica Hicklin, who spent 26 years in maximum security and won the federal ruling the state just defied.

“Better Than Christmas”: Inside Kansas City’s Abolitionist Juneteenth Cookout

By Ryan S.

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Black Life & Joy

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June 22, 2026

A Black child ran ahead of his mother into Harris Park and called it the best day of his life. He did not yet know whose names would be spoken there, or what his people had survived to give him a day like this one. He will understand it someday. We spent the whole afternoon teaching him without saying a word.

Kansas City’s Black Abolitionist Freedom School Is Working, and It Just Graduated a New Class of Organizers

By KC Defender Staff

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Education

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June 11, 2026

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.

Kansas’ Anti-Trans ID Law is Sending a Warning Across State Lines

By Tiffany Watts

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LGBTQIA2S+

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May 6, 2026

Under Senate Bill 244, Kansas requires driver’s licenses to reflect sex assigned at birth and invalidates about 1,700 licenses previously updated to match gender identity. Advocates say the law directly targets transgender residents, forcing them to carry identification that contradicts who they are and raising concerns about discrimination, safety, and barriers to voting.

KCUR Not Sure How to Feel About Ending Slavery

By Ryan S.

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Propaganda Observer

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April 24, 2026

Still workshopping its position on chattel slavery, the NPR affiliate invites you into the conversation.

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

By Mili Mansaray

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Aboltion

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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.

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

By Ryan S.

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Kansas City

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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.

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Abolition

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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.

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Abolition

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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.

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