Opinion
Kansas’ Confederate flag fliers say, ‘Honk if you love hate’
There’s a guy in town who drives around with a Confederate battle flag fluttering from the back of his pickup. Here’s what I’d like to tell him: Congratulations. Just when I thought things can’t get any worse, you’ve found a way to show me what worse looks like. You drive from one end of town […]
RBG is gone. This is why we fight.
The Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. Susan J. Demas is editor of the Michigan Advance, a Kansas Reflector sister outlet in the States Newsroom network. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, best known as a […]
How to express yourself like a professional while wearing a mask
Like everyone, I’ve been thinking about masks. Since I’m an actor by profession, I feel like we’re living in this weird, forced acting exercise, this play I call “Masking in the time of COVID.” How do we perform it? I recently went to a salon to get my hair cut and colored. I had waited […]
Listen to this kid who worked to make Kansas better for everyone
Here’s a story about a promising young teenager with a heart of gold who fell into some real deep state stuff in Kansas. The kid is Ashton Rickford, who just started 9th grade at Rawlins County Junior/Senior High School in Atwood, a town of about 1,200 people up near the Nebraska line, one county east of […]
Kansans should reject the myth of voter fraud once and for all
I am the most unlikely of voting rights activists. I had never voted in a midterm before 2018, I’ve never been affiliated with a party, and up until a few years ago I couldn’t have told you the name of my state representative or senator. Knowing what I now know, I am ashamed of this […]
This pandemic-survival message brought to you from a small business in a tiny Kansas town
Like everyone, Karla Fleming was scared when the pandemic hit. “I had this horrifying thought: What am I going to do?” she says. “Because I have all these people depending on me for jobs.” Fleming’s business is in one of the hardest-hit sectors. She’s one of the owners and the general manager of Sweden Creme, […]
How the grief of the pandemic forced me to be a great teacher
The Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. Josh Anderson teaches in the Olathe school district. “Good grief,” Charlie Brown groused at the end of many Peanuts comic strips. His exasperated exclamation evoked frustration […]
Politicians fighting about the pandemic just adds to Kansans’ suffering
“Mom! Dad! Quit fighting!” That’s how it feels, now, whenever Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and Republican House and Senate leaders start talking about how best to move Kansas through the plague. A couple of weeks ago, they fought over how much federal help to extend to unemployed Kansans. On Friday, it took two timeouts before […]
People of faith in Kansas should support decarceration
The Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. The Rev. Rich Shockey is a chaplain based in Kansas City, Kansas. You might think that excessive imprisonment of a nation’s people would be something found […]
How one man accomplished extraordinary things for Kansas schools
The Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. Mark Tallman is the Kansas Association of School Boards‘ associate executive director for advocacy and communications. I first met Dale Dennis, the legendary Kansas school finance […]
One church’s lesson from COVID-19: Don’t fear the truth
As of Wednesday afternoon, Kansas suddenly looked clearer, disease-wise. That’s when the Kansas Department of Health and Environment released the the names and places associated with active outbreaks of COVID-19 across the state. Until then, we’d had a map with numbers for each county. This was useful but vague, each number floating above a county […]
Kansas, and the country, must return to ‘constructive partisanship’
The Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. Former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman is executive director of the Aspen Institute Congressional Program. I have always been proud of the bipartisan heritage of […]