Kansas City Anarchist Black Cross is a prisoner support and solidarity affinity group within the loosely federated anti-repression network of northwest Missouri and northeast Kansas. The Kansas City Anarchist Black Cross exists to contribute to the defense of social movements working against oppression and for self-determination. Located on the banks of the Missouri river separating Missouri and Kansas, we offer support and stand in international solidarity with various social movement, politicized, anarchist and indigenous prisoners, and will focus our efforts on those stolen from us by the courts in the middle western section of the continent once known as Turtle Island and now referred to as the United States.

Since the earliest years of the 20th Century, the mission of the Anarchist Black Cross has committed to the defense of mass movements working for liberation from state and capitalist domination. For over one hundred years decentralized groups have provided support to those arrested for actively engaging in ending class relations. Former prisoner and anarchist, Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin claims himself the first U.S. prisoner to receive support from a U.S. Anarchist Black Cross in the 1970s. Beginning in 2004, in what could be considered the third wave of Anarchist Black Cross support in the wake of the Green Scare, anarchist organizations came under heavy assault after a full scale FBI investigation was launched to coincide with the security efforts protecting the Democratic National Convention that summer in Denver, CO.

The resulting FBI investigation included the Denver Anarchist Black Cross, the Great Plains Anarchist Network and dozens of anarchist organizers active in the Midwest. The repression continued to spread and by 2007, Kansas Mutual Aid were prohibited by the Kansas Bureau of Investigations and FEMA from giving aid to tornado survivors in Greensburg, KS. By 2008, the FBI was setting up entrapment cases against protesters at the Republican National Convention resulting in federal prison time. By 2012, the FBI had spread their entrapment cases far and wide with the use of agent infiltrators claiming terrorists walked among Chicago’s anti-NATO movement and Cleveland’s Occupy movement; both ending with multiple prison sentences. Another disturbingly repressive trend in 2012, was the use of grand jury arrests without charges with the intention of breaking people and turning out snitches that blanketed the Pacific Northwest and New York City anarchist communities. This method continues to fail as people continue to refuse participation in witch hunts.

The beginning of the 21 century is frontloaded with state repression of burgeoning social movements and it was felt the time was far past due to solidify methods of defense within our communities. Under the historical banner of the Anarchist Black Cross is one of many strategic ways to proceed with this defense. Thus, the Kansas City Anarchist Black Cross was formed from a smattering of anti-repression groups in late 2013.

The state deploys numerous official and ‘back channel’ methods in attempts to destroy liberation movements. We support the political prisoners and prisoners of war they create, we organize against white supremacists and attacks by neo-fascists, we can take on the roles of security and physical defense at the barricades all while organizing self-defense and legal defense as the backbone of our work.

As we actively confront the damage inflicted by the state and capitalist relations, we also seek effective solutions to internal problems that can tear movements apart. Also in our aim is to end the reproduction of state violence that affects our own interpersonal relations, racists, misogynists, neo-fascists of all stripes and other masked forms of domination will find no comfort in the movement for liberation. Solidarity is our principle but it will not be used as a shield to protect the abusive or the privileged.

A better world is possible and we’re still trying to figure out what it will look like. We’re still working to understand how to provide the best support possible within our networks and beyond, and to maintain our movement as a legitimate and concrete deterrent to state, capitalist, white supremacist, and patriarchal coercion. #nodads is our principle of solidarity.

Any questions, concerns, comments, ideas, or how to collaborate and participate, please contact us at our blog kansascityabc.wordpress.com

our fan page at facebook.com/closemissouriprisons

or on twitter @KCABC

Follow @ABCKC