Tag: kansas city

The Cafe Cà Phê team is serving up hella good coffee, culture, and AAPI inclusion.

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By Kelcie McKenney

For Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, we teamed up with The Pitch to highlight the AAPI team members who make Kansas City’s first Vietnamese coffee shop Cafe Cà Phê possible. Stick around this month to hear their stories.

Cafe Cà Phê makes a damn good cup of coffee. But mixed in with the Vietnamese drip and sweetened condensed milk is the recipe for representation.

If you’re tapped into the Kansas City coffee scene, chances are you’ve heard Jackie Nguyen’s story. But we’ll give you a quick refresher. Nguyen, a first-generation Vietnamese American, left Broadway at the start of the pandemic, moved to Kansas City, and opened Cafe Cà Phê—Kansas City’s first Vietnamese mobile coffee shop. And since then, Nguyen and her coffee shop have positioned themselves as advocates for KC’s Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.

“When I grew up, I felt so ashamed to be Asian. I thought it was so uncool, and I felt like we were always teased and looked down upon,” Nguyen said. “I do not ever want any Asian kid to feel that way because it’s so far from the truth. I hope to combat that.”

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Want to support the KC Black community with your money, time, and action? Here’s where to start.

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By Catcall Staff

Erin Zimmerman, president of Kansas City Women in Film and Television, started this growing, Anti-Racism Resources document to help Kansas Citians get connected and supportive of our Black community. This is a growing doc, open for contributions.

Anti-Racism Resources

* This is NOT a fully comprehensive list, it’s a START. A community-collected resource. If you have a resource you would like added, a correction or update, please fill out this Google Form. Thank you!

** THANK YOU to the humans who have paved the way for us to DO THE WORK—especially Black Folx! We see you. We hear you. We are here to do the ongoing work.

This is meant to continue on as a living, breathing resource, to do the work so that we can keep black humans living and breathing! It’s a resource meant to add to, update and reference over time, so that we, as white people, can do our part to dismantle racism and the systems that oppress, brutalize and murder black people. Performative, optical allyship is just NOT acceptable!

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Poet Jen Harris’s new book Unconfirmed Certainties is about heartbreak, growth, and telling your truth⁠—even if that means saying “fuck you” to cheating fiancées.

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Bad Ass Babes: Jen Harris

By Kelcie McKenney

Jen Harris outside her Kansas City home
Photo by Justina Kellner

Poet Jen Harris is unapologetic about telling her truth, and she wants readers of her new book Unconfirmed Certainties to feel the same. 

The Kansas City poet and spoken word artist has earned her place at the center of KC’s poetry scene: She has both a Drugstore and Charlotte Street residency under her belt, gave a TED talk called “Spoken Word Poetry Saved My Life,” had a guest spot on season three of Queer Eye, founded the Kansas City Poetry Slam (aptly named because she “believes in SEO ratings”), and published two books, with her third to be released on Sunday. Harris isn’t stopping any time soon.

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Planned Parenthood Great Plains Needs Our Help. Here’s What You Can Do.

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By Kelcie McKenney

From Catcall’s Plant Parenthood event at PlantKC
By Travis Young

Planned Parenthood’s decision to leave Title X leaves the organization without millions of dollars in funding, and with thousands of patients who might not receive care.

In February, Trump’s administration issued a “gag rule” with Title X, a federal program that provided reproductive health services to many of Planned Parenthood’s patients. The rule would essentially force Planned Parenthood to lie to its patients—about pregnancy options, abortion referrals, and facts about procedures.

Planned Parenthood said fuck that.

Well, they said “no way,” we said “fuck.” Then we threw an event to help educate people on how they can support PP and affordable access to healthcare. Even if you didn’t make it out to Plant Parenthood, we wanted everyone to have access to the information shared.

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Bad Ass Babe Amy Shoemaker: Queer. Artist. Pastor.

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By Rebekah Lodos

By Justina Kellner

Dancer, artist, spiritual coach, wife, pastor—the list of roles Amy Shoemaker moves in seems endless. A Kansas City native, she got her degree in theater from Drake University and attended seminary at Pacific School of Religion, Berekely, before making her home in San Francisco for 10 years. There, she worked odd jobs in tech, established a spiritual direction practice and met her wife, Carly. But her dream was always to be an artistic minister; a Christian leader who incorporates movement, dance, and improvisation into spiritual formation. She found that opportunity last year at Broadway Church, one of only 20 (out of 2,000) Kansas City churches that are affirming of queer leadership. She and Carly have been here for almost three years.

We spoke with Shoemaker about her journey, her worship, and what it’s like being a queer, female pastor in Kansas:

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