Kansas
Saving a neighborhood park in this Kansas town was a necessary lesson in community — and democracy • Kansas Reflector
It would be easy to overlook Quaker Park.
Located on the corner of First and Sylvan in Emporia, it’s less than an acre in size. It has trees and grass and a ball court and a weathered basketball goal, just what you’d expect of a neighborhood park in a working-class part of town. It’s a nice place to shoot hoops or play catch, but it doesn’t seem special. It’s not the oldest park in town. Others are bigger and more beautiful and have better amenities, including a zoo and several disc golf courses.
So it was no wonder that earlier this year Emporia added the park to its surplus property list, a sort of municipal equivalent of gathering up items for a garage sale. Who would really miss Quaker Park? The city could rid itself of the burden of maintenance and provide land for a modest housing development.
Then something surprising happened.
Residents fought back.
I am reminded of the petition drive to save Quaker Park because of recent news from Wichita that the city is considering selling some of its parks to make up a projected $3.6 million budget shortfall by 2026. At a public hearing earlier this month, Wichita Mayor Lily Wu said she wasn’t advocating to eliminate some of the city’s 146 parks, but that all options were on the table.
The future and function of municipal parks is something that cities of all sizes have long debated. Parks are both an expression, and a metaphor, for democracy; expression because they are policy made concrete-and-grass, and metaphor because they represent a community’s priorities, no matter the lofty marketing language you might find on a city’s website. If you want a glimpse of the soul of a community, look at its parks.
Although it would be reasonable to think there would be a metric for how many acres of parks a city should have given a certain population, that isn’t the case. While just about every other indicator does scale with population — road networks and crime rates, for example — it doesn’t work that way for parks and other green spaces.
“There’s no neat relationship between city population and parks per capita, or tree cover or even space that’s simply unpaved,” Emily Badger wrote in a 2013 Bloomberg article, citing the nonprofit Trust for Public Land’s study of parks in America’s 40 biggest cities.
We’ll return to an updated version of the Trust for Public Land study later, but first — of course! — a little history.
The first city park in America was Boston Common, founded in 1634 and initially used for cattle grazing, militia drills and public hangings. By the Civil War, it had become a place for non-lethal civic events and for free speech.
While the rich have always had private green spaces, the concept of a public park didn’t come along until the mid-1800s, with the rise of industrialization and the need for the tired and poor to, well, breathe free. The visionary who gave us municipal parks in the form we’d recognize was Frederick Law Olmsted. Known today as one of the designers of Central Park, Olmsted was more than a landscape architect. What he did best was travel and think, sometimes committing a little journalism on the way, and in 1850 he went on a six-month walking tour of England that would forever shape his — and our — way of thinking about public spaces. There, he visited Birkinhead Park, a “people’s garden” that was as open (in theory, at least) to the poorest British peasant as it was to Queen Victoria.
In parks, Olmsted imagined democracy in action.
Public spaces brought citizens together “with a common purpose,” Olmsted wrote, “not at all intellectual, competitive with none, each individual adding by his mere presence to the pleasure of all others, all helping to the great happiness of each.”
Central Park was opened to the public in 1858 and has gone through cycles of decline and restoration since. Like other American parks that would come later, it has reflected the sensibilities and sometimes the passions of its community, from the Victorian dinosaur craze to the massively attended free concert by Simon and Garfunkel in 1981.
Out here in the hinterland, our parks are heavy on history. You can scarcely visit any older city park here in Kansas that doesn’t have a monument to the Civil War or some later conflict. In Emporia, I like to walk Peter Pan Park, a 52-acre space that for about 40 years had monkeys on display in a WPA-built stone house in the middle of a lake. Most people around here know about monkey island, but the park still has some surprises. My route through the park takes me through a wooded area where stands a lonely, pylon-shaped monument to the Spanish American War.
While many parks started as memorials — and originally had the look and feel of cemeteries — in later decades the emphasis has been on recreation, from ball fields to splash pads to pickleball courts. This reflects conventional municipal wisdom that parks should be useful in some way, that public spaces should offer utility in addition to, or perhaps instead of, reflection.
