Justice Together: Praying, Planning, and Partly (but Not Yet Entirely) Pushed Aside in Wichita

[Cross-posted to Wichita Story]

Before Christmas, I had some complimentary things to say about Wichita’s city council. Here at the end of the year, though, my thoughts are more critical—though this is really a story about an organization of citizens here in Wichita, one that has pushed and challenged the city council, with some (but not total) success.

Justice Together, an association of nearly 1500 volunteers from nearly 40 Wichita-area congregations, synagogues, and other religious bodies, made local history several months ago, when, at a major public assembly, they pressed and received commitments from various elected leaders that certain positive steps would be taken to assist the homeless population of Wichita. Their well-researched calls for 1) more free bus passes for those with mental health needs, for 2) more staffing for on-call psychiatric assistance, for 3) a sustainable budget plan for completing and operating the planned Multi-Agency Center (MAC) which aims to bring together resources for homeless individuals, and for 4) a free municipal ID program, all remain on the table. But two weeks ago a proposed set of changes to how the city deals with homelessness threatened to derail the compassionate efforts that Justice Together, along with many other municipal organizations (Wichita’s Coalition to End Homelessness deserves much credit here), had pushed for.

Fortunately, Wichita’s city council was convinced (or pressured) to bypass the worst feature of these proposed changes, and the role JT played in that effort (in over two hours of public comment before the city council on December 17, 21 of the 24 speakers opposed the proposed changes, and more than a third of those were associated with Justice Together) deserves praise. Still, the fact that the other changes which passed through the council on a 4 to 3 vote will increase the ability of law enforcement to treat homeless individuals from a criminal rather than a compassionate perspective is evidence of how much more, and perhaps how much further, the kind of activism JT represents has to go.

As was pointed out by multiple speakers (as well as a couple of members of the council from the bench), the proposed changes in Wichita’s policies were less rooted in local changes (though Wichita’s homeless population has increased, as it has in cities both large and small across the country, for dozens of often intertwined reasons) than they were in national decisions. When the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its majority decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson last summer, making it clear that criminalizing “public camping”—a euphemism that we all know is ridiculous (“camping” is a voluntary recreational activity, while sleeping or residing outside without shelter in public places is practically never either of those) but seem doomed to use anyway—would not be considered an unconstitutional punishment someone for their condition, but would instead be considered a nominally constitutional punishment of an action, the door to more aggressive enforcement of anti-homelessness policies was kicked wide open. Honestly, those of us Wichitans who recognize both the increased costs as well as the lack of compassion which the further criminalizing homelessness entails should probably be grateful that the city’s proposals didn’t go any further than they did.

As someone who has been associated with Justice Together since its beginning in early 2023, I received word of the prayer meeting being planned for the day of the city council meeting. Multiple faith leaders set the tone for the dozens who gathered for the meeting by emphasizing that pushing back, in whatever peaceful way we can, against adding burdens to the lives of those suffering from whatever mix of causes—poverty, trauma, mental illness, drug or alcohol addiction, or all of the above—which had left them living without permanent shelter was a shared religious demand. As I’ve written before, JT is not a radical organization; rather, it is a serious, careful, realistic group of believers, who work in the tradition of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1) researching and proposing responsible plans premised upon compassion and justice, and then 2) presenting their plans before elected leaders in ways that create tension, thereby hopefully forcing action and progress. That was the plan a few weeks ago, with a summary of the changes Wichita’s government was proposing and an action plan laying out a bullet-pointed list of Justice Together’s primary concerns handed out beforehand. (The individuals in the photo above, from the Justice Together prayer meeting before the city council chambers on the morning of December 17, are, from left to right: Pastor Chad Langdon of Christ Lutheran Church; Deacon Lory Mills of St. Bartholomew’s and St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church; Justice Together Co-President Rabbi Andrew Pepperstone of Ahavath Achim Congregation; and Rev. Dr. Karen Robu of Plymouth Congregational Church.)

