Vice President Harris released her first campaign ad for President, and it’s pretty spectacular. On his blog, Jason Kottke points out the emphasis on “Freedom” — not just the Beyoncé song (although that is absolutely an important part of it), but the ideal — and why it’s such a perfect message to kick off the campaign with.

Kottke quotes from an interview with Pete Buttigieg, pointing out how we’ve let Republicans corrupt the word “freedom” to push an authoritarian agenda, even though it’s actually progressive policies that make real freedom possible. That’s the kind of common-sense insight that made me a supporter of Buttigieg, and it seems especially common-sense insightful when you consider it was from 2018, before the pandemic.

That’s when we were shown repeatedly that the Republican Newspeak version of “freedom” just means “freedom from responsibility.” It’s not “conservative,” since genuinely conservative values assume some level of responsibility to society. It’s not even libertarian, since the idiots screaming “tyranny” at the prospect of wearing a mask or getting vaccinated also have unsurprisingly strong opinions about banning people from getting married or making their own reproductive decisions or receiving health care.

For what seems like my entire life, the Democratic party has met this challenge by treating the fall of American democracy as if they were a pair of enlightened parents trying to reason with a child having a screaming meltdown in the middle of a grocery store. That is, if the parents were also constantly haranguing the other shoppers to give them more money as the only way to make the screaming stop.

The Republicans have had their masks off — literally and figuratively — for a long time now, to the point where they’ve got people waving pre-printed signs reading “MASS DEPORTATION NOW” at the Republican National Convention, and the political media covering it talks about how the party is pivoting to a more mature and reasonable message of “unity.” The Democrats seem to have risen to the challenge by pointing out their obvious hypocrisy and then shrugging.

So the last couple of weeks have been bleak. Conventional wisdom said that a fundamentally decent man (with a bafflingly horrible and head-in-the-sand stance on one foreign policy/humanitarian issue) in the office of President, staying true to his promise of treating the job as a public servant, was doomed to lose the election. Democratic establishment — I’m assuming Schumer and Pelosi? — and a bunch of “elite donors” had decided to squeeze Biden out, and the New York Times and Washington Post joined the fight by devoting non-stop coverage to undermining the President. The stakes of this election were so high, they seemed to be saying, that why should we keep up the pretense that we’re obligated to represent the will of the people? Why not just drop the curtain and make it transparently obvious that we’re beholden only to super-wealthy liberals? Why not let a “Disney heiress” and George Clooney pitch in to remove the elected President and install a new one more to our liking?

The morning of Sunday, July 21st, I first read word that Biden planned to drop out of the 2024 Presidential race. I felt furious and completely defeated. Not only had they ruined any hope of preventing the disaster of another Trump administration, but they had destroyed any illusion that there was anybody left in federal politics who still believed in the most basic ideals of American civics. Even if they did somehow, impossibly, manage to stave off disaster for another election, it would be just the same cycle of barely hanging on until the next round of fundraising, forever. We need your $10 right now to save Democracy! No for real this time!

By the evening of Sunday, July 21st, I had done a complete reversal, feeling more energized and more optimistic than I had since the high point of Barack Obama’s first campaign. Is this what “hope” feels like?

The difference was the wave of endorsements for Kamala Harris led by Joe Biden, and then followed over and over and over again by one influential Democrat after another. And then a record-breaking number of individual donations to Harris’s new campaign. Everybody had been expecting — and I got the sense that the Times and the Post had been particularly looking forward to — more Democratic Party chaos, as they scrambled to pick their favorite candidate and make Harris jump through hoops to prove her worthiness. Instead, people overwhelmingly said “Nah. We’ll stick with the person who we explicitly voted to succeed Biden, thanks.”

I don’t know the “real” story, I probably never will, and I kind of hope I never do, because I like the apparent version too much. It sure as heck seems like Biden and Harris did everything exactly right: securing as many high-profile endorsements as they could, timing the announcement so that word of it couldn’t leak out in advance, and pulling off the whole transfer shockingly seamlessly, without giving the Democratic Party enough time to shoot themselves in the dick yet again. And significantly, it gave Biden the respect he was due, undoing all of the work the GOP and the media had been putting into “old and unfit” and flipping that into “lifelong public servant gracefully choosing to do what’s best for the country.”

(It is slightly unfortunate that “Freedom” by Beyoncé is a perfect choice for campaign song except that its most powerful line is “I’ma keep running cause a winner don’t quit on themselves,” which is a connotation I’m hoping will fade once the mistreatment of Biden is less fresh in everybody’s mind).