But public parks offer more benefits than just playing or thinking.
In addition to being essential for our health, according to the Trust for Public Land, access to green spaces conserves nature, fights climate change, reduces crime, and strengthens communities. The trust’s original ranking of the nation’s 40 largest cities has expanded and offers insight into how equitable communities are, based on what percentage of its residents are within a 10-minute walk of a park.
Called ParkScore, the project has now expanded to the 100 largest cities and many smaller ones, and on its website you can look up metrics for just about any urban area. ParkScore uses five metrics: acreage, access, investment, amenities, and equity. Washington, D.C., is ranked the best among America’s large cities.
Wichita is ranked 66. It scores below average on acreage, access and investment, and about average in amenities and equity. Only 4% of Wichita’s land is used for parks and recreation, compared with a national median of 15%.
For acreage, Emporia fares even worse.
Only 3% of the land is used for parks and recreation. Emporia is above average for access, however, because 74% of its residents are within a 10-minute walk of a park.
Hahrie Han, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins, was quoted in a recent Trust for Public Land study that over the past 50 years, American society has seen a “withering” of common spaces for people to gather. But, she said, that trend can be combatted by investing in parks and other green spaces.
“The audacious, beautiful, and exciting promise at the heart of democracy is the idea that putting people into community with each other creates opportunities to learn the capacities, skills, and motivations needed to forge a common life together,” Han said.
Sound like wishful thinking?
It sounded like it to me at first. Then I remembered the petition drive to save Quaker Park.
In March, the Emporia City Commission voted 3-1 to designate the park as surplus property and authorize its sale. The plan called for three houses to be built on the property, two by private developers and one by the local Habitat for Humanity. Some saw it as a step toward providing housing for the community, but others questioned whether the city should be shedding a park in a part of the city that didn’t have many to being with.
The park was acquired by the city in 1952 from the Conservative Friends of Galena. It was an empty lot then and had been for years. An original Quaker meeting house had been built on the site in 1881, but as the number of Quakers in Emporia dwindled, the building had been sold to another denomination and moved.
The grassroots effort to save the park had to be done in a hurry. The goal was to gather, within a 30-day window, the required 462 signatures on a petition to halt the sale. The signatures had to be from registered voters and the number was equal to 10% of those who had voted in the previous city election.
The organizers held a barbecue, talked to reporters and community members, and established a website. In the end, they came up with more than 800 signatures. The city commission rescinded its previous action to declare Quaker Park surplus and for sale.
“We talked to so many people in this process and the vast majority of people we met were eager to sign the petition,” the five organizers said on the website. “Those few who didn’t were always respectful and we didn’t have a single contentious interaction. … Parks are a precious asset in our town, and we want to preserve them — even when they aren’t necessarily ‘our’ neighborhood park.”
There are at least a couple of lessons here for Wu, the Wichita mayor.
The first is that people will fight for their city parks.
The second is that they will do so in ways that are confoundingly civil.
I use the word confounding because in this day and age just about any political activity is likely to get you into a shouting match with your neighbor over the backyard fence. But not this. Not a single “contentious interaction.” That has to be some kind of civic miracle in 2024.
Because Wu is a registered Libertarian, I’m guessing she wouldn’t be particularly troubled by the transfer of public land to private ownership. Libertarians are notorious in their belief that free markets and private interests can better manage assets than can government. But Wu should take notice of a community coming together to save a city park in a neglected neighborhood.
So, let’s hear it for “Save Quaker Park!”
It may be just the lesson we need in how to save democracy. Or at least it might make opportunistic politicians think twice before sizing up the office furniture for a municipal garage sale.
Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Kansas
Kansas law revoked their right to drive and threatens their right to exist, transgender residents say
Some 1,700 Kansans had their driver’s licenses invalidated last month. It wasn’t for racking up speeding tickets or a DUI charge, but because they are transgender.
Kansas is one of five states to prohibit trans people from changing the gender marker on their licenses, but it is the first to pass a law that retroactively cancels licenses that were already changed. The law also invalidated birth certificates for those who updated their gender markers.
