It’s always a good time to organize with your community, but the moment we’re living in calls for deep, principled collective struggle - and political education. Join us for an our virtual base meeting on April 15th at 6:30PM. We will host a discussion on the history of abolition from the antebellum period to now, led by Melissa Ferrer-Civil (@melissaferrerand ), an organizer and teacher at the Kansas City Defender’s B-Real Academy.
🔗 Register now at bit.ly/dkcvirtual (link in bio.)
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Over the next several months, we will be using our virtual base meetings to dive deep on aspects of organizing in order to learn and grow together. If you’re interested in learning more about organizing and building power together, this is a great time to tap in.
WE ALL DESERVE A SHOT TO WIN
Last Saturday, a coalition of 23 orgs launched "We All Deserve A Shot," a campaign to stop the city's plan to build a detention facility ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
While city officials have framed the facility as a short-term solution for event-related detention, the reality is this jail that will outlast the games by 20 to 30 years, built directly across from Frontier School Academy, which serves elementary, middle, and high school students.
Decarcerate KC member AJ Johnson shared: "I can think of 100 other ways $25 million could go into improving our communities: supportive services for our unhoused community, green spaces, housing for all, efficient public transportation, facility improvements for our schools."
Israel, a student at East High School, spoke to what the jail already means for young people nearby: "The World Cup jail makes students feel like we are being watched, that we are being targeted. Building this jail in our community and next to Frontier is a daily reminder that this is where they expect to put us."
The facility's contractor, Brown and Root Industrial Services, is co-owned by KBR, the same military contractor that built the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.
Joy Mart of Sunrise Movement KC shared: "The largest international sporting event and the largest immigration crackdown are happening at the same time in the same city...Our neighbors are being terrorized."
Full list of coalition members:
Advocates for Immigrant Rights and Reconciliation
Boots On the Ground Kansas City
Community Movement Builders - Kansas City Chapter
Decarcerate KC
Education Equity Collective
Entre Nos
Inner Space KC
Kansas City DSA
KC Tenants
KC Law Enforcement Accountability Project (KCLEAP)
Missouri Workers Center
Mobilized Motivation
Nafasi TransCare Collective
National Black United Front - Kansas City
Party for Socialism and Liberation Kansas City
Reale Justice Network
Rise Above Justice Movement
SCL Office of Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
St. Mark Church
Stand Up KC
Sunrise Movement KC
The Hive: The Indigenous Collective
COMMUNITY CARE IN ACTION 💥
In 2024, Decarcerate KC organized for and won the city’s FIRST pre-arrest diversion program?
Responding with Empathetic Alternatives and Community Health (REACH) is a pre-arrest diversion program in it’s pilot year that connects community members experience crises with trained community responders rather than the police. Community responders then connect community members to Care Navigators, who help them navigate both short and long-term quality of life concerns and connect them to resources that assist with housing, mental health, substance abuse, and employment assistance.
We recently recieved some numbers back from the Health Department on the success of the program in the first three months of 2026, which we’ve listed on the follow slides. The numbers are powerful - each one represents a community member who reached out to or received assistance from REACH, and 87% of active REACH clients have not been reincarcerated once engaged in the program.
Swipe to learn more about the impacts of the REACH program and our work organizing for alternatives to incarceration and policing - like a community resource center for Kansas City. DM to tap in! 💥
🗞️PRESS HIT: This great piece in @nationmag features the work of Decarcerate KC and other groups across the country organizing against criminalization, incarceration, and policing in World Cup host cities.
The article speaks to Decarcerate KC’s organizing against the World Cup Jail and the impacts that increased criminalization during the World Cup will have on Black, immigrant and working-class communities in Kansas City.
Decarcerate KC’s Executive Director Amaia Cook draws connections between Kansas City’s anti-loitering ordinance (passed in 2025,) the construction of the World Cup Jail, and the criminalization of unhoused people. Cook says “the law can be used during the World Cup ‘to lock up people and take them off the sidewalks, take them out of areas, in order to arrest them and eventually detain them.’”
Decarcerate KC and a coalition of 24 organizations are calling on the jail’s contractor, Brown and Root, to halt all construction of the World Cup Jail. You can sign our petition at bit.ly/worldcupjail, or at the link in our bio. ✍🏾✍🏾✍🏾
Coverage by @dolinar1972
KANSAS CITY IS NOT FOR SALE: PEOPLE OVER PROFIT
Last week, teachers, students, and workers joined together in a May Day action and marched with a coalition of local organizations led by Missouri Workers Center. Hundreds of people gathered to call attention to the mounting fascism against workers and fight for the Kansas City we deserve.
Michael, a teacher at a local high school and leader with Decarcerate KC, shared a powerful reminder of what’s at stake:
"We all deserve a shot... A shot means investment in our students, not new jails. A shot means immigrant families can walk outside without fear. A shot means unhoused neighbors are treated with dignity, not swept away like trash."
TAKE ACTION:
💥 SIGN THE PETITION against the World Cup jail: bit.ly/worldcupjail
💥DM US to find out how to get involved in the movement.
Decarcerate KC Black Power - Monthly Meeting
🗓️ This Sunday, May 3rd
⏰ 6 PM
The theme for our next few meetings is “alternatives to incarceration.” polz (he/they) @grrlboy222 and orion “southern” kendrick (he/him) @southernhxll will kick us off with an in-person workshop they created and led at Trans Joy Camp. This non-violent communication workshop is focused on transforming conflict into an opportunity for collaboration with those you share connection and community with.
The goal is to re-connect to our internal understanding of power and to remember how to wield our power wisely while remaining in connection to ourselves, within community.
This is a space for Black folks to come together, share experiences, and build collective power.
✍🏾 Sign up at the link in our bio to receive the location!
