The Kansas City Defender

10/31/2025

EMERGENCY RESOURCES: KC DEFENDER SEEKING FOOD & CLOTHING DROP-OFF THIS SATURDAY

The Defender’s Free Food & Clothing Program is seeking coats, hoodies, socks (new), and blankets — to prepare our people for the dangerous and even lethal cold weather coming up this winter.

📍 Drop off your donations this weekend at Willa’s Bookstore:

When: Saturday, 2pm-5pm
Where: 5549 Troost Ave.

WHAT TO DONATE (CLOTHING 👕🧣🧤🧦)

-Outerwear (Jackets, coats, Hoodies, Hats, gloves)
-NEW socks, NEW underwear
-Hand Warmers and Toe Warmers
-Warm Weather Essentials: (blankets, and sleeping bags)
-Personal Hygiene & Supplies (Tampons, wet wipes, narcan, diapers, hand sanitizer)
-Baby & toddler items: Diapers, Unopened formula, etc.

WHAT TO DONATE (FOOD)
-Shelf-stable proteins: tuna/chicken pouches, peanut butter, canned beans, lentils.
-Meal-in-a-minute: hearty soups/stews, chili, pasta + sauce, instant rice pouches.
-Budget stretchers: rice, pasta, oats, cooking oil, bouillon, salt-free spice blends.
-Produce that keeps: canned veggies (low-sodium), tomatoes, fruit in 100% juice, applesauce, UHT milk/alt-milk.
-No-cook options: pull-tab cans, crackers, nut/seed mixes, tortillas, fruit cups.
-Culturally requested staples: masa/hominy, jasmine/basmati rice, coconut milk, collard greens, adobo/creole seasoning.
-Special-diet picks: low-sodium/low-sugar, whole-grain, gluten-free pasta/crackers, lactose-free or alt milks.
-Essential non-food (SNAP won’t cover): menstrual products, diapers, soap, toothpaste, detergent pods, TP.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM & WHY NOW ❤️

Each year, thousands of Black, poor and unhoused community members face life-threatening risks due to freezing weather. In one of the richest countries in the world, people die simply because they lack a coat or warm socks.

This is heightened even more during the Trump/republican-led government shutdown crisis! We refuse to let that happen in our community.

Our Free Clothing Program is a means where people unable to buy decent clothing or lacking funds to buy good quality, stylish clothing can outfit themselves at absolutely no expense.

Most importantly, this program exist to share love and resources with our Black community members, as we grow our Mutual Aid network.

We look forward to seeing you there! Please DM us if you have any questions or if you’d like to partner!

10/14/2025

Should Kansas City give millions to one of the world's most dangerous war criminal companies? 🤔

The company Mayor Q & City Council want to contract for a World Cup human caging facility is co-owned by KBR— the company that built Guantanamo Bay concentration camp.

Here are just a few of the horrifying things KBR has done 👇🏾

🛑 In 2008, the families of twelve men sued KBR and its subcontractors for human trafficking after KBR lured them to Iraq under false pretenses. One was beheaded with a hunting knife, eleven others executed. All the executions were filmed and sent to international media.

🛑 A 19-year-old woman at her fourth day on the job alleges she was drugged and gang-raped by KBR employees, then held hostage in a shipping container under armed guard to silence her.

🛑 KBR has been sued in a class action lawsuit for poisoning over 100,000 people, many who were U.S. troops. A jury found KBR knowingly exposed the U.S. soldiers to such deadly chemicals and awarded them $85 million in damages.

🛑 A class action lawsuit brought against the company says they “burned every type of waste imaginable.” Including human corpses, biohazard materials, lithium batteries, petroleum, medical waste, asbestos insulation, pesticides, polyvinyl chloride pipes, animal carcasses, dangerous chemicals and hundreds of thousands of plastic water bottles.

MAYOR & CITY COUNCIL VOTE TOMORROW

Two competing ordinances—250889 and 250890—go before Kansas City Council’s Finance Committee TOMORROW October 14th. Both would authorize contracts with Brown & Root to construct a human caging facility before international soccer fans arrive for the 2026 World Cup.

Stop Human Rights Abusers From Coming to KC

However, Decarcerate KC & community members are making a CALL TO ACTION to show up at 10AM at City Hall to give testimony on why the city shouldn’t build a world cup jail.

SHOW UP TOMORROW Tuesday, Oct 14 @ 10AM City Hall

WEAR GREEN (show solidarity)

BRING FRIENDS

GIVE TESTIMONY (Optional)

DM US “✊🏾” IF YOU WANT TO ATTEND TOMORROW

10/08/2025

10/03/2025

FREE DINNER FOR KC BLACK MOMS THIS MONDAY! 🔥

The KC Defender & District Fish & Pasta are linking up to provide 150 free dinners for Black moms to kickoff Black Feast Week 2025. EVENT STARTS AT 6PM! FIRST COME FIRST SERVE.