Hundreds of trans drivers already received letters from the state informing them their documents were “invalid immediately” and they “may be subject to additional penalties” if they continue to drive, unless they surrender the license to the Kansas Division of Vehicles and receive a new one with their birth sex.
“I’m pretty heartbroken,” said Jaelynn Abegg, a 41-year-old trans woman living in Wichita who received a letter. She said she will not turn in her license and plans to move this month to another state.
“It is a continuation of the message that the Legislature has been sending out for years now, and that is that transgender people are not welcome in Kansas,” she said.
Two anonymous trans residents sued Kansas last month, arguing that the law violates state protections for personal autonomy, privacy, equality, due process and freedom of speech. On Tuesday, Douglas County District Judge James McCabria declined to grant a temporary restraining order against the law while the case proceeds.
McCabria wrote in his decision that there isn’t enough evidence to show that trans people will face harassment and discrimination if they have to use bathrooms or show IDs that conflict with their gender identities.
Kansas law was years in the making
Kansas had allowed trans people to update the gender markers on their IDs since 2007. Then in 2023, it changed its legal definition of sex to be male or female and assigned at birth.
Fifteen other states have made a similar change in the past few years — and President Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring that there are only two unchangeable sexes. The State Department now prohibits trans people from changing the gender markers on their passports.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach sued the state, arguing that allowing people to update their gender markers violated the 2023 law. Last year, the Kansas Supreme Court affirmed an appeals court decision and allowed gender marker changes to resume.
In January, Kobach backed the new bill he said would “correct an error” by the courts. The state Senate added a provision prohibiting trans people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identities in government-owned buildings. It was passed without public comment. The penalties for violating the provision can be $1,000 for individuals and up to $125,000 for government entities with more than one infraction.
Last month, Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the bill, saying the Legislature “should stay out of the business of telling Kansans how to go to the bathroom and instead stay focused on how to make life more affordable for Kansans.” Days later, the Republican-held state Legislature overrode her veto.
Kansas House Speaker Daniel Hawkins, a Republican, said in a statement at the time that the law’s purpose was to protect women. “This isn’t about scoring political points, but doing what’s right for women and girls across our communities,” he said, according to the Kansas Reflector. Hawkins did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
State Rep. Mark Schreiber, the only Republican to vote against the bill, told NBC News he agreed with the appeals court that Kobach could not show how allowing trans people to change the gender markers on their licenses caused harm to the state.
“I don’t have any trans folks in my family, but I know trans people,” he said, adding that they aren’t looking for special privileges and just want to live their lives. “And we seem to keep passing laws that keep getting in the way of that.”
Harper Seldin, one of the ACLU attorneys involved in the lawsuit, said during court arguments Friday that the Kansas Legislature singled out trans Kansans “for unique social stigma.”
“They were suddenly required, with no notice or opportunity to be heard, to present themselves to the DMV to obtain driver’s licenses that announced to everyone — the teller at the bank, the clerk at the hotel, the poll worker on election day — that they are transgender,” Seldin said.
Trans people have long reported facing more harassment and discrimination while using IDs that don’t align with their gender identity or expression, and many trans Kansans said they fear that their daily risk of facing such harassment would only increase as a result of the law.
‘There was no plan whatsoever’
Over the last five years, dozens of states have considered bills targeting transgender people, but the majority of those have targeted people’s ability to play on school sports teams that align with their gender identities and minors’ access to transition-related care. In the last few years, state and federal policies have shifted to focus on changing legal definitions of sex and restricting access to updated identity documents.
Logan Casey, director of policy research at the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank that tracks legislation, described these broader laws as “gender regulation laws” that attack the fundamental rights and identity of trans people.
“The point all along for the people pushing these bills and these attacks has been to single out transgender people and create a license to discriminate against transgender people and remove them from public life,” he said. “In effect, trying to get them to stop being transgender.”
Kansas’ law took effect immediately after it was published in the register Feb. 26. A spokesperson for the Kansas Department of Revenue told the Kansas Reflector that the law invalidated about 1,700 licenses. The department did not respond to a request for comment. During the court hearing Friday, Kobach said the department had so far sent letters to 275 Kansans and 138 had received new licenses.
