This past Sunday we hosted our first “Pop-Up Grocery Buyout” — we showed up unannounced at Wild Woody’s Food Center on 31st Street and stood at the cash register and paid for Black people’s groceries until we ran out of money.
These types of events are vitally important to us because we aren’t only a news outlet, we are a community organization that is actively committed to building directly alongside and showing love to Black people and our community.
The responses we received ranged from heartfelt to funny, some people were nearly brought to tears while others looked around before accepting the money because they thought it might be a YouTube prank. When people realized it was real they thanked us and even asked how to get involved with our organization.
This was our first in-person event with our new intern class. We do this to reinforce our commitment to the community and demonstrate to new folks on our team that building relationships and engaging with our community is always at the forefront of our work.
Shoutout to our family over at KC Discover who we partnered with on this event.
We did $500 this time, but we hope that with community support we will be able to increase the amount next time and also start doing Buyouts bi-weekly or even more frequently.
Want To Support? : If we raise $500 this week, we’ll do another Buyout this upcoming Saturday (hopefully with even more money). Do you want to donate towards our Pop-Up Grocery Buyout Fund? We accept cashapp at $KCDefender or Venmo at @kcdefender. You can also donate via our website here.