Free State Advocates
Becky Orlin from Salina, was arrested at the Dirksen Senate Building on September 10, and held overnight. A group of fourteen activists, from across the country, including nine Kansans, were arrested by the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department protesting the impending loss of assistance for housing across the country.
The group disrupted lunch in the busy Dirksen Cafeteria, setting tents in the lunchroom and chanting “housing is a human right.” Thirteen of the group were arrested and released in hours, Becky was held overnight on additional charges of AOP Resisting Arrest.
Arraigned the next day she was released to an enthusiastic cheer from the crowd for her action.
“I am from the heartland of America, the middle of America, the line in Kansas and I want the world to know that there is a spark in the middle – even - of the United States,” Norlin said. “I am in love with the people in my country and my community, and the people that I work with every day. This was a no-brainer for me.”
The Free State Advocates travelled to Washington D.C. for an act of civil disobedience protesting proposed cuts to the Housing and Urban Renewal in the recently proposed appropriations bills. The Free State Advocates are a coalition of ten state-wide political organizations: ORGS.
Represented by fourteen Kansans from across the state, nine members provided jail and court support for Hermosillo while the rest headed back to Capitol Hill to continue their advocacy.
With a meeting scheduled with the office of Senator Jerry Moran, and after being met with silence after weeks of outreach to their remaining federal delegation, they were determined to bring the voices of their neighbors to their elected leaders.
The Free State Advocates travelled from House offices to Senate offices, popping in to ask to talk with their leadership or aides. In Congresswoman Sharice Davids’s office, they were allowed a comfortable impromptu meeting with Senior staff who heard feedback on the needs to protect immigrants, the poor, and the queer community.
In Ron Estes’s offices aides met the group with a sense of reservation, asking them to state their issues and were quickly asked to depart. For their meeting with Senator Moran’s staff, they were brought to an internal conference room where they sat around the table discussing concerns about National Guard deployments to Wichita – where the crime rate is four times worse than in D.C. – about education, and about preservation of the federal safety net.
“I’m the only trans member of the group, I need to push my voice just as much as I’m helping to push everyone else's," says Jesseka Greene, from Abilene, who travelled with the group to advocate for special education funding. “There is no difference between my civil rights and your civil rights. Some people feel uncomfortable with me, but that’s their deal and has nothing to do with me. In Moran’s office, I felt heard. I felt the emotional response I got when I got into the details of my experience as a trans woman looking for a job, after a lifetime of struggling through school needing more support.”
On Friday, September 12 the final day of advocacy for the coalition of organizers and activists, they spent the day on Capitol Hill. In Kansas, at meetings and protests across the state they gathered hundreds of yellow notecards with handwritten notes asking the federal government to meet the needs of the average Kansas.
They lined the steps to the United States Capitol with the voices of their community, constructing a yellow brick road in hopes that their members of Congress will be able to follow the will of the people home.