police brutality

March on KC 9/4 marks 47th anniversary of MLK’s March on Washington

The March on KC included PeaceWorks-KC leaders. “There were many denunciations of police violence and murders, many calls for the civil rights movement to be fully realized,” says Ann Suellentrop. Charles Carney highlights “the interlocking injustices” of police brutality, white supremacy, racism, and poverty.

Can Do

Ron Faust of PeaceWorks-KC begins his poem thus: I am what I am Stricken by a pang in the leg Halted in my march to a higher calling Tired by people who can’t get along I rest in the journey to remember John Lewis

PeaceWorks leaders speak up for monitoring KCK police

“We, as citizens of Kansas City, Kansas, have no trust in the KCK police department,” Christopher Overfelt testified July 13 at a budget hearing for the Unified Government of Kansas City, Kansas, and Wyandotte County. Overfelt and three others from the PeaceWorks Board, speaking at the hearing, called for independent oversight of police. And by July 16, the Unified Government commissioners passed a budget including a new watchdog over the police.

Open letter from PeaceWorks-KC

“We are compelled to cry out against the murder of George Floyd,” says this letter from PeaceWorks-KC. “We cry out against all prior and continuing acts of violence toward Black, Indigenous, and other persons of color.”

Choking Racism

Ron Faust, a former Disciples of Christ minister, wrote this poem May 31 on the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis by police May 25. Faust’s poem begins: It was so visible, so wrong/In contrast to the death snarl/Of an invisible pandemic attack When an officer pressed the wind pipe/Of George Floyd to his death Even after he pleaded, “I can’t breathe”/Which took the whole world’s breath away

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