The Kansas City Defender has officially launched Liberation Now, our first-ever video interview series and the latest expansion of the Defender’s mission to build radical, independent, Black-led media in the heart of the Midwest.
“Too many Black faces are being bought up in service to a genocide, in service to ethnic cleansing, in service to tax breaks for the rich.”
That line is from the debut episode of Liberation Now, the Kansas City Defender’s first-ever video show and the latest expansion of our mission to build radical, independent, Black-led media in the heart of the Midwest. It is the kind of line that would never survive a mainstream newsroom. Which is exactly why this show needed to exist.
There is virtually no progressive video news infrastructure across the states of Missouri and Kansas. And beyond that, across the entire midwest region, there are few Black-led video shows platforming radical perspectives, movement voices, and the people who are actually building power in their communities.
Even nationally, the landscape is almost as barren. You can count the outlets doing this work on one or two hands.
As we know, that void is no accident. Corporate media was never going to build this for us.
So we built our own.
Liberation Now will feature organizers, politicians, youth, scientists, academics, technologists, and more. The show is built to hold the kind of conversations that have no home anywhere else in this region and almost nowhere else in the country.
The debut episode features Hartzell Gray, one of the youngest congressional candidates in Missouri history and a democratic socialist running on what he calls “love and liberation” in Missouri’s 4th Congressional District.
Gray sits down with Defender Executive Editor Ryan Sorrell for an unflinching conversation about everything the political establishment would rather keep quiet.
Gray does not hold back. He talks about why he refuses money from AIPAC and the entire Israeli lobby, and reveals how a Black woman from AIPAC slid into his DMs before he even publicly announced his campaign.
He goes after the Democratic leaders who took the money he refused: “Minority Leader Jeffries takes money from Palantir. The same Palantir that installed JD Vance. The same Palantir that’s making money off of blowing up kids!”
He talks about his demand for cash reparations, and his refusal to hide that position from rural voters in a district that stretches across 17 counties. He lays out his case for universal healthcare, social housing, guaranteed union jobs, and a complete dismantling of the systems of racial capitalism that are killing working class people across Missouri and the country.
He goes even further, describing the lawsuit he filed against Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas after the mayor’s office allegedly called his newsroom to have him fired following a tenants’ rights direct action at City Hall.
He details how the mayor’s office then allegedly attempted to “offer him a “bribe him off” by offering seats on one of two city boards.
He calls for the abolition of the Department of Homeland Security, which he describes as a “department of domestic terrorism.” He challenges Hakeem Jeffries by name, calling out the weaponization of Blackness by Democratic leadership in service of empire and capital.
And he tells the story of his great-grandmother, Mama Silla, whose house on Tracy Avenue was taken from her for pennies on the dollar during the destruction of what is now known as Beacon Hill. He says he can no longer afford to live where her house used to be. When his mother asked him if he was willing to die for this movement, his answer was simple: they’re killing us right now.
Liberation Now is filmed on location and produced by the Kansas City Defender team. New episodes will be available on the Kansas City Defender YouTube channel.
Watch the full debut episode now.
