Photo: David waves a substantial red, white and black flag, which flutters in the breeze, causing motion blue as the wind makes it vibrate. The red and white are in fairly broad vertical stripes.The black is in letters on a white field across the flag's center: "ABOLISH ICE" The flag is mostly backgrounded and backlit by twilight sky. On the photo's right, the tail lights of a red pick up truck are pulling away up Linwood Boulevard.

A new (to your reporter) flag.
#AlexPrettiVigil #KCVAMC
#KanasCity, #Missouri
1 February 2026
#LocalResistance #AbolishICE

Photo: Gary, a former active duty Marine, in a forest green hoodie and black Corps ball cap, holds a hand-made, torso-sized sign that reads, in multi colored lettering, "Renee Good | Say Her Name."

Photo: Tara holds a hand-made sign with a depiction of an Aladinesque lamp and red letters that read, "The Nursing Lamp of Life Shines for Renee & Alex." In the background, at the top of a hill, the mostly brick, 11 (or more) storied KCVA-MC catches the fading glow of the setting sun.

A couple of new (to your reporter) signs.
#AlexPrettiVigil #KCVAMC
#KanasCity, #Missouri
1 February 2026
#LocalResistance #AbolishICE

Photo: Six members of the KC Handmaid Army, in their red regalia, stand with a speaker before the rest of the vigil attendees. Four of them hold sign reading (l-r): "Trans Right are Human Rights" "Hey! News Flash! Trump and GOP | No Due Process Deportation Is Human Trafficking" "SHAME" and "Fight For Good" with an illustration of something similar to an old Slurpee[™] cup, except it's labelled "FUCK ICE."

The KC Handmaid Army was out in force at the …
#AlexPrettiVigil #KCVAMC
#KanasCity, #Missouri
1 February 2026
#LocalResistance #AbolishICE

Photo: Thomas, in overalls, leans across the Respect MO Voters' table to offer a pen to a new recruit, in a white puff jacket and jeans, while John, in a yellow jacket, waits to pick up his clipboard and petition to start soliciting signatures. Respect MO Voters describes itself as "volunteer-led campaign to pass a ballot initiative for a state constitutional amendment that will BAN politicians from: Overturning initiatives that voters have already passed. Attacking citizens' ability to use the initiative process. Deceiving voters with confusing ballot language." You can find more information about this campaign here: https://respectmovoters.org/

Just to the west of the main gathering, Thomas and John, of Respect MO Voters, and a new recruit to the cause prepare to solicit signatures in support of a citizens' initiative to protect the citizens' initiative process.
#AlexPrettiVigil #KCVAMC
#KanasCity, #Missouri
1 February 2026

Photo: Corliss, with short steel grey hair being blown by the wind and glasses and smile, in a navy blue puff jacket, holds a white poster board sign affixed to a wooden dowel and steadied by a white-gloved hand and its lower corner. She is standing at the curb of a very busy street clogged with traffic controlled by the signals that rise over her right-hand shoulder (on our left). Office buildings provide the background for the other half of the photo (on our right). Her sign reads "BAN ICE (in red) AND PROJECT 2025 (in black)" in block letters. She leans out from behind it to share a resolute smile.

Anywho. It all comes down to this.
As our favorite Pope Hat ( @kenwhite.bsky.social ) observes, "ICE should be ripped out and woodchippered root and branch."
ICE Out for Good
Stand with Minneapolis Vigil
Mill Creek Park, #KanasCity, #Missouri
10 January 2026
#LocalResistance, #DefundICE (8 of 9)

Photo: The back side of a substantial sign composed of white poster board duct taped to a yardstick and reinforced with a smaller rectangle of recovered and repurposed brown corrugated cardboard box affixed with two strips of duct tape and several more strips of clear packing tape. Printed on the cardboard reinforcement is the declaration: "This box is now | Made With | Less Material" with an additional message encouraging anyone who saw the box to scan a code to go to "[WebRetailerWhoCapitulatedToFascism].com/thisbox" to read a self-serving message from that retailer. The construction is lifted aloft over the heads of a large crowd of capped heads, also seen from behind, and a backdrop of trees, hillside, a hospital complex and some apartment buildings. The person lifting the sign is Jeanne, who laughs but also wants you to know that she is "not an Amazon customer, not a Prime customer, NONE of that. It's just a piece of cardboard I found." I don't know why, really, but this eco-friendly sign and Jeanne absolutely cracked me up. Thank you, Jeanne.

Photo: Two brunettes, one in a dark jacket in sunglasses and one in a tan jacket without eyewear (Dani and Lisa) pause to to pose, smile, and offer, from a white cardboard box they're carrying, "FREE * Stickers * Buttons * Magnets [RESIST]." The box has a few more stickers, buttons, and magnets left, but it's running low. They've been offering them to other demonstrators as they've walked through the crowd that surrounds them. The box is balanced on a larger foamcore poster board sign that reads, across its visible bottom half, "ICE IN MY STREETS?" next to a big red no-vote "X." How can that not lift your spirits? Thank you, Dani and Lisa.

