Justice Archives – The Kansas City Defender

Racial Capitalism Broke My Family. The Church Basement Put It Back Together.

By Andrew Hairston ● Black Liberation Theology ● September 21, 2026

Black people are growing lonelier as we age, and capitalism is the reason. In the first essay of the Defender’s Black Liberation Theology series, Minister Andrew Hairston, Baptist minister and co-chair of Austin DSA, writes about the family he lost in court, the Black socialist ministers who came before him, and why grief belongs in the pews and the organizing meeting rather than alone at home.

Latest in Justice

Exclusive Video: Horrifying Bodycam Footage Reveals Missouri Cop Firing 9 Shots at Unarmed Black Teen, Continues Shooting As Lifeless Body Lays on Ground

By Ryan S. ● Justice ● September 18, 2026

“Trying to find a Black kid at night, that’s always fun,” one of the two officers on the recording can be heard saying on body camera in the minutes before Lafayette County Deputy Kenneth Lewie shot nineteen-year-old Saveion McConnell to death on the shoulder of U.S. 50. The Kansas City Defender has obtained the footage, and the prosecutor’s memo that cleared Lewie. Neither says what the state has been telling the public.

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. ● Justice ● 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.

NUCLEAR GUINEA PIGS: How a Small Kansas Town Became the Site of a Nuclear Experiment to Power AI

By Ryan S. ● Investigation ● September 9, 2026

Artificial intelligence needs more power than America will give it, so the industry went looking for ground where nobody gets a vote. In Parsons, Kansas, where one in five residents lives in poverty, that means the first nuclear reactor in history designed to operate underground, drilled through the aquifer, on land where the Army still detonates waste explosives under federal permit.

Following Gloria Steinem’s Death, Black and Brown Feminists Ask: ‘Ain’t I A Woman?’

By Jon Jeter ● Justice ● September 9, 2026

She spent time on the CIA payroll and a lifetime near power. Gloria Steinem died wealthy, surrounded by family and friends, lionized in the New York Times. Assata died in exile. Black and Brown feminists ask whose liberation the icon’s bourgeois politics served.

While Cutting Buses for the Poor, KCATA Signed a Secret Deal to Harvest Their Faces for a Private Company’s AI

By Ryan S. ● Technology & AI ● August 25, 2026

A secret contract. No policy protecting riders’ data. The Defender obtained the deal KCATA signed to harvest bus riders’ faces for AI.

“There Was No Warning”: Nobody Wants to Call the Storm That Hit Wyandotte County a Tornado

By Vaughan Harrison ● Climate ● August 21, 2026

The People Said Let Us Vote. The Council Gave a Billionaire $600 Million Instead

By Silas Lee ● Justice ● August 21, 2026

Two days after city officials violently arrested a community leader, I sat in a chamber swarmed with police and watched eleven council members give a billionaire one of the biggest public deals this city has ever seen, without letting a single resident speak.

“I Can’t Breathe!” Black Community Leader Violently Attacked & Arrested For Resisting KC Billioniare Stadium

By Ryan S. ● Justice ● August 19, 2026

A Royals stadium worker was violently attacked and pinned to the ground at City Hall as Kansas City advanced the billionaire ballpark with no public vote.

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

By Ryan S. ● Abolition ● 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.