Topping the list of those concerns was that the city, in the wake of Grants Pass, intended to “remove a requirement that a shelter bed be available for anyone displaced by an encampment removal”—in other words, to no longer oblige law enforcement to confirm that there are beds available at public shelters before enforcing anti-“camping” rules and forcing a homeless person to move from whatever location of rest they’d found for themselves. This central issue was highlighted by Rabbi Andrew Pepperstone, the co-president of Justice Together, when he stood to speak before the city council (two other speakers, Revs. Travis Smith McKee of the Disciples of Christ and Jacob L. Poindexter of the United Church of Christ, later underscored Rabbi Pepperstone’s demand): the “removal of bed space verification” from those tasked with the often ugly task of disrupting the attempt of the homeless to find a secure corner or underpass somewhere in public space has, in his words, “no compassionate rationale that I can conceive of.” He challenged the city council to strip that policy change from the proposal, which resulted in some city leaders playing hot potato, suggesting that this odious proposal was really just a matter of police protocol. But thankfully, whomever ultimately owns this obligation, the result was a positive one. The policy changes voted on ended up preserving this restriction, thus making it at least still slightly difficult for those experiencing homelessness to be forced to move and to abandon many of their possessions like herd animals and not human beings.

Justice Together also opposed, along with other groups, expanding the number of city workers who could wield that kind of police power against the homeless, another proposed change which the city council was convinced to drop. Unfortunately, though, the other priority of JT—opposing “a change to shorten the notice to vacate period before an encampment is removed, from 72 hours to 48 hours, and in some cases, allow removal without notice”—went through. Perhaps that’s unsurprising; the city staff made it clear in their presentation to the council that there was, functionally speaking, only two elements of the proposed changes which they considered truly substantive: getting rid of the bed requirement, and allowing for the more immediate removal of homeless persons and the clean-up of their sleeping locations. Despite complaints that went far beyond the religiously motivated—there were speakers who challenged the proposed ordinances from libertarian perspectives on human rights, and conservative speakers who pointed out all the additional costs which ramping up enforcement requires—Wichita will, beginning probably in mid-January, join the host of American cities that are responding to the increase of the homeless population with even more criminalization, even if conjoining that with some additional compassion.

That additional compassion is obviously vital. Justice Together’s slogan for their (in retrospect, only partly successful) action was “Invest in a Fully Funded MAC, not Criminalization of Homelessness,” and there was much discussion of how to move forward with finding the funds necessary to keeping the plans for the MAC on track, and many supportive words from city council members for doing so. (There was an update on plans for the free municipal ID as well, which still seems to me likely the most important single non-structural action Wichita could take to assist the city’s homeless.) Ultimately, though, those who have dedicated so much time and effort to Justice Together must now consider their next steps.

Do they accept this defeat and continue to focus on pushing our elected leaders on the social justice issues which they have not foreclosed? That seems most likely; what JT’s volunteers are best at is speaking practically about policy options and researching how other cities have funded programs or dealt with changes in the legal landscape is the kind of action that appeals to their skill set best. But there is also the possibility of reconsidering what kind of, and how much, tension they can productively generate—perhaps while looking towards this year’s municipal elections, with the aim of changing one of those 4 yes votes. Becoming an interest group which actively promotes or opposes candidates would give Justice Together a very different and much more contentious vibe, yet political challenges are part of the toolkit of any successful advocacy organization, whether they’re used or not. (Sometimes, simply the knowledge that an organization could organize their forces—in this case, many hundreds of mostly middle or upper-middle class Wichitans in dozens of well-established religious congregations, the great majority of which are likely voters—can be persuasive enough.)

Justice Together has worked with and through the religious faith of thousands of Wichitans over the past 2 years to advance the conversation about social justice in our city. As a supporter, I am curious to see how its leadership will continue to try to advance our shared ideals, even as the opposition to some of what has been labored over pushes back. As in so many other ways, 2025 will be a very telling year.

Hoping to Take Home Rule Seriously

Many Kansas Republicans likely guffawed in disbelief when Governor Laura Kelly recently insisted "I am a major local-control advocate" and that she was opposed to "usurping" the power of local governments. The stereotype of Democrats as always favoring centralized government programs, with Republicans always fighting to keep government small and local, is deeply entrenched in our national political discourse, and it's an image which the Kansas Republican party fully intends to make use of this election year. The language of the state GOP, which dominated much of the spring legislative special session, presents Kelly’s emergency orders during the pandemic as examples of one-size-fits-all overreach, thus building on this stereotype expertly.

