As we watched the Kansas Legislature vote for state-sanctioned discrimination of LGBT families last week, one Twitter user said, "This is not my Kansas." This is a state where, apparently, the religious beliefs of the majority trump civil rights. In this Kansas, the poor get higher food taxes while the rich get to itemize their charity giving. Here, public schools are demonized as inefficient (proven false), teachers are denied due process, and taxes go to parochial school scholarships. In Kansas, we want to eliminate the checks and balances of our government because judges dare protect the Constitution.
No, this is not our Kansas, either.
Saving the "soul" of Kansas may sound like we're being dramatic. But are we? In 2010, Sam Brownback and his followers swept in to Topeka with their brand of "governing." As we now know, it involved crippling revenue streams to force dramatic spending cuts in the name of "smaller" government. In reality, it drove services and salaries and economic opportunity either out of state, or to the highest earners.
In 2016, you and MainStream and others fought hard to change that. We shifted 40 seats in the Legislature! The next year, it seemed like we were on the path back, with tax reform passing, and health care expansion only narrowly unable to override Brownback's veto. But 2017 was a different story. Health care hardly got a day in the sun. School finance proved a hard struggle that likely won't clear the Constitution's requirements, again. We saw bills to lower the firearm carry age to 18, and bills that further restrict the legal right to reproductive health. And the final straw: it is now legal to discriminate for religious beliefs in Kansas.
Kansas needs our help.
In 2018, we can cement the change we started.
We can vote in a Governor who will help, not hinder. Or we can see Kris Kobach elected, with his anti-immigrant, anti-voting, anti-revenue policies.
We can secure those 40 seats we flipped in 2016, and send more legislators to Topeka to help them. Or we can see those seats revert to the anti-poor, anti-education, anti-government radicals who held them before.
We can elect a Secretary of State who actually promotes voting, or we can let one of any number of Kobach clones take his warm chair, ensuring that voting remains difficult for all but the privileged.
Which one will you work towards?
Today, we are asking you to join a movement to make sure Kansas does not slip back into the hole Brownback dug.
Come to Walk the Vote. Make a stand. Get heard. Meet others like you.
- $50 donation entitles you to a t-shirt
- $10 gets you a foothold in the effort to save the soul of Kansas
What is it worth to you?
It starts here. With you. Do more than vote.