Poetry for Personal Power, based in Wyandotte County, Kansas, will host the Rite of Joy conference Oct. 14-15 at Unity Village. The event will focus on Black communities’ mental health and resilience.
Mili Mansaray
Mili Mansaray is The Beacon’s former housing and labor reporter and began covering the beat in 2022. She’s documented the concentration of housing ownership by corporate interests and explored challenges to Kansas City’s homeless shelter capacity. She received training through the Solutions Journalism Network’s labor cohort. She has a bachelor’s degree in digital journalism and Africana studies from New York University. She also studied abroad in Argentina. She was a business reporting intern for the Dow Jones News Fund. She was an audio intern for The Urban Scene with Don Frierson on WGCV 105.1 in Columbia, South Carolina. She has lived in Kansas City since 2022.
Posted inHealth
For Black Kansas Citians seeking therapy, having a Black counselor makes a difference
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that Centurion Johnson is a co-owner of Journey Embraced. Cleveland Chatmon has had his fair share of experience with white counselors. When he had therapy with a white female counselor, he felt out of place sharing his issues with her. “Not having the comfortability with her […]
Posted inEconomics
Without live gigs, Kansas City jazz musicians get creative
Local jazz musicians have lost a large part of their income to the continued spread of COVID-19, which has pummeled the live music industry, leaving them to look to new ways of making money.
Posted inCivic Engagement
For trans and nonbinary voters, photo ID requirements can discourage participating in elections
In Kansas and Missouri, legal name changes and gender marker alterations can be long, tedious and costly processes, discouraging many trans and nonbinary voters from casting a ballot and barring the most financially disadvantaged from participating in elections altogether.
Posted inEconomics
As COVID presses on, small businesses in Kansas City get creative to survive
As COVID-19 continues to spread in Kansas and Missouri, many small businesses have had to swiftly pivot their business plans to avoid shutting down. And some now see their prepandemic operations as a thing of the past.
Posted inEconomics
In the midst of a pandemic, tenants face the looming threat of eviction
The end of the Jackson County, Missouri, eviction moratorium in response to COVID-19 has highlighted issues around access to low-income housing in Kansas City, Missouri. Meanwhile, Kansans on the other side of the state line have more protections.