I especially like my most-likely-fictional mental image of Chuck Schumer sitting in his office, scowling like The Penguin from Batman 1966; and Nancy Pelosi with a forced smile dictating her effusive endorsement for Harris through clenched teeth. Not to mention the Times and Post gearing up for a long process of finding the nominee, complete with interactive charts and graphs showing endorsements, only to find that it had been settled by end of day Monday.

I’m so not used to seeing the Democratic Party be competent, I still don’t know what to think or how to be. But so far, the Harris campaign has been cranking out the hits. So much of it has the feeling of, “Wait, we’ve been able to do this the whole time?” We can have a President who’s not a Boomer? We’re allowed to call out bullshit when we see it? We can have campaign press releases acknowledge that Trump is an incoherent idiot and also bafflingly weird? We can admit that the “when they go low, we go high” approach wasn’t actually all that effective? And it in fact backfired into normalizing gutter trash people pissing all over the Constitution as if it were all just politics as usual?

I’m aware that I’m still in the honeymoon phase. Even if I’m confident now, I’ve got no doubt that the Democrats will find lots of clever new ways to disappoint us over the next five years. I’m sure that there has been considerable discussion about whether the country is ready for a black, south Asian, female President, instead of the more obvious question of whether the party is ready to acknowledge that it’s 2024 and shut the hell up with that nonsense. I’m sure there’s been no shortage of discussions about which middle-aged, straight, white man is the freshest and most exciting pick for vice president. I’m sure that there is considerable pearl-clutching going on as the campaign courts the youth vote by calling the GOP out on its bullshit, instead of making tortured references to Pokémon Go.

My somewhat-vague and probably-largely-fictional understanding of the current political situation has been driven entirely by reading political posts on social media and blogs, which I’ve been doing obsessively all week. And my biggest takeaway is that I hate reading that shit, and it’s been such a blessed relief to spend the last three years in relative calm, not convinced I have to stay constantly on top of what’s going on in federal politics. So if nothing else, I’m looking forward to “freedom from political blogs.”

But mostly, I’m just relieved that it feels like they’ve successfully rebooted the Democratic Party and gotten it to make sense again. It already feels like the Harris campaign has dropped the veil of nonsense and said, “You know it doesn’t have to be like this, right?” First take back the word freedom to mean what it’s supposed to mean, and then maybe we can do democracy, tolerance, inclusion, equality, diversity, unity, and woke.

In his most recent address, President Biden talked about the American ideal that we’ve never lived up to, but we’ve never walked away from. I’m really looking forward to ditching decades of dead weight that’s been dragging us down, and walking back towards that ideal.

Angela Bates, a fifth-generation descendant of Nicodemus, points to historical artifacts of the Kansas town created by former slaves in the 1870s. She spoke Wednesday at Spencer Research Library at University of Kansas, which archived portions of Nicodemus history. (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector)

LAWRENCE — Fifth-generation Nicodemus descendant Angela Bates draws inspiration from carrying forward the history of people who left the South in the 1870s to establish a town in rural Kansas where they might move closer to the promise of freedom.

Bates, who was raised in California by parents born in Nicodemus, eventually relocated to Kansas, formed the Nicodemus Historical Society and campaigned to preserve the documentary history of a town that had gradually fallen on hard economic times. Structural pieces of Nicodemus remain these days in a handful of buildings. The settlement near the Solomon River has been designated a National Historic Site by Congress.

“It’s always exciting to talk about Nicodemus,” she said. “It runs in my blood. I’m a channeler of all of those ancestors that endured slavery and have gone on before me. I’m glad I’m still here to tell their stories and to preserve their history.”

Bates brought her slice of oral history to the Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas, where a collection of photographs and documents related to Nicodemus has been archived. She said the library served as the Fort Knox of history for people tied to Nicodemus. She recently completed work on a documentary about settlement of Nicodemus and the legacy of a community far from the Kentucky hills where many settlers were recruited.

Her great-great-grandfather Tom Johnson was among the first to arrive in 1877. A great-great-great-grandfather on her father’s side of the family came to Nicodemus in 1879. While her parents moved in the 1950s in California, the family returned to Nicodemus regularly for celebrations of the emancipation of slaves in the United States.

