One day last week, at the Occupy Kansas City site near the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, a dreadlocked and heavily pierced individual, who identified himself as Rocky, brandished a piece of cardboard that accused the Fed of treason. Among Rocky’s complaints was (I think) the obscure moment in rock history when Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies album was delayed at the printer because of concerns about the way currency was used in the artwork. It was actually the Secret Service that temporarily stopped the presses, but I got his drift.
Taking inspiration from the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, about 15 people showed up at Penn Valley Park at 9 a.m. Friday for Phase One of Occupy Kansas City. The cars and bicycles collected in a parking lot near the shipping containers that comprise sculptor John Salvest’s IOU/USA temporary installation. Val Baul, who hosts a show on KKFI 90.1, pulled up in the KC Strip trolley car that she drives and left the group with a megaphone. “I think the movement is about movement,” she explained, standing near her trolley. “I think people are tired of the status quo.”
Looks like a protest against the Smart Pawn shop, which sells guns and ammo at 63rd and Troost, is being planned for 5 p.m. October 10.
Miles Bonny posted the above image on his blog, adding that the info was taken from an e-mail from an employee of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City/St. Joseph. Tony's Kansas City posted a photo of the place with big letters spelling out "guns & ammo." Apparently, the place used to be a Hollywood Video.
The pawn shop is near three schools (Hogan Preparatory Academy, St. Peter’s and Benjamin Banneker Charter Academy of Technology). I can't stop shaking my head.
Surprising no one, the Westboro Baptist Church plans to picket the SlutWalk march in Kansas City on July 30. The mere mention of the word "slut" sent church officials reaching for the finger grease-stained pages of the Old Testament. Leviticus! Deuteronomy! Some other book of the Bible that only sex-obsessed fundamentalists read!
SlutWalk is an international response to a Canadian policeman's advice that women should avoid dressing like "sluts" to maintain their safety. The marches make the point that it's rapists who commit rape and that blaming the victims of sex crimes is unacceptable.
Wichita's ultraconservative billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch likely won't be amused by this video parodying the 1970s' "I'd like to buy the world a Coke." The video comes via the anti-Koch-brothers websites Koch Blocked and The Other 98 Percent. The commercial premiered last week -- projected on the wall of the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City. Why do I get the feeling that there's litigation brewing?
H/T: Mo Rage.
Because there's nothing like petty spite, House Republicans are getting rid of biodegradable cups in the Capitol lunchroom, replacing them with Styrofoam cups. Of course, there's going to be a link to Wichita's billionaire Koch brothers.
Via the Huffington Post: "Former Koch Industries executive George Wurtz owns WinCup, which supplies the Styrofoam cups now littering the building, following the House GOP's decision to phase out biodegradable cups from a Capitol lunchroom.
The loose collective of hackers known as Anonymous have two new Kansas targets in their cross hairs: billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch of Wichita's Koch Industries.
Last week, Anonymous took on Topeka's gay-hating Westboro Baptist Church. Anonymous announced on its website the plan to go after the Koch bros as a sign of solidarity with union workers protesting in Wisconsin. Anonymous said on its website: "The Koch brothers have made a science of
fabricating 'grassroots' organizations and advertising campaigns to
support them in an attempt to sway voters based on their falsehoods."
You can hear them chanting from blocks away: "We want justice! Prosecutors out! Aren't you fed up? We want closure! Ain't gonna take it no more."
Rachel Riley, head of an East Side political action committee called the 23rd Street Nonviolent Marchers, is leading a protest until 4 p.m. today on the steps of the Jackson County Courthouse. She seeks closure in her son Larry's murder. No one has ever been charged in the shooting, which took place in front of Truman Medical Center on October 30, 2003. Riley's not angry with the Kansas City Police Department, she says, but she's fed up with the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office.
Throngs of kids and parents swarmed the Sprint Center last night for the opening of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. But they had to pass by a different circus outside in order to make it into the Big Top.
A huge elephant, whose body was made of gray plastic tablecloth and whose legs were made of little humans, lumbered outside of the entrance with a sign on its back bemoaning the supposed cruelty done to his species by the circus. One woman brandished a piercingly sharp bullhook and announced that the instrument was used to train the elephants. "Do not, buy, the tickets!" shouted a young elefriend at the top of her lungs, her tiny voice punctuated by shallow breaths.
Protesters from as far away as Florida convened at the Honeywell plant construction site yesterday in south Kansas City. The protest was the culmination of a three-day gathering for the KC Nuclear Weapons Plant Conference.
The activists condemn the plant, which will replace one nearby and will be the first new nuclear weapons plant built in the United States in over 30 years. It will cost $4.8 billion, says the KC National Nuclear Security Administration/Honeywell Watch blog. The plant will manufacture non-nuclear parts for uber-nuclear weapons.
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The Gumball 3000 makes a pit stop in Kansas City tonight (Monday)
Fifty years ago this week, Continental Flight 11 fell out of the sky over Unionville
Guy Fieri, Henry Ford and Johnny Trigg to be inducted into the National Barbecue Hall of Fame
Johnson County boobaphobe wants Overland Park to disappear arboretum's Yu Chang sculpture
The Pitch Questionnaire with Historic Kansas City Foundation executive director Amanda Crawley
Clemson, rumored to be interested in the Big 12, opens up its relationship with the ACC
KC's bakeries turn up the flour power
New teen curfew goes into effect this weekend