The truth, of course, as always, is more complex. And here in Kansas, that complexity--the product of trends in platform development and political socialization rooted in constitutional disputes over federal versus state power going back to the civil rights movement and before--is inextricable from the fact that the localities which the "small government" rhetoric of Kansas Republicans seems most often focused upon are the spacious, rural, and increasingly empty ones which cover most of the state's territory. Whereas to allow the local governments of Kansas’s few growing cities and urban areas to take care of themselves, by contrast, is often seen as a threat. When Kansas Senator John Doll (R-Garden City) recently commented “I think we [in the legislature] just do so many things to curb the power of the municipal,” his frustration was justified.

This session included two major examples of this dynamic. First, a bill to prevent Kansas cities and counties from banning, limiting, or even taxing plastic bags. This bill, which doesn't quite have enough support in the legislature to overturn a veto by Governor Kelly, emerged mostly in reaction to, not any actual local regulations, but rather just the successful environmental activism here in Wichita which led to the creation of a task force to explore and make recommendations regarding such regulations. Second, a bill to prevent Kansas cities and counties from issuing municipal IDs to undocumented residents so as to provide them with some protection from federal immigration enforcement. This bill, which does appear to have enough support to overcome an executive veto, and which rushed through the Kansas Senate with barely any debate at the urging of Attorney General (and all-but-officially the Republican candidate for governor this November) Derek Schmidt, emerged mostly in response to the passage of a local ordinance in Wyandotte County, which itself was the result of five years of conversations and negotiations driven by concerns over the public health and safety needs of many of the county's diverse, long-time, yet often unregistered residents. With both bills sitting on Governor Kelly's desk she thus finds herself in the position of potentially being able to use her veto pen to defend of local democracy, at least a little bit.

(Also, it's worth noting that these two examples are not alone, though they are the most prominent. There was also a bill, which the governor allowed to become law without her signature, that restricts the ability of cities or counties to impose limits upon individual citizens' use of natural gas, a bill which emerged in part when the city of Lawrence committed to switching entirely to green energy by 2035, and there remains a bill in committee that would prevent local government entities, including school districts and college and university boards, from responding to pandemic concerns by imposing mask mandates; that bill has strong support in the Republican caucus, and might yet come up for a vote at any time.)

Now anyone who has spent time watching the patterns of Kansas politics through the frame of the rural/urban divide, and how that plays out in shaping the electoral interests of legislators, can’t find this surprising. Over the past decade and a half, there have been many similar conflicts, with most Republican legislators consistently rebuffing the concerns democratically voiced in Kansas’s (very slowly, but nonetheless surely) liberalizing urban areas. There have been state laws which overturned city efforts to keep their insurance costs low by preserving gun-free zones in municipal buildings, and state decisions which have blocked city efforts to lower or eliminate the criminal penalties attached to medical or recreational marijuana use.

Federalism has always been, and always will be, a messy area of American politics, and extending the subsidiarity idea supposedly implicit to the federal principle further down the ladder, to the municipal level, obliges us to think hard about a host of theoretical, demographic, legal, and socio-economic matters relevant to what we really mean when we talk of "democratic sovereignty." After all, calls for “small government” or “local control” are often more self-interestedly instrumental rather than morally principled, and state legislatures dominated by Democrats don’t necessarily have a better record when it comes to respecting municipal democracy (as Eric Levits notes, "progressives are wont to frame popular democracy as morally sacrosanct even as we carefully guard our preferred exemptions from it"--though he argues, reasonably enough, that such inconsistencies don't reflect a foundational problem with democracy so much as a recognition that, practically speaking the "myriad obstacles" to true popular democracy in the United States require constant work-arounds). Still overall, the "populist" (or, specifically, anti-intellectual elite) character of much contemporary Republican rhetoric, while it does potentially have a localized, small-d democratic aspect to it, so consistently overlaps with a general anti-liberal, anti-urban, and anti-majoritarian position that it's easy to conclude that American conservatism today has, in Alex Pareene's words, "no philosophical commitment to localism," but rather "an instrumental attachment to federalism, and to the state form of subgovernment," because it is "the form best suited to maintain, at the local level, the dominance of the suburban and rural over the urban, and, at the national level, the dominance of geography over people."