“I feel very blessed to be part of the Nicodemus legacy,” Bates said. “I’m doing it not for fame, not for money — obviously not money — but I do it because I don’t want their stories to be lost. I think their stories are important. They’ve been a part of my life. I can remember sneaking around listening to the old folk. I wish I had a pen and paper at that point and taken down notes, because I got some stories. I tell you.”

Spirit, determination

The people who made a home in Nicodemus included formerly enslaved residents of the central bluegrass region of Kentucky, which included Lexington and Georgetown. The objective was to gain ownership of land in Kansas and put distance between themselves and aggressively enforced Jim Crow laws stalling the ability of Black Americans to broaden their personal experience with freedom, Bates said.

Bates said the decision by more than 300 people to leave Kentucky was difficult, especially for people who had been confined on plantations and had traveled little. The Great Plains was geographically quite different from the environs of Kentucky, she said. She said Jim Crow’s hold on Kansas wasn’t as fierce, but that mindset was an unmistakable presence in Kansas, too.

“It’s not like Kentucky, but they’ve got free land,” Bates said. “Your geographic mindset is tiny, but your imagination is big and your heart is even bigger and your spirit and determination is even greater. And the greatest thing of all is that you have faith in God that you’re going to make a difference.”

Bates said the early period in Nicodemus was harsh, but Potawatomie and Osage tribe members assisted settlers. Potawatomie members on a hunting trip shared game with Nicodemus residents in the first year, she said. Initially, homesteaders lived in dugouts or sod structures.

She said it was often assumed the name of the town came from Biblical stories of Nicodemus. However, she said, the name was drawn from a Civil War-era abolitionist song “Wake Nicodemus” about the end of slavery.

Residents of Nicodemus helped organize Graham County. The first three county attorneys were Black men, she said.

Bates said Nicodemus was passed over when decisions were made about construction of a railroad system from Salina to Colby. Track was laid several miles from Nicodemus at Bogue. It was consequential because a collection of merchants in Nicodemus relocated to Bogue, she said.

She said the Dust Bowl years and Great Depression further eroded the business community in Nicodemus. More families moved away over the years, she said, but elements of their history, including five buildings, remain of the settlement. The preserved archive record, including community and family photos, put a face to people who engaged in a courageous effort to reposition themselves inside the United States.

“More than anything, they brought their spirit of determination and cooperation, and they did work together,” Bates said. “A lot of people knew each other. Before they came, they were on neighboring plantations or on the same plantation. I think those are some of the things that really made the community cohesive over the years.”

‘Never occurred to me’

Bates said there was tension between Nicodemus and predominantly white towns and cities nearby. Relations with Hill City and Bogue were strained at times, she said, and about 20 miles away the city of Stockton had a sundown rule that prohibited nonwhite people from remaining in city limits after sunset. There was a strong bond between Nicodemus and the French-Canadian town of Damar, she said.

The 160-acre core of Nicodemus was designated by the National Park Service as a national historic landmark district. Bates organized the Nicodemus Historical Society in the 1980s.

Subsequently, Bates worked six years with members of the Kansas congressional delegation to secure approval from Congress to declare the homestead of formerly enslaved a national historic site.

“It never occurred to me, not one time, that it wasn’t going to happen,” Bates said.

She said the Nicodemus historic site and the town’s historical society needed an infusion of financial resources to improve access to the local history.

On Wednesday, Bates brought a fresh bundle of Nicodemus materials to add to the collection at Spencer Research Library at KU.

“These people represent what African-Americans did with their freedom,” Bates said. “They participated in manifest destiny.”

She said too often analysis of American history focused on the slave experience and the civil rights movement. The experience of Black people after emancipation and during Reconstruction was generally skipped over, she said.

“That whole chapter is just missing,” she said. “I’m hoping through the story of Nicodemus they will understand what African Americans did with their freedom.”

The post Nicodemus descendants preserve history of former slaves’ quest for freedom in Kansas appeared first on Kansas Reflector.

Sunday services at the Immaculata, recently finished after years of effort and fundraising by members of the Society of St. Pius X, draw large crowds. The massive church is symbolic of SSPX's towering influence in the area. (Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)

ST. MARYS — A growing Catholic sect has divided this small Kansas town between those who view the church’s influence as idyllic or disturbing.

Shops selling Bibles, crosses and modest garb line the main street, where parents stroll by with their children. American flags dangle to showcase patriotism. There are homes with manicured lawns and shade trees, and parks to play. And on the northern edge of St. Marys stands a 66,400-square-foot church, towering over the town. 

