The Return of Local Civil Rights' Enforcement in Topeka, Kansas

Our governing body voted to put it with the overburdened state Human Rights' Commission. Let's get together to change that with a civil rights' nonprofit! On June 15, 2010, the governing body of the City of Topeka, Kansas; the city of the landmark 1954 U.S. Board of Education decision, voted to end local civil rights' enforcement by eliminating the Topeka Human Relations Commission’s staff and the THRC’s enforcement powers. It was a decision driven by politics and deceptions (perhaps that’s redundant), including, I suspect, the fact that the THRC had conducted investigations that found that some of the city’s largest employers had discriminated against their employees, that has left the state's 4th largest city and its capital city vulnerable to discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodation. The way to respond to politics interfering in meaningful civil rights’ enforcement is to establish a free-standing nonprofit. We’ve got to get past the idea that government always has our best interests at heart. We need to KNOW that something as serious as discrimination is being handled by serious people and that those people cannot be swayed by powerful interests or political expediency.