Given all of that, why expect the Republican-dominated Kansas legislature, or the mostly Republican Kansas electorate in general to take more seriously sincere efforts by the citizens in Kansas's cities to govern themselves? Partly, perhaps, because Kansas has a literal “Home Rule” provision written into its state constitution, thereby is formally--if not necessarily effectively or coherently, as debates here in Wichita over popular protection of historical buildings demonstrates--committed to recognizing the self-governance of Kansas's towns and cities. Also, perhaps one could hope for some recognition of the value of allowing localities the liberty to govern themselves as many Kansas Republicans have felt driven toward (or have chosen to present themselves as pursuing for partisan reasons) an arguably more pluralistic, libertarian, "pro-choice" line--not regarding abortion, of course, but definitely when it comes to matters of public health and therefore, at least potentially, other policy concerns as well. The link between libertarianism and localism isn't a necessary one, of course, even assuming that either ideological position is rooted in actual beliefs. (The fact that Lawrence passed an ordinance motivated by concerns pretty much identical to Wyandotte’s with no reaction from the legislature--at least not initially--suggests that the Kansas Republican opposition to local urban governance is more a matter of political timing than legal interpretation.) Still, it's something that we left-leaning urban localists (there are some of us!) in this majority Republican state can hope for, at least.

Truthfully, there's probably no chance of Kansas losing its historically rural reputation and character, and the deep attachment to voting Republican which has come along with it, any time in my lifetime. But the fact remains that the state’s continued economic development, given that a revolution in the direction of autarkic agrarianism and anarcho-socialism is highly unlikely, is and will overwhelmingly in the hands of those urban parts of the state where the population is growing and connections to the actually existing nationalized and globalized economies of late capitalism are being maintained. There is just no getting around that plain fact. Hence, the local governments in those places, in particular, need a free (or at least a freerer) hand to respond to the interests and beliefs of their citizens, thereby enabling-- and, in fact, inducing--them to be that much more committed to our shared home. To treat urban Kansans’ efforts on behalf of public health, environmental stewardship, and civic life in the places they live with dismissive inconsistency, whether for sincerely state-centric ideological reasons or (more probably) for self-interested partisan ones, is no way to keep Kansas’s sunflower blooming.

The Potential of, and the Problems with, Wichita’s (More) Partisan Future

[Cross-posted to Wichita Story]

 (From left to right: Mayor Brandon Whipple; Mike Hoheisel, councilmember for Wichita District 3; Maggie Ballard, councilmember for Wichita District 6; Brandon Johnson, councilmember for Wichita District 6. Photo credit: Chris Pumpelly)

There’s been a lot of talk about the “new Democratic majority” on the city council that officially took power on Monday night. WSU professor Chase Billingham, in particular, observed last August what the consequences of the November elections might mean should they go the way Mayor Whipple wanted them to (which they did), and in a long Facebook post on Monday, Billingham considered a relatively small-stakes fight during last week’s council agenda review meeting in ways that makes his observations from last year seem pretty prescient: namely, that with three--presumably reliable--Democratic votes on the council, Mayor Whipple appears both capable and willing to pursue agenda items that he previously knew he wouldn’t have the votes to push forward. And he wants the Republicans on the council–who have long enjoyed an unstated and basically uncontested majority on the council but are now in the minority–to know it.

So is the business of the city council, or the way it conducts business, about to radically change, and if so, how should the people of Wichita feel about that? Answering those questions aren’t easy, because it obliges one to figure out just what the business of our, or any, city council, actually is--or ought to be.