So, there are, in times of community action, spirit-lifting moments.
ICE Out for Good
Stand with Minneapolis Vigil
Mill Creek Park, #KanasCity, #Missouri
10 January 2026
#LocalResistance, #DefundICE,
#HumansOfBlueSky (7 of 9)

Photo: Brown-haired Heather stands with a friend and holds in gloved hands a large hand-lettered sign, blue letters on white poster board with black musical notes, She looks over the top edge of the sign and smiles. The sign reads, "Anybody here seen my old friend John Renee | Can you tell me where she's gone?" (The name "John" has been struck through and replaced with Renee.) It's an lyric excerpt from the song "Abraham, Martin and John" by Marvin Gaye that laments the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln; John F. Kennedy; Martin Luther King, Jr.; and Robert F. Kennedy, written in 1968, following the murders of the latter two. The last line of the song is, " I just looked around and they were gone." Behind the pair, four or five more demonstrators are partially in view. Across the street, the eastern elevation of a two-story Country Club Plaza mixed-use (shops on the first floor and offices above) tan stucco building meant to evoke Spanish architecture provides a backdrop.

Photo: Bearded Todd (wearing two hats: a beanie under a ball cap) and Smiling Diane (wearing a thermal headband) (both of them in sunglasses), both hold signs: hand-made, simple and tidy graphics and text. Todd's sign reads, "NO HUMAN | IS ILLEGAL" and the two lines of text are separated by the word "ICE" is overlaid with the international symbol for NOT HERE (circle with a slash through it). Dianne's sign reads, "NO ICE | RESIST | FASCISM" and is decorated with a melting blue ice cube. I complimented Todd on pulling off the two-hat look effortlessly (it's not easy.) He said he had to do it to "keep his bald head warm," and he bared his head to prove it. While it's true you wouldn't expect a hairless top on a head with that beard, I would have taken your word for this, Todd. That's not something I've ever heard a man lie about. Diane's shirt features the deadhead logo and reads, in the deadhead font of a generation that preceded hers, probably by some decades, "MAKE AMERICA GRATEFUL (AGAIN)." (The word "again" is hidden by her sign in the photo. Just trust me. It's there. I did not know, when I took the picture, that Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, passed away this same day. I don't know if Diane knew either. But anyway … "Sleep In the stars "Don't you cry "Dry your eyes on the wind" – Robert Hunter

Sad Songs Remembered
Other demonstrators reminded me of music.
ICE Out for Good
Stand with Minneapolis Vigil
Mill Creek Park, #KanasCity, #Missouri
10 January 2026
#LocalResistance, #DefundICE,
#HumansOfBlueSky (6 of 9)

Photo: Christina and Linh stand against a backdrop of buildings on the east edge of the Country Club Plaza with other demonstrators walking about around and behind them. She wears a brown knit cap and he is bare-headed. Both wear sunglasses and each holds a sign that has been lettered by hand in black ink on white poster board. Christina's sign displays the words "Insecure," "Coward," and "Executioner," stacked so the initial large cap letters of each, outlined in red, spell out "ICE" vertically. Linh's sign displays in serif letters a quotation from George Orwell's dystopian /1984/ that has seen a lot of use since the murder of Renee Nicole Good and the MAGA regimes bizarre insistence that the several videos of her final moments show things that simply are not visible in any of those videos: "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." Several more demonstrators are visible standing around them.

Photo: Sarah – with long auburn hair escaping a black knit cap, glasses, and a black N90 mask – holds a hand-lettered sign, black & red ink on white posterboard. It quotes Margaret Atwood's dystopian /The Handmaid's Tale/: "Don't let the Bastards Get you down," with the word "Bastards" in red and the others in black. (The flip side of sign reads, "Nolite te Bastardes Carborundum," also from Atwood's novel, in which Atwood used it as a sort of inside joke, revived from her high school Latin class, faux Latin that, with a bit of a stretch reaches toward meaning, "don’t let the bastards grind you down.)

Dystopian Reflections
Recent events reminded these demonstrators of dystopian novels.
ICE Out for Good
Stand with Minneapolis Vigil
Mill Creek Park, #KanasCity, #Missouri
10 January 2026
#LocalResistance, #DefundICE,
#HumansOfBlueSky (5 of n)

Photo: Jacques – of the salt'n'pepper beard and rolled, polar fleece beanie cap – peers out from behind a hand-lettered, repurposed cardboard sign that reads, "DEFUND ICE." The stripes of a frayed U.S. flag are visible behind his left shoulder. Other demonstrators are visible behind his right.

Photo: Joe, in shades and a Navy Seals ballcap, looks over the top of the hand lettered on white poster board sign that he carries, which reads, "TRUMP MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN | MOVE TO NORTH KOREA." I mean," he says, "since he likes dictators like Kim Jong Un so much." Kim Jong Un is the "the third supreme leader of North Korea, and also serves as the president of the State Affairs Commission and the chairman of the Central Military Commission (per Wikipedia)" and he and Trump have exchanged, in Trump's own words, "love letters." Presumably not as romantic as the birthday card Trump famously sent to Jeffrey Epstein, but still. Other protesters and a bit of an LGBQT+ flag are visible immediately behind Joe, and apartment buildings populate the horizon.