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✨ polz (he/they) is a spiritual practitioner, multidisciplinary artist, and organizer with Decarcerate KC. he previously organized with Trans Joy as the assistant camp director in 2025 and co-created/facilitated a series of non-violent communication workshops during that time. he joined Decarcerate KC shortly after. their practices are grounded in the ability to alchemize what feels limited, in order to create safe passageways into what is unknown. their core values of integrity, sustainability, and active care were formed from their lived experiences. in his day-to-day you can find him modeling, writing poetry, reading tarot, or hugging a tree.
✨orion “southern” kendrick (he/him) is spiritual worker who guides others to self liberation through creative activism and community advocacy. he is rooted deep in his southern beliefs of community, care, and accountability, and uses these principles as foundation in any of the work that he does for himself or others. he enjoys cooking, performing arts, and spiritual psychology. for his day job, he is a community health worker, and provides access to resources to communities that are underserved. he is a connector, an advocate, and a student of his people.
🚩 🚩🚩ADVOCATES IN KC WARN TRAVEL TO U.S FOR WORLD CUP 🚩🚩🚩
Decarcerate KC was recently featured in @thekansascitystar , alongside organizations like @airr_kc and @kansascitydsa , who signed a travel advisory warning of the U.S.’s “deteriorating human rights situation.”
Executive Director Amaia Cook spoke to the expected increase in policing, surveillance, and ICE detention during the 2026 World Cup this Summer, warning of the expansion of all forms of detention, including the involvement of federal troops from DHS and the National Guard.
Cook shared “We are really trying to focus on what makes Kansas City great, and that’s our community, and to challenge the national and local increase in detainment.”
With the recent reopening of the CoreCivic private prison as an ICE detention facility in Leavenworth, the federal government at one point eyeing KC as the location for a federal ICE detention facility, and the construction of the “temporary” World Cup Jail, there is a local ramp-up of detention. As abolitionists, we know “if they build them they’ll fill them,” meaning every detention cell they build, they will find a way to fill.
Decarcerate KC is spearheading a coalition of 24 organizations working to stop the construction of the World Cup Jail. You can still sign their petition at bit.ly/worldcupjail, or at the link in our bio. ✍🏾
⏰ Our No School virtual training call is happening in just THREE days! Register now to join us over Zoom on Monday, April 27, at 7pm: bit.ly/noMOschool
This May Day, young people and our families are joining the fight for a Missouri — and an America — that puts OUR futures over billionaires’ profits! This call is for students, parents, teachers, and anybody who is ready to take action next Friday, May 1.
We’re following the long legacy of working people and young people taking bold collective action to improve our lives. Ready to SHUT IT DOWN on the nationwide day of disruption? Join Monday’s call to learn how YOU can take part!
#MOworkers #WorkersOverBillionaires #noMOschool
MASS STUDENT WALKOUT 📢
On May 1st, students have committed to participating in a day of disruption to win a Kansas City that puts workers over billionaires, removes ICE from our communities, and puts and end to the construction of the World Cup Jail.
If you are interested in having your school represent to take part in this student walkout, please fill out this form: https://bit.ly/mostudentwalkout
We will follow up with a link to a student walkout call and further details on organizing a walkout.
This call is hosted by organizations including The Missouri Workers Center, Sunrise Movement KC, Missouri Jobs with Justice, and The Kansas City Defender for students, parents, teachers, and *anybody* who is ready to take action on May 1.
Register now to receive the Zoom link before the call! (Link also in bio.) https://bit.ly/mostudentwalkout
KANSAS CITY IS BUILDING A ‘WORLD CUP JAIL’ WITH YOUR MONEY. Here’s what you need to know. 📝
💥A growing coalition of community organizations, led by Decarcerate KC, is circulating a petition demanding that the World Cup Jail contractor Brown and Root, who has direct ties to Guantanamo Bay torture facility, halts all construction of the World Cup Jail.
💥Not only does the jail’s contractor have a history of human rights violations, but the jail’s location is less than 1 mile away from Frontier School of Innovation, an elementary, middle and high school, with majority Black and Latino students. Kansas City councilman Crispin Rea was the only sponsor for this jail site.
Swipe to learn more about why we firmly oppose the jail and how you can take action today. ➡️➡️➡️
✍🏾 Sign our petition at bit.ly/worldcupjail.
Introducing Volume 2 of Sunrise KC’s World Cup zine series. ⚽️
This series explores the impact of the World Cup on our community, from transit to policing to climate—not because we don’t enjoy soccer or community events, but because we can imagine a city that invests in its people over capital and presentation.
This issue of Not a Game to Us covers our city’s outsized investment in policing at the expense of our community. When an event as large as the World Cup comes to town, policing and violent technologies are ramped up in the false name of ‘public’ safety—to eventually be weaponized against us beyond the Cup.
We deserve to live in a city that invests in real safety, measured not in cuffs and cages, but in people’s needs being met and connected communities.
This zine was informed by the work of @decarceratekc and @kansascitydefender — both are organizations who are changing the narrative on what true safety and community care looks like. Swipe for ways you can plug into and support their work.
You can flip through a digital version at the link in our IG bio or join Sunrise KC to get a copy! Stay tuned for what’s next & look out for some around KC!
Kansas City is getting ready for the World Cup… but at what cost?
We sat down with the Black Council to break down a powerful 3-part teaching on what’s really happening behind the scenes—and why new “trailer jails” are part of the plan.
This one is deeper than a conversation… this is about truth, power, and protecting our communities.
Episode dropping soon. Stay tapped in. ✊🏾🔥
#DecarcerateKC #TheBlackCouncil #WeKeepUsSafe #NoNewCages #WorldCupKC BlackPower CommunityOverCages