Is the business of a city council the sort of thing which even ought to be construed in partisan terms, much less one where talking about having a “Democratic majority” on a council is meaningful? There’s plenty of reason to think “no,” and a lot of those reasons are echoed by the members of this Democratic cohort themselves. In a long article on partisanship in municipal elections published in the Kansas Leadership Center Journal last November, Ballard affirmed “local elections should stay nonpartisan in nature and focused on local issues,” while Johnson claimed that keeping city council elections and candidates “focused on the issues” makes it “harder to simply paint candidates with broad partisan brushes.” These views are reflective of a perspective that is more than a century old: the presumption that partisan groupings, being more national and ideological, have nothing to do with figuring out how to keep potholes filled and otherwise managing the rules and resources necessary for living and working together in a city, and hence that municipal elections shouldn’t involve candidates identifying themselves by a party label, much less running with the support of party organizations. Hoheisel echoed these presumptions in an interview after his election, stating that his “political leanings are irrelevant” to the business of the city council.

One problem with all these assumptions, however, is that they are not actually grounded in complaints over partisan identification or political beliefs. Rather, they really turn on the voting and funding practices which partisanship activity is usually seen as connected to, and the fact that many of those activities are seen as corrupting. To be sure, that’s a legitimate concern. However, there isn’t a lot of evidence that making municipal elections non-partisan actually evades any of those practices or activities (which, of course, shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who remembers the mayoral election of 2019, where the lack of partisan labels certainly didn’t prevent corrupt actions and accusations from dominating the campaign).  In fact, the evidence mostly indicates that Democrats and Republicans elected to municipal positions tend to act—despite the constraints which our system imposes upon city governments–pretty similar to other Democrats and Republicans elected to all other political positions. And voters pick up on that similarity pretty quickly, with Democratic and Republican voters casting their ballots (and making their donations) accordingly.

This doesn’t mean Democratic or Republican voters are any less likely to hold Democratic or Republican officeholders accountable for failing to keep potholes filled, absent other considerations. Nor does it mean that national partisan positions will always be a good predictor of local partisan ones (for example, promoting bike paths, farmers markets, and alternative transportation and environmental sustainability generally are usually seen as liberal or progressive causes in the United States, yet Councilmembers Becky Tuttle and Bryan Frye, both Republicans, have been smart and consistent supporters of both). But it does mean that those “other considerations”—which reflect the wide variety of ways in which most of us identify our interests and respond to public concerns in an electoral way—are always going to be present. Going to extra lengths to prevent cultural or socio-economic or racial or any other considerations from “polluting” municipal elections by connecting them to partisan positions beyond those of pure municipal management is, I think, a fool’s errand (not to mention, given the way our system, for better or worse, strongly supports the freedom of speech and association, potentially unconstitutional). Allowing people to organize and run for office with those considerations—and those partisan connections—explicitly present would make possible a wider (and, I think, a more responsible) engagement with the diverse interests present throughout Wichita’s city council districts. Hence my belief that our city council elections should be partisan, as I’ve argued again and again and again.

But whatever your opinion on bringing partisanship to the forefront or hoping to keep it subdued when it comes to Wichita’s city council, the fact is that in 2019 Wichita elected a mayor who—as he put it in the same article which quoted Ballard and Johnson—has a “different viewpoint” when it comes to partisanship, seeing it as “less scary and dirty” than many may make it out to be. Whipple’s belief that partisanship is a valid—perhaps even unavoidable—tool when it comes to leadership is, I think, correct. That’s not a defense of the many ways in which partisan thinking makes compromise--which the fundamental, ambition-vs-ambition, Madisonian logic of our constitutional system accepts as essential—more difficult. The worries expressed by Lynn Rogers, Kansas’s state treasurer, former lieutenant governor, and a Wichita resident, about the rising partisanship in Wichita’s (and other Kansas) municipal elections, especially when it comes to rules about candidate eligibility, can’t be easily dismissed.

But it is also valid to note that parties and their members—both those who run for office and those who vote for them—don’t exist in a vacuum; they’re shaped by their electoral environment, and those shapings change as the wider environment does. Insofar as the state of Kansas and the city of Wichita are concerned, it is reasonable to see both of them as going through, however slowly, the same demographic and ideological transformations, particularly in regards to both urbanism and liberalism, as the nation as a whole has over the past 30 years. It’s also worth noting that Whipple and all three of the other Democratic members of city council members are young enough (clockwise from top left: Ballard—39; Hoheisel—38; Johnson—35; Whipple--39) to have been shaped by those same transformations.