ABOUT THE EVENT

Last year, to celebrate the launch of KC’s first ever Black Feast Week, we also wanted to celebrate the Black mommas of all ages who hold our communities together. It’s truly the least we can do to thank you all. WE LOVE YOU!

This Monday we are running it back! All you have to do is show up at 6pm (1664 E 63rd St, Kansas City, MO 64110), and you get a free dinner.

The Defender is powering this effort, but we couldn’t do it without the generous partnership of District Fish & Pasta, who is donating a HUGE amount of resources to enable this beautiful event to happen.

Black Feast Week runs from Oct. 6th-12th.

If you know a Black mom, please send this post to her!

09/17/2025

Less than a month after KCPD dismissed Black community warnings, a 22-year-old Black woman who was kidnapped from Prospect Avenue in Kansas City escaped a serial killer’s basement torture dungeon 30 minutes outside of KC in Excelsior Springs.

This horrifying, explosive story that The Defender broke in September 2022 sparked international headlines and continues to reverberate today, as Black women and youth continue to vanish in what many describe as an epidemic.

Now, our investigation continues.

For nearly three years, we’ve tracked court hearings, combed records, walked neighborhoods, and spoken with families who’ve been ignored.

As the trial of the man who was abducting Black women in Kansas City approaches, our years of reporting are culminating in the launch of a new project.

Investigative reporters Vaughan Harrison, creator of the Fountain City Files podcast, and Mili Mansaray, senior editor at The KC Defender, are coming together to launch Fountain City Files: Vanishing Point.

This limited series, set to be released in December, will uncover the wider crisis of missing Black women in Kansas City, the institutions responsible, and the people fighting back.

If you or someone you know has gone missing and would like to share a tip or testimony, please reach out to [email protected]

Check out our Instagram for the full story https://www.instagram.com/p/DOo_1TECbvg/?img_index=1

08/19/2025

Last week, the last full service grocery store for miles surrounding 31st & Prospect closed its doors, plunging thousands of poor and Black folks further into an already existing food desert.

But rather than waiting on City Hall for a solution, The People have decided to fight back.

Today, The Defender, KC Black Urban Growers, the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Association, and every major Black farm in the KC metro, are uniting to launch the Hamer Free Food Program, a first-of-its-kind Black-led mutual aid program that distributes fresh produce from Black farms straight to Black families within a one mile radius of 31st and Prospect at ZERO COST.

WANT TO VOLUNTEER OR RECEIVE A FREE FOOD BOX? FILL OUT THIS 30 SECOND FORM: https://forms.gle/QwzkKBCWH211aW2T9

What is the Hamer Free Food Program?

Named in honor of Fannie Lou Hamer, often heralded for her Black liberation & civil rights activism, she is less known for her pioneering role in founding the Freedom Farm Cooperative in 1969.

The Hamer Free Food Program purchases produce directly from Black farms including: Young Family Farm KC, Global One Urban Farming, Sankara Farm, Ophelia’s Blue Vine Farm, and Pearl Family Farm, and the program is coordinated by KC Black Urban Growers, Ivanhoe, and The Defender.

In our September-October phase one rollout, we will deliver free boxes packed with nutrient-dense produce to 50 households within a mile of 31st and Prospect, prioritizing Black elders and neighbors facing mobility barriers after the Sun Fresh closure.

The Defender raised funds to purchase food directly from Black farmers at a fair rate for our phase 1 rollout. This enabled our program to schedule purchases of roughly 667 pounds of fresh produce for direct distribution, while injecting direct reliable cash-flow into Black growers’ income.

SEND THIS FORM TO SOMEONE WHO WOULD SIGN UP FOR A FREE FOOD BOX, MUST LIVE IN 1 MILE RADIUS OF 31ST & PROSPECT

Fill out this 30-sec form: https://forms.gle/QwzkKBCWH211aW2T9

07/12/2025

Missouri’s oldest Black bookstore flips its last page today, and you’re invited to help write the sequel.

From 2-8 PM @ 5547 Troost, snag Black books for $5 paperbacks / $15 hardcovers.

Come through for FREE soul-food plates, 2 raffles, and an open-mic of stories with Ms. Willa, her fam, and the Freedom-Fighter crew.

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THE BACKGROUND

For more than 40 years Ms. Willa Robinson an 84-year-old Book Collector, Freedom Fighter & Visionary has kept Willa’s Books & Vinyl alive on Troost Avenue.

It is Missouri’s oldest and longest-standing Black-owned bookstore, a living archive of 20,000+ works, including first-edition Frederick Douglass volumes and books printed in 1863, the very year our ancestors seized emancipation.

Last year when she was 1 week from being forced to sell everything to non-Black collectors due to gentrification and her rapidly declining health, The Kansas City Defender stepped in and began covering her rent and also mobilized 40 volunteers to catalog her 20,000 book collection.

Now she is passing the torch to us and we will be converting her storefront into a free public archive, mutual-aid hub, Freedom School site, and the Defender’s first brick-and-mortar HQ.