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Radio Active Magazine
A locally produced program where activist groups in the Kansas City area present interviews, commentary, editorials, and other thought provoking content on a weekly basis.
Radio Active Magazine host Spencer Graves talks with three people from MORE2: their executive director, Lora McDonald, and community organizers, Ricee Cade and Cautia Wadood. MORE2 is Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equality, pronounced “MORE-squared” and sometimes written with the “2” as a superscript.
Cautia is working primarily on improving healthcare for MORE2 supporters in Missouri. Ricee is focusing more on police reform.
The discussion focuses primarily on their work pushing for police reform in Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas. MORE2 is part of a consortium of organizations working on these issues, They work to educate voters about local control of police and what it means about their inability to engage in democratic change of law enforcement.
In addition to encouraging people to register and vote, they are asking US Attorney General Garland to have the Civil Rights Division investigate claims of excessive use of force by the police departments of both KCK and KCMO. In Missouri, the Urban Council (Urban Summit, Urban League, NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and National Black United Front) authored a 2021-07-23 letter alleging abuse of power in 18 incidents in the last 8 years. These 18 include 8 men of color killed by police when they were not threatening law enforcement officers, 9 brutally beaten to the point that many are now permanently disabled, plus a 15-year old, who spent 3 weeks in the county jail before a police officer decided he was not guilty of the crime of which he was charged.
Lora also said that our police have killed on average 4 or 5 people a year for at least the past 15 years. Most people don’t know about these cases, because each time it happens, the police department sends out a slick press release that substantially distorts what actually happened, and the case may be just one blip in the nightly news. MORE2 has documented these cases through Sunshine requests and searching for lawsuit settlements.