None of this means, of course, that any of these folks are clones of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or other youthful progressive darlings of the moment; they are all their own people, with their own roots and histories here in Wichita, Kansas, which is very much not New York City. (Whipple’s record as a rather moderate Democratic state legislator before he ran for mayor ought to conclusively prove that.) And yet…Wichita nonetheless is an American city, one that is, like other American cities, becoming more diverse than it was before, more progressive than it was before, and thus more Democratic than it was before. (Wichita may not ever be blue, but it went for Biden nonetheless.) And moreover, it’s not like the Kansas Republican party which those who identify as Democrats—like Ballard, Hoheisel, and Johnson--define themselves against hasn’t greatly changed over the same time period. So overall, I think it’s fair to wonder just how much of the angst some feel about Whipple’s willingness to bring partisanship, especially Democratic party partisanship, into Wichita’s municipal elections is a function of either 1) the way it potentially gives effective electoral expression to newly emergent—if hardly dominant--progressive interests in our city, or 2) the way it challenges the (admittedly often successful!) strategies which previous generations of Kansas Democrats developed to deal with Republican dominance, as opposed to solely because it presents a challenge to municipal norms and expectations. If nothing else, it is a question that serious political observers should keep in mind: that Mayor Whipple, by approaching city elections here in Wichita with an unapologetically partisan eye, may have made himself and the city of Wichita into a significant part of the story of party development in the Sunflower State.

I need to emphasize that “may,” however. Successfully building a partisan majority in a nominally non-partisan context will only ever be of interest to political nerds like myself if it isn’t conjoined with partisan direction that can be successfully pursued and will make a difference in the perception of voters; otherwise, that electoral achievement will be remembered by everyone who isn’t a partisan themselves as a lot of conflict which didn’t necessarily change the status quo. Hence, Whipple and the three other Democrats on the council need to be able to show voters that, now that they have a majority, they can do something that wasn’t done before, or do what’s been done before better. Given the heavy policy limitations which city governments operate under, that’s easier said than done. The recent struggle to pass a non-discrimination ordinance in the city, despite the sturm und drang which surrounded its writing and passage, might in retrospect be seen as low-hanging fruit in terms of distinguish votes on the council, at least in comparison to other municipal matters before them.

Among those issues that are most obviously within the legal grasp of the city council—including land use, business subsidies, and law enforcement--it’s not clear that these four Democrats will be sufficiently united as to make their majority position as effective as it might be. For example, Johnson has strongly advocated for expansive (and expensive) redesigns of our downtown core, and pushed against the idea of the council being wholly bound by public referendums on Century II and other historic buildings; Hoheisel, by contrast, has criticized new major downtown projects as inappropriate, spoke fondly of restoring Century II, and defended the idea of conducting a “binding vote” on its fate. Similarly Hoheisel, during his campaign, expressed significant doubts about retaining Robert Layton as Wichita’s city manager; whereas last week, both Whipple and Johnson gave Layton a strong show of support by voting to give him a raise. And while Johnson has long been engaged in efforts to change the Wichita’s overly violent police culture, the police union was crucial to Whipple’s election as mayor, and it is reasonable to presume that he wants to retain their support.

None of these facts suggest policy orientations that might not change or involve a significant rethinking or compromise once people get down to the nitty-gritty, of course—but by the same token they demonstrate, I think, some of the obstacles to declaring some immediately obvious common agenda which this Democratic majority shares. Which leaves this particular electoral accomplishment, at the moment, resting primarily on its members being young and new(ish) and thus, presumably, a breath of fresh air. In politics, where the ability to deal with others from a position of knowledge and influence is often key to getting things done, such freshness can only take you so far. Still, this is their first week, with everyone still getting used to the new arrangements; maybe only now, with these new members officially on the council, will we see some new unifying initiatives emerge that weren’t on anyone’s radar screen before.

Do I happen to have any recommendations for what those unifying initiatives might be? Why yes, I do...