On The Vine: ‘Put on for my city’
I re-enter the world today (officially). It’s been two weeks since getting jabbed with the second weight-lifting dose of the vaccine (Moderna for inquiring minds. And actually, while I’m here, please get vaccinated. What are you playing at? It’s not cute?) and I’ve been slowly feeling the safety and freedom to reengage with my city. Really, for the first time since moving back late last year.
Over the weekend I showed up for my community and attended the AAPI Heritage Month celebration outside City Hall. Had a chat with Mayor Lucas and met the owner of Paradise Garden Club. I strolled through 18th and Vine’s first First Friday of the year, even ran into an old friend. Our people sure know how to have a good time. Y’all had three separate speaker systems set up all playing different jams.
This weekend (rain permitting), I’m planning to swing by friend of the newsletter Cafe Cà Phê for a pop up grad party they’re hosting at the shop in the West Bottoms. I also can’t wait to check out a book parade in Lakewood that a reader of this newsletter invited me to after seeking children’s books recommendations — I suggested “Salt in my Shoes,” “Just Right Stew,” “Dancing in the Wings,” and an all time favorite “The Ugly Duckling.”
“We try to support each other, and want to offer you our support,” she wrote to me in an email. “We have had walks to raise awareness of some neighbors not being treated well, put signs of unity in our windows, and signed a poster against Asian hate supporting Asian neighbors that have been harassed. While we all are impacted by the nonstop headlines, we hold each other up and hold each other close, and try to make our little corner of the world a little better.”
Gah! That is truly what I have missed. I’m stoked to be able to again engage with you all in person, to rediscover and put on for my city. I’ve waited more than a year for this feeling.
Around the block
Kansas City man is innocent in 1978 murders and should be released, prosecutors say
Kansas City Star reporter Luke Nozicka in 2020 investigated and reported on the case of Kevin Strickland, convicted in 1979 of a grizzly triple murder. There was just one problem though, Strickland wasn’t even there. In fact, not only was he not there, but Luke’s reporting found that the people who did carry out the shootings, as well as the one witness to survive the encounter, said, for decades, that Strickland in innocent.
Yet he has spent more than 40 years in prison.
This week, in part as a result of Luke’s 2020 reporting, the Jackson County Prosecutors Office, federal prosecutors in the Western District of Missouri, as well as Jackson County’s presiding judge, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and members of the team that convicted Strickland four decades ago have come to the conclusion that he should be exonerated.
“This is a profound error we must correct now,” Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said Monday.
The overwhelming support for Strickland’s release, an exceptionally rare occurrence, came in a letter made public Monday after his attorneys filed a petition urging the Missouri Supreme Court to free him immediately. In the letter, Baker and Dan Nelson, Jackson County’s chief deputy prosecutor, said the evidence used to convict Strickland as a teenager has since been “eviscerated.”
Read this too...
Kevin Strickland was convicted by all-white jury. That was by design, his lawyers say
Prosecutor apologizes to Kansas City man who she says is innocent in 1978 murders
It’s First Friday at KC’s 18th & Vine. Everybody’s invited, and we’re RSVPing yes
Last week was the first First Friday in Kansas City’s historic 18th & Vine jazz district. But it definitely shouldn’t be the last.
The vision is a beautiful thing: hundreds of Kansas Citians of all ages and races filling 18th Street from Vine Street to Highland Avenue, enjoying music, buying crafts and chowing down on barbecue.
That’s what Makeda Peterson, program director for Juneteenth KC, is hoping to see Friday as the historic 18th & Vine Jazz District hosts its first outdoor First Friday event of the year.
“We want to see the community come together here,” Peterson said. And it should. Wouldn’t it be great to have this First Friday start something special in this historic district?
In case you missed it...
Kansas City police made racist challenge coin with image of pimp: ‘It was repugnant’
New police chief named for Kansas City, Kansas: Karl Oakman, deputy chief at KCPD
‘KC has your back’: City celebrates May as Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month
Fired Olathe coach gives his version of racial slur incident. Accuser says it’s untrue
Beyond the block
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Israel and Palestine are on the verge of all out war as tensions rise, tensions that have been ebbing and flowing for more than 100 years. I won’t give a history lesson, if you’re looking for some knowledge you can start here. But the violence now is escalating. More than 67 Palestinians, including 16 children, have died since the start of the conflict on Monday, The New York Times has reported. And rockets fired by Hamas and its Islamist ally, Islamic Jihad, have killed at least six Israeli civilians, including a 5-year-old boy and one soldier.
Patrick Kingsley writes for The New York Times:
The sudden turn of events, which in less than two full days has escalated from a localized dispute in Jerusalem to full-scale aerial war over Gaza to widespread civil unrest, shocked Israelis and Palestinians alike, and left some of the country’s most experienced leaders fearing that the decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict was heading into new territory.
For years, leaders warned that a failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might eventually lead to fighting within the state of Israel itself, said Tzipi Livni, a veteran former cabinet minister and former chief negotiator in peace talks with the Palestinians.
“I don’t want to use the words ‘civil war,’” she added. “But this is something that is new, this is unbearable, this is horrific, and I’m very worried.”
The unrest has shifted the Palestinian conflict to world attention after several years in which attempts to resolve it had faded from both the global and domestic agenda. Once a centerpiece of international diplomacy, there have been no serious peace talks since the Obama administration.
Don’t miss this...
‘This Government Has Failed Us’: Anger Rises In India Over PM Modi’s COVID Response
COVID-19 continues to decimate India. On Wednesday there were 362,727 new cases reported and 4,120 deaths. Some citizens have begun to request the legalization of mercy killings in the country.
Lauren Frayer writes for NPR:
India’s health system has collapsed. There are shortages of hospital beds, medical oxygen, antiviral drugs and vaccines. People are dying in hospital parking lots, unable to get care, or at home, unable to get an ambulance. Many Indians say they feel abandoned by their government.
Citizens are increasingly directing their outrage at Modi himself. His pre-pandemic slogan, Aatmanirbhar Bharat — Hindi for “self-reliant India” — no longer resonates in a country now struggling to process tons of international coronavirus relief supplies landing daily at New Delhi’s airport.
For the culture
9 years out of the league, Tim Tebow is getting another shot while Colin Kaepernick still sits on the sideline
I once nearly ran into Tim Tebow on a corner in Manhattan, New York. It was somewhere on 8th Avenue between 39th and 42nd streets. That has nothing to do with this story really, but it was raining and he was wearing a v-neck t-shirt and I’ll just never forget that.
Anyway, the fact that Tebow, nine years out of the league — he flamed out by the way, more than half as many interceptions as touchdowns for his career — is on the verge of getting an NFL contract, is baffling (granted as a tight end, but still, he hasn’t played since 2012). It’s actually enraging when you consider Colin Kaepernick, who, lest we forget, took the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl, is still for all intents and purposes being blackballed from the league after his protest of kneeling during the National Anthem as a means to bring awareness to police brutality and Black men and women killed by law enforcement.
Someone please explain to me how racism isn’t at play here...
Check this out...
How a 28-year-old from Kansas City area got to play Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s dad
Disney takes ‘woke’ steps toward inclusivity, but sparks a conservative backlash
Phylicia Rashad Named As Howard University’s Dean Of The College Of Fine Arts
We out!
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This story was originally published May 13, 2021 at 12:45 PM.