Hundreds of people gathered at Thompson Park in downtown Overland Park on Sunday as part of Free State Days, a statewide effort to rally Kansans to “defend democracy.”
Johnson County-based advocacy organization Boots on the Ground Midwest, founded by Nancy Mays and Martha Lawrence, initiated the Free State Days event — a nod, they said, to Kansas’ history as a free state before the Civil War.
The event in downtown Overland Park was one of more than a dozen such demonstrations statewide this past weekend. Organizers called on elected officials to “resist the anti-democratic policies” of the second Trump administration.
Organizers estimated 650 to 800 people attended the afternoon demonstration in Overland Park, making it among the largest political gatherings in Johnson County in the months since President Donald Trump was inaugurated for a second time.
Other Free State Days-aligned demonstrations that took place in Johnson County this weekend included gatherings in Lenexa, Roeland Park and Mission on Saturday. Organizers estimated about 140 people attended the Mission rally.
Anti-Trump demonstrations in Johnson County, which voted for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris by an 8-percentage-point margin last November, have become routine since the second Trump administration began in January.
In February, the American Civil Liberties Union hosted a gathering of some 300 people in Merriam calling on Kansans to voice their opposition to some of the president’s early executive orders.
The League of Women Voters of Johnson County also recently held a roadside rally outside of Oak Park Mall urging passers-by to honk for democracy and voting rights.
There has also been a weekly gathering of demonstrators near 87th and Maurer in Lenexa focused on messages opposed to the moves of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency. (Musk announced last week that he’s stepping back from his role in Washington D.C.)
In an attempt to get Trump supporters’ perspectives in response to this weekend’s events, the Post reached out multiple times to both the Johnson County Republican Party and the Kansas GOP but had not received a comment as of this story’s publication. The Post did not see any pro-Trump counterdemonstrators at the Overland Park event.
The weekend rallies took place as Trump closes on his first 100 days in office. Topeka-based organization Kansas First is celebrating the milestone Wednesday at the Overland Park office of former Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer, who served as chairman of the Trump campaign in Kansas leading up to the president’s election last November.
Little information about Kansas First is available online, but an address at the bottom of the hosting organization’s e-invitation belongs to Timothy Keck, according to Shawnee County property records. A top healthcare leader at VitalCore Health Strategies, Keck served as secretary for the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services under the Colyer and Sam Brownback administrations, according to his LinkedIn profile.
‘A radical trailblazer for progress’
Most of the speakers on Sunday afternoon, while focusing on different specific issues from fired federal workers and veterans’ benefits to public education, centered their stories around Kansas’ history as a free state and attempted to cast the state as a weather vane of sorts for political change.
Kate Eckert, a Kansan who is currently a student at the University of Kansas, spoke to the crowd about Kansas’ history as an anti-slavery state before the Civil War.
Eckert said Kansas more recently also led the country toward change when it came to segregation, suffrage, and, in 2022, abortion protections when Kansas became the first state to vote to explicitly protect abortion rights following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of the Roe v. Wade precedent.
Taylor Bussinger, an Olathe middle school teacher and the 2024 Kansas Teacher of the Year, led the crowd in chants like “Hands off our public education!”
Bussinger, echoing Eckert, said Kansans “have consistently answered this cause to do what is moral and just.”
“While some may consider us conservative, boring or flyover country, the Sunflower State has always been a radical trailblazer for progress,” Bussinger said.
Where do local politicians stand on Trump’s moves?
Kansas’ Congressional delegation generally has followed their partisan camps early in Trump’s second term.
Last week, during a town hall hosted by local public radio station KCUR, U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, a Democrat representing Johnson County, panned the policies coming out of the second Trump administration, calling widespread federal cuts in the name of efficiency “nonsensical.”
“It’s almost like I can’t use the word ‘unconscionable’ enough when talking about these policies,” Davids said when asked particularly about international student visas being canceled.
On the other hand, Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall has remained firmly in lockstep with the president, particularly on the global trade war and immigration.
In a recent interview with a Wichita TV station, Marshall said Trump is coming through on his campaign promises.
“I think the American people are going to look at Donald Trump and say he did what he said he was going to do, promises made, promises kept,” Marshall told 12 News.
U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, Kansas’ other Republican senator, has pushed back more on some of Trump’s efforts, publicly supporting bipartisan legislation that would restore some of Congress’ powers on tariffs, the Kansas Reflector reported earlier this month.
Moran’s Olathe office was also the site of a demonstration last month at which protesters called on him to “do your job” and assert more Congressional power over presidential actions.
Moran has said previous U.S. tariffs resulted in foreign retaliatory tariffs that negatively impacted farmers and ranchers.
Attendees said they are concerned about state of democracy
Marie Woodbury, who attended the Overland Park rally and protest Sunday, told the Post in an interview following the event that she believes “our democracy is threatened.”
“It’s time for people to do what they can, to stand up and take action,” Woodbury said. “This felt important to be with a community of people who have the same beliefs, who have the same values and want to stand up together.”
Leanne DeShong, another attendee, said she attended the protest and rally in Overland Park for her three children.
“I have three 20-something-year-old children that I want them to have the same freedoms and opportunities and democracy that I grew up in, and that is not guaranteed right now,” DeShong said.
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