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In his 1896 polemic against the populist movement, William Allen White writes, “What’s the matter with Kansas? We all know; yet here we are at it again.” White laments that common people have won control of Kansas, and have made the state unattractive to capital investment.
This tract, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” catapulted White to stardom among the GOP. One can draw a connection from the Kansas People’s Party wins and White’s vitriolic response, to the progressive movement he championed within the Republican Party, to the antitrust reforms enacted by Teddy Roosevelt. Pressure from below threatened the GOP’s power, leading to concessions from the powerful.
Kansas has been a bellwether for change in this country. The “board” in Brown v. Board of Education refers to Topeka. Federal food safety standards were a response to the outcry inspired by Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” which was commissioned and first printed in Girard by the United States’ largest ever socialist newspaper, Appeal to Reason.
In the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned, Kansas was the first state in the nation to preserve abortion rights with a resounding “NO” vote. From its founding, Kansas has been an early adopter of radical changes in national politics, for better or worse; even the failed Brownback experiment foreshadowed the rise of the MAGA movement.
Again, there’s a shift in the national mood and Kansas has the opportunity to lead the country toward change. Conditions for the working class have continued to get worse, and regular people are looking for answers. Charlatans like Donald Trump, Kris Kobach and Ty Masterson have attempted to mislead us and direct our ire towards immigrants and transgender people.
But like all charlatans, their lies wear thin. Turns out, making things worse for some workers doesn’t make things better for other workers. The working class looks for results, and the MAGA movement’s results are more suffering. “Pay no mind to the man behind the curtain,” they say, as we keep looking for answers.
The political center has found itself stuck in the status quo. The centrist faith in the strength of our institutions and the importance of decorum has left us vulnerable to attacks from the extreme right. Regular people have rallied in the streets at Hands Off, No Kings, even May Day marches.
Here in Lawrence, a weekly protest has stood in struggle every Sunday at Ninth and Mass since the start of Trump’s second term. As these protests have swelled in numbers, the participants have felt more and more abandoned by the political insiders who have failed to stand next to them in the face of a fascist assault on our democratic and labor rights, on our human rights.
Answers are coming from other quarters of the political spectrum. Scary watchwords like “socialism” and “communism” are coming into the public imagination to the horror of William Allen White’s political successors, both Democrat and Republican alike.
Communists don’t sound so scary when the real threat is eviction or foreclosure; when you have to choose between food and medicine; when higher education means setting young people back with decades of debt. We have real problems, and we need real solutions, not scapegoats.
To get real solutions, we have to be bold, and we have to be brave. The working class will fight, if we have a vision to fight for. We have to aim high, for KanCare for all to eliminate the predatory private insurance companies that exploit the most vulnerable people. Patients should be healing from injury and disease, not fighting with bureaucrats over coverage.
We have to struggle for a Democratic Bill of Rights and a Labor Bill of Rights to strengthen the political and economic power of the working class majority, who, when united, are more of a force than any other class of people. We need a public housing land trust to put low-cost housing into the market without means testing, to drive the cost of housing down and alleviate the housing crisis.
Kansas public schools need to be a guarantee for prosperity and success for all, fully funded and supported, and not exploiting our teachers who buy supplies out of pocket.
We can address the climate crisis by developing our rich solar and wind capacity, investing in battery storage and building high-capacity power lines to bring clean energy from the windswept plains to the population center here and in other states. We can break our reliance on automobiles by investing in public transit with dense walkable, bikeable neighborhoods along streetcar lines with high-speed rail connecting our cities.
We need to hold the line against MAGA’s assault. That means voting “NO” on Aug. 4 to preserve the integrity of the Kansas Supreme Court. The GOP wants to inject billionaire money into the court, to buy it off and eliminate one of the last checks on their power so they can overturn the right to abortion, protections for trans people and guarantees for public school funding.
We need to find our common strength. That means rejecting the fear and hatred the GOP manufactures to keep us divided and weak. When we fight for trans rights, immigrants’ rights and reproductive rights, we’re struggling for the whole working class. When we struggle for each other across our differences, we’re laying the foundation for the broad, multiracial, multigenerational, gender-diverse working-class coalition that is needed to win real solutions.
When Josiah Miller came to Lawrence in 1854 to advance the Free Soil cause, he may not have known just how big and difficult a fight he was getting into, but a fight he found. When he was elected to the first Kansas Senate he proposed the state motto we all know and love, Ad Astra per Aspera.
“To the stars through difficulty” is a common translation; I prefer “To the stars through struggle.” Together, we can get to the stars; first we have to aim for them, then we have to struggle.
Will we rest on the faith in our institutions, while their foundations crumble around us under attacks from the extreme right? Will we aim for the stars? Will you struggle with me?
— TJ Campsey (he/him), Lawrence, is a Democratic candidate running for election to represent House District 10 in the Kansas House of Representatives.
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