They call this corner a crime hotspot. They never tell you the state sent tanks down this same street in April 1968 to crush the Dr. King assassination uprisings. Fifty-eight Aprils later, our Defender Mutual Aid Team came back with clothing, hygiene, and political education for the people the state abandoned.

One of the greatest Black orchestras in American history returns to the city that birthed it Thursday night, on the eve of International Jazz Day. KC’s own Lonnie McFadden, Deborah Brown, and Charlton Johnson take the stage with them. The kind of show people will tell their grandchildren they were at.

Still workshopping its position on chattel slavery, the NPR affiliate invites you into the conversation.

The Kansas City Defender launches Liberation Now, our first-ever video series, debuting with an interview so explosive it names AIPAC, Hakeem Jeffries, the Kansas City mayor, and the entire war machine in a single conversation. Missouri democratic socialist Hartzell Gray holds nothing back. Neither do we.

On Monday night, students packed every seat in the Schlundt Hall auditorium and lined the walls. More than a thousand watched on a livestream. They’ve toppled a Mizzou president before. They can do it again.

The measure would preserve one of the city’s biggest revenue streams and a budget model where public safety still overwhelmingly means police.

They took the land, the labor, and the minerals. They left behind an economy where working 89 hours a week earns you $77 a month, and you still owe your boss a cut for hiring you. The Plunder Papers follow the money from a Nairobi father to the extraction machine the West built and never turned off.

For Black women and girls in Kansas City, the struggle to be found often begins with having to be believed.