In the Northland, a festival to combat the Kobach-ization of voting rights

A horde of racist ghouls are seeing their fringe beliefs elevated to national policy under the Trump presidency. Jeff Sessions has used his short time as attorney general to double down on the failed War on Drugs, roll back progress made to fight the United States’ shameful mass-incarceration problem, and attack sanctuary cities. “Chief strategist” Steve Bannon’s primary qualification for his job is that he ran Breitbart, an “alt-right” website that featured a section called “Black Crimes” under Bannon’s leadership. More recently, Kris Kobach, Son of Kansas, has been appointed head of Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, where he will attempt to throw low-income voters (primarily people of color) off the rolls and advance the delusion that millions of people in this country vote fraudulently. 

Before he was a Kansas gubernatorial candidate (he announced he would run earlier this summer), and before he was elected Kansas Secretary of State (the position he currently holds), Kobach was a professor at UMKC’s School of Law. Like many who attended the law school between the years of 1996 and 2010, Blake Green took Kobach’s constitutional law class. Green, an attorney living in Parkville, earlier this year founded Northland Progress, a political action group that advocates for progressive policies north of the river. Green has watched Kobach’s rise with a certain amount of horror. 

“I see his national profile being raised and I want to warn people, like: Don’t sleep on this guy,” Green says. “He’s actually very smart, and very affable. And, I think, as a result of that, very dangerous. He has this wholesome persona that disguises a lot of less-than-wholesome intentions.” 

As Kobach’s perverse views on voter fraud and immigration have gained traction in the Republican mainstream, voting-rights activism is seeing a parallel resurgence. Former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander has launched Let America Vote, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting voter suppression. On Saturday, August 26, Kander will be one of the featured speakers at In for 10, a voting rights festival being put on by Northland Progress at English Landing Park, in downtown Parkville. The event is free to the public; other guests include Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, Trae Crowder (aka the “Liberal Redneck”), several Northland politicians, and a bunch of local music (the Grisly Hand, Hi-Lux, the Whiffs). I called up Green last week to check in on Northland Progress and learn more about the goals of the event. 

The Pitch: It’s been about six months since you launched Northland Progress. Have you been able to sustain a consistent level of enthusiasm and engagement as the shock of Trump’s election has bled into the background of everyday life? 

Blake Green: We have been able to sustain it, yeah. Membership has ballooned; we’re up over 300 people now. I think a lot of people across the state, and across the country, have hit some kind of breaking point. There’s an acknowledgement that it’s no longer enough to passively cheerlead from the sidelines. And that’s why we’re seeing whole new crop of activists and concerned citizens who are determined to effect real change. 

What are some of the things Northland Progress has been advocating for? 

We had to oppose several things during the last [Missouri legislative] session. We got behind the citizens’ veto of right-to-work, and from what I understand we already have the signatures to get that on the November 2018 ballot. We’re also really getting behind the Clean Missouri initiative. 

What’s that? 

It’s awesome. It’s a comprehensive ethics-reform ballot initiative that would amend the Missouri constitution by popular vote in November 2018. It would instantly take Missouri from a lower-tier state in terms of ethics to a top-five state. It would limit lobbyist gifts to five dollars, basically eliminate gerrymandering, greatly limit the amount of financial contributions state legislators can receive. [Missouri Governor Eric] Greitens campaigned on ethics reform and talked all the time about taking “dead aim” at corrupt politicians. But we’ve seen no meaningful ethics reform advanced, and Greitens himself has been roundly criticized by both sides of the aisle for his shady dealings. So, I think the conclusion to be drawn from all that is that real ethics reform will have to come directly from the people of Missouri. 

Talk about In for 10. 

A pie-in-the-sky idea for Northland Progress early on was to organize a very big voter-registration effort. Over time, we talked about it and said, Wouldn’t it be cool to figure out the most underrepresented communities in the local electorate, educate them about the new voter ID laws in Missouri, and help them get registered? But we wanted to have a big event, too. So, we’re doing both. We’re having a festival where we’re celebrating the importance of voter participation; there’s gonna be great bands, compelling speakers, it’s a free event that’s open to the public, and there’s no obligation to anyone who attends beyond having a good time. But, at the event, we’re also going to be asking people to step up their civic engagement and commit to a pledge to register, or update the registration of, ten voters.

How will that work? 

So, for those who make the pledge and sign up, we’re going to eventually organize them into teams and send them out to specific underrepresented areas in the five counties we cover in the Northland; we’re not just going to turn everybody loose with no direction. And we’ll also be sending them out carrying petitions for the Clean Missouri initiative. We’re forming an army for democracy in the Northland. 

Why is voting rights a particular area of interest for Northland Progress?

We now have this backdrop of the voter-ID law passed in Missouri in 2016 that is going to disenfranchise a lot of voters, and then there’s everything my old constitutional law professor Kris Kobach has been attempting in DC. It’s becoming a really critical issue to our democracy, in my opinion. 

What was it like taking Kobach’s class? 

I was already aware of what his views were when I enrolled, so I was on guard. But even so, he’s very slippery. He’s very persuasive. In class, he’d start with some point that’s difficult to argue — something mundane about the purpose of representative democracy in the United States — and you’re nodding along, and you don’t realize while he’s doing it that he’s guiding you into more controversial territory. Then you look up and realize you’re riding down this super-jingoistic path and you don’t even know how you got there. Like, you’re waiting for him to make his weird leap and then suddenly you realize it happened two steps ago. Which, to me — that’s so much scarier than the Alex Joneses of the world who just beat you over the head with their crazy ideas. Kobach has the wherewithal and the talent and the intelligence to do serious damage. And I think it’s the job of people and organizations like ours to make sure that doesn’t happen. 

In for 10. Saturday, August 26, from noon to 10 p.m., at English Landing Park, in Parkville, MO. The event is free and open to the public.