Smiling faces surrounded the lake at Penn Valley Park in Kansas City, MO on during the annual Take Kids Fishing event. It was a collective effort from the Union Sportsmen’s Alliance (USA), union volunteers and partners to connect local youths and families to fishing at the 2024 Greater Kansas City Take Kids Fishing Day on Sept. 14th, 2024.
Hosted by the USA and the Greater Kansas City Building and Construction Trades Council (BCTC), the 200-plus attendees, including 130 youths, caught hybrid sunfish and channel catfish at Penn Valley Lake.
Ralph Oropeza, the Business Manager of the Greater Kansas City Building & Construction Trades Council, has placed great emphasis on the life-changing role that unions can play for kids in urban communities, citing his own life as experience, and has encouraged unions to get boots on the ground in every community we can in our region. Volunteer events like this provide an opportunity for kids from urban communities to learn how to fish, many for the first time, and to
Over two dozen union-volunteers assisted participants with baiting hooks, using their fishing rods, and reeling in fish, and every youth took home a free rod and reel to keep pursing fishing after the event. Members of the Building Trades had spent time assembling the rods ahead of time at The Builders’ Association Training Center and Teamsters Local 41 transported the rods to the event space using the Joint Council 56 tractor-trailer.
Missouri Department of Conservation Private Land Conservationist Andy Carmack, who helped seven kids catch their first fish at the event, enjoyed imparting his fishing knowledge.
“I love seeing the smile of someone catching their first fish,” Carmack said. “I grew up in a fishing family. I caught my first fish at the age of three. Hunting and fishing are what I devote my recreational time to. Fishing is a lifetime sport. You can learn it at any age, and you can continue it near death. It’s not like basketball or football that’s so detrimental to your body, so I love the fact that if you teach someone how to do a sport that they can continue to do for the remainder of their life.”
Greater Kansas City AFL-CIO President Pat “Duke” Dujakovich said multiple reasons motivate him and others to get involved with Take Kids Fishing Day.
“Everybody comes together to help a kid,” he said. “Hopefully we give them the tools like the rod, reel, bobbers, hooks and weights because where they live, there’s not an Academy Sports around the corner. Giving them all those resources, showing them how to dig for worms and showing them how to actually catch fish gives them skills. Also, it shines an extremely positive light on the unions. People are amazed when they find out we give up our Saturdays to go do something like that.”
Partners such as the Missouri Department of Conservation, Outdoors Tomorrow Foundation, Humana and Marriott Hotels supported Take Kids Fishing Day.
Carmack and the Missouri Department of Conservation protect and manage fish and wildlife across the state. He hopes attendees gained an understanding of the public fishing access available in the area.
“[Missouri] has access to public waters that a lot of the other states don’t, especially inside our Kansas City proper. There are at least three or four impoundment ponds that we stock on a regular basis. That’s not very common amongst other municipalities. We do try to manage the fishing to where the people are and put the fish where people will utilize them.”
Dujakovich discussed what makes Kansas City a special location for USA events.
“The solidarity,” Dujakovich said. “Everyone is willing to jump in and help. Kansas City is one of the most giving areas of the country. United Way and others rank cities on philanthropy and Kansas City always scores highly on people willing to help others out. There’s definitely a positive vibe going on in Kansas City. It’s just a fun, good place to be.”
(This report uses information and reporting originally made available by the Union Sportsmen’s Alliance)
Tristin Amezcua-Hogan is the Editor of The Labor Beacon and a member of LIUNA Local 264. Tristin also serves as the Director of Communications for the Greater Kansas City AFL-CIO and the Chair of the Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance.
Tristin grew up as the son of a UA Local 669 member in Tecumseh, KS and the great-nephew of George C. Amis, longtime leader of the United Rubberworkers (now USW Local 307) in Kansas. Growing up in rural Kansas as the child of teen parents, Tristin quickly came to appreciate the life-changing benefit of a union job.
Tristin and his partner, Rebeca Amezcua-Hogan, are residents of the Westside, Kansas City, MO's historic Mexican neighborhood. They are proud members of Kansas City's New Reform Temple.