Andrea Ellis, a 34-year-old trans woman living in Wellington, said she received a letter Wednesday even though she never changed the gender marker on her license — she only legally changed her name on it in December. She drove to the DMV the next day, where she said staff were confused about what to do and said her license had a “flag” on it.
They cut the corner off her license and gave her a temporary one. But later that day, they called her and said she had to return to the DMV because they made an error. When she went back, she said they gave her another temporary license that looked the same as the first.
“They claim that it was thought out, and everything else, but there was no grace period unlike any other kind of rollout program,” Ellis said. “There was no plan whatsoever.”
Some trans residents, like Matthew Neumann, said they still haven’t received any notification regarding their licenses. Neumann, who is the executive director of the LGBTQ Foundation of Kansas, said he’s been checking the validity of his license every day on the Kansas Department of Revenue website, and it’s still valid as of Friday.
Neumann said his organization has raised funds to help trans Kansans pay to update their licenses. Getting a license with an updated gender marker costs $8.75, while receiving a new ID is $26.
Neumann has lived in Larned, Kansas, for 20 years and said he will never leave. He said he’s been threatened over his restroom use, and he fears he could face more harassment under the new law.
“I’m just disappointed and frustrated,” he said. “I’m just hoping that maybe this is the wake up call we need,” he said.
KISMET, Kan. (KWCH) – Last month, wildfires in southern Kansas raged, destroying farmer Randall Thorp’s property, tools and 960 acres of land.
As he handles the massive cleanup project, he knows he is not alone.
“It’s about the greatest show of love I’ve ever seen,” Thorpe said. “I didn’t realize that I would have all this support in my greatest time of need.”
The two main contributors to Thorp’s optimism are the community around him and his faith.
“I’ve seen a lot of darkness that, because of my faith in Jesus, I can see the light in my heart,” Thorp said. “And that’s what keeps me going.”
Throughout the past few weeks, friends, family and neighbors have come to his property to help sort out and clean up the debris.
“I come out here and I’m by myself and I find it hard to do anything, but when a group of people all shows up and they’re wanting to work, then I’m ready to get to work with them, and they’re all ready to help me,” Thorp said.
Even with all the uncertainty following the fire, Thorp has been able to feed the 150 cattle he has, a number that is now growing since it is calving season. Friendly helpers are providing free hay for his animals to eat.
There’s a long way until things will be back to normal, but Thorp is determined to get there.
“You know, I can see some light at the end of the tunnel, but I’ve got to stay strong and keep it going and make it through,” Thorp said.
The powerful show of dependability from fellow Kansans is something he will never forget.
“I’ve been shown lots of love,” Thorp said.
You can still donate to Thorp’s GoFundMe here.
Copyright 2026 KWCH. All rights reserved. To report a correction or typo, please email news@kwch.com
Kansas City International Airport in Missouri was partly evacuated over a “threat” Sunday afternoon but has since resumed “normal operations,” officials said.
“The security incident at [Kansas City International Airport] is now clear and normal operations are resuming,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote on X.
“I want to thank law enforcement including the FBI for their timely response. The safety of our passengers, airport staff, and crew members is always our number one priority.”
Airport representative Jackson Overstreet told The Associated Press in an email that the threat was reported at 11:50 a.m. local time, at which point an entire terminal was evacuated.
He said planes that landed after the threat were being held on the taxiway until it could be fully investigated.
FBI rep Dixon Land said the bureau was “aware of the incident” and worked with “law enforcement officials to determine the credibility of a threat.”
Passenger Logan Hawley, 29, told the outlet he was getting ready to board a flight to Texas when he saw police and K-9 units swarming the terminal.
“Suddenly there was an airport worker saying ‘immediately evacuate,’ people got up fast and rushed out of there,” Hawley said.
Roughly 2,000 people were ushered out of the terminal and onto the tarmac, he said.
Photos and video from the airport circulating online show large groups of passengers being led onto the tarmac or funneling out of the terminal.
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