This event is proudly sponsored and supported by a generous contribution from the Urban League of Kansas City!
This winter, while much of the city nestled into their holiday traditions, The Kansas City Defender team gathered at Sunfresh on 31st & Prospect – launching one of our most inspiring mutual aid initiatives yet.
Our final Grocery Buyout of 2024 was as much about providing material relief to our people, as it was about building power, communal love, and the radical act of Black people just taking care of Black people.
“Her husband recently passed away, she’s been going through an unbelievable amount,” a beloved community member whispered to our team, gesturing toward a Black woman near the front of the store. “I know she’s really been needing some new shoes for the weather.”
Without hesitation, we extended $100.
That moment grounded us again in why we do this work. While our journalism and reporting is absolutely urgent, without going hand-in-hand with impacting our people’s material conditions, it has limited impact.
Every grocery buyout and free clothing program reminds us of this truth – that real liberation requires both consciousness and care, both information and intervention.
We intentionally chose Sunfresh for this reminder. As one of the last Black-owned grocery stores in Kansas City, its potential closure is a stark example of the food apartheid plaguing Black communities across our city.
But beyond that, this location – and our broader community–has experienced relentless criminalization and demonization over the past year. Our youth and our unhoused family members in the area in particular, have borne the brunt of these attacks.
Graciously, Sunfresh allowed us to host the event, and the Urban League of Kansas City stepped forward as a sponsor and major donor of the event.
“This aint no prank is it?” a young brother asked cautiously when we approached. The walls of suspicion crumbled when we assured him this was real – just Black people showing love to Black people.
His laughter filled the store as he pulled out his phone: “Yo The Kansas City Defender up here at Sunfresh blessing Black people!”
While our Buyouts are no strings attached support, often people show interest about our organization and we share information about our programs, our platform, and our vision for Black liberation.
We thank people simply for being Black, for existing, and for surviving. The tears that sometimes follow tell a story of a people starved not just of resources, but of recognition and of dignity.
To us, this is community power in action. This is the radical practice of love as liberation. On a holiday-eve, in a Black-owned store, in a neighborhood that power structures would rather forget, we demonstrate what we’ve always known: our people’s salvation lies not in politicians, the wealthy elite or the powerful, but in our collective care for each other.
Our final learning of 2024 was that liberation and resistance aren’t just in the streets. Sometimes it’s in a grocery aisle, in a pair of warm shoes, in the simple act of showing up for our people when systems fail them.