🎼 "People Try To Put Us Down" 🎵
But Jacques and Joe represented my generation admirably.
ICE Out for Good
Stand with Minneapolis Vigil
Mill Creek Park, #KanasCity, #Missouri
10 January 2026
#LocalResistance, #DefundICE,
#HumansOfBlueSky (4 of n)

Photo: Walt makes, by hand, very nice signs, lettered in white (usually) block letters with drop shadows on repurposed brown cardboard. The sign he holds today atypically contains an image: the face and upper torso of an ICE agent, all masked up and ready for another day on the streets of Fallujah (or Belton). The sign's text reads, "FASCISM | STARING YOU IN THE FACE." Walt has long light grey hair that is usually topped with a wide-brimmed leather hat ("That's my trademark," he says.), but he's not wearing that today ("It's too windy," he says.).

Photo: Dan (but always going to be Danny, to me) has been showing up since last March. He is the only person in this trio that I can guarantee you fully appreciates the Usual Suspects reference. His sign includes a picture we've all seen by now of Renee Nicole Good, pregnant, on a beach, in a ruby red dress, smiling. The text on the sign reads "Renee was Good" across the top and "ICE is BAD" across the bottom.

Photo: The perpetually effervescent John McCrae of Respect Missouri Voters smiles for the camera. He's used to me taking his picture by now. He and other Respect Missouri Voter volunteers were in attendance soliciting signatures for their petition to get an initiative on the ballot for a state constitutional amendment that will BAN politicians from: Overturning initiatives that voters have already passed. Attacking citizens' ability to use the initiative process. Deceiving voters with confusing ballot language. Find more information here: https://respectmovoters.org/

Familiar Faces (aka, the Usual Suspects)
ICE Out for Good
Stand with Minneapolis Vigil
Mill Creek Park, #KanasCity, #Missouri
10 January 2026
#LocalResistance, #DefundICE (3 of n)

Photo: Angela, in a checkered knit cap, stands backlit by the sun in a park across the street from a collection of buildings of Moorish architecture. She carries a variation on the U.S. Flag, with black and grey stripes and black stars on a grey field and "RESIST." (including that period) emblazoned across it. Behind her, a hundred-plus other demonstrators tarry as the protest disperses and the low-hanging sun glows brightly through her flag.

At least 1,000 Kansas Citians turned out this sunny but breezy and cool Saturday to protest the murder of #ReneeNicoleGood in Minneapolis this past week.
ICE Out for Good
Stand with Minneapolis Vigil
Mill Creek Park, #KanasCity, #Missouri
10 January 2026
#LocalResistance, #DefundICE (1 o n)

Travis Kelce walked into the Kansas City Chiefs' Thanksgiving clash against the Dallas Cowboys without Taylor Swift, setting off a wave of separation buzz across social media.
#TravisKlece #KanasCity #Dallas #TaylorSwift

Read More: www.ibtimes.co.uk/travis-kelce...

Day two of a great mash up round robin with #FountainCity. Guest skaters from Illinois, Jersey, Colorado, Tulsa, East Coast join #KanasCity #rollerderby skaters.

Lit & Libations Great Gatsby Edition Event in Pleasant Valley, MO by KC Book Beat and 7 others on Saturday, November 8 2025 with 373 people interested and 41 people going. 14 posts in the discussion.

I am stoked to be an author at the Lit & Libations Great Gatsby Edition in Pleasant Valley, MO.

Can't wait to see everyone there!

#KanasCity #booksky #readingcommunity

www.facebook.com/events/16635...

Volunteer Fair May 31 2025 1 to 4 PM. 2nd Presbyterian Church 318 E 55th Street KCMO in Brookside) Hosted by Boots on the Ground Midwest

#kanascity

Color caricature of me and my dog Milo. Made by Kansas City’s own Christopher Fenton; owner of FentonCreative. He is selling customs. I requested this for Milo’s 13th birthday tomorrow (May 7) Chris did above and beyond ❤️ #Dogsofbluesky #localart #caricature #kanascity #drawing #dogmom #Milo #FNTN

Score Prediction #buffalobills #buffalo #billsmafia #billsnation #nfl #nflplayoffs #superbowl #kanascity #kc #kanascitychiefs @chiefs @buffalobills @nfl @fansofbuffalo

#JimCantore Experiences #Thundersnow In #KanasCity While Covering Winter Storm
#Blair

youtu.be/FVJjCeOjVmc?...

Kansas City Prepares For The Winter Solstice: What You Need To Know As winter continues to grasp Kansas City, its people are getting ready for the shortest day of the year: the winter solstice on December 21, 2024.

Kansas City Prepares for the Winter Solstice: What You Need to Know
Read More: theoriginalfact.blog/kansas-city-...
#WinterSolstice #solstice #kanas #kanascity