Kansas City spent a year telling the world to watch.
The host-city banners went up downtown, the tourism ads ran in a dozen languages. We were told that businesses would flourish and diversity celebrated. The promise was that the eyes of the world would be on Kansas City this summer, on the stadium, the crowds, the show, which in many respects has indeed been the case. Yet the underbelly of this spectacle was something community members from Advocates for Immigrants Rights and Reconciliation, the rapid response network known as AIRR, and Decarcerate KC among others named and warned about long before the first whistle.
That another set of eyes would invade our city, the eyes of America’s fascist gestapo.
As I write this, ICE agents are running a manhunt across the metro that local television has scarcely named. Raids. Terror operations. Viciously brutal scenes of community members looking up to see agents smashing their window and ripping them from a vehicle to be trafficked…