The conservative Catholic sect that built the church has transformed life here since its arrival more than four decades ago. The Society of St. Pius X, also known as SSPX, rejects many modern ways of living, requiring modest dress for women, enforcing strict divisions between genders and encouraging large families. As members of the group have gotten into political leadership, they’ve imposed those beliefs, jettisoning books that mention LGBTQ+ people from the public library and shutting down a municipal swimming pool.

Parishioners highlight the increasing population as a direct link to the church, and they value an insular life. But for residents who fall outside the fold, the Society of St. Pius X’s presence is oppressive. That view is worsened by accusations of sexual abuse from within the church.

For residents devoted to the SSPX faith like Mark Moser, life in St. Marys is carrying out the society’s mission.

“It’s about Catholicism, and following the methods that have been used for centuries,” said Moser, who moved to the town in the early 1980s and now serves on its recreation board. “It was the society that God put in place to continue the tradition of the church.”

Church officials didn’t respond to interview requests for this story. Church officials directed questions to spokesman James Vogel, the editor of St. Marys-based Angelus Press, which publishes Catholic literature. Vogel did not respond to calls or voicemails left at his cellphone and business’ phone, or a text message follow-up. Phone inquiries with SSPX’s U.S. district headquarters in Platte City and in-person and phone inquiries at the St. Marys church office were redirected to Vogel.

While attempting to reach Vogel in-person at Angelus Press, an SSPX priest coincidentally in the bookstore said he could not be interviewed without approval from church authorities.

Inside versus outside

The late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded SSPX in 1970 following changes from the Vatican aimed at modernizing the church. The society arrived in St. Marys in 1978, buying a collection of historical buildings formerly owned by Jesuits and starting St. Mary’s Academy and College.

By 2023, it had finished construction of the $42 million structure named Immaculata. The largest SSPX-built church in the world, the structure features brickwork made to look like limestone, two bell towers and a gold-coated Virgin Mary statue positioned to peer down on the town below.

Since SSPX established itself here, the town population has seen steady growth. Census figures show it’s now home to about 2,800 people — a 50% jump since 1980 and a sharp contrast to declining populations in other rural Kansas communities.

That growth — and the church’s draw from surrounding communities — is evident during a Sunday service at the Immaculata. 

Morning light bathes rows of families filling the wood pews that set up more than 1,500, while others form a long line down the side of the 12-story church, waiting to step into the confessional and unburden their sins. Chapel veils, mostly white, dangle fringe over the women and girls’ faces. With many toddlers and babies in attendance, little heads pop up over the pews. 

But outside the church walls, tension arises.

Hannah Stockman, who grew up in the St. Marys area and moved to town in 2020, refers to herself and other residents who aren’t part of the society as “townies.” 

She motions to the houses around hers to point out that all of her neighbors attend SSPX services. Once, she said, other girls from the neighborhood came into her yard to confront her stepdaughter over a Pride T-shirt.

“It’s hard to fit in unless you go to SSPX,” Stockman said. “And then there’s the townies, who kind of all just stay isolated in their own home.”

Stockman helped organize efforts to save the Pottawatomie Wabaunsee Regional Library in 2022, when the SSPX-dominated city commission debated pulling the library’s lease over its refusal to accept a “morality clause” and remove all material that could be viewed as socially, racially or sexually divisive, including all LGBTQ+ content.

Many non-SSPX residents were afraid to oppose the church, Stockman said, and she described their thought process as: “We stand up, then we will lose our business. Or, if we stand up, my husband will lose his job. Or, if we say something in opposition, there’s a whole array of fear.”

In 2023, the city commission succeeded in forcing the library to remove LGBTQ+ books for youths from the library. While commissioners have no governing power over the library, the branch would be forced to find a new location if the lease weren’t renewed, giving up a community spot it has held for decades.

Library director Judith Cremer, who has commuted to work in St. Marys from Topeka for 20 years, said community relations had settled down since then.

“We’ve always tried to be very welcoming to everybody that walks in the door,” Cremer said. “That’s always been my stand, and that’s how we run the library. It’s hard to be neutral in this world. But we try the hardest we can. We don’t take any sides. And we don’t turn anybody away. And we also don’t make them feel like they don’t belong.”

Moser acknowledged his church is sometimes at odds with people who aren’t a part of it. But he also recognized the political advantages his group holds.

“Who’s going to win? The one with the most numbers,” Moser said. “That sounds way too simplistic. And I don’t mean to just boil it down to that, because I’ve lived here forever and I know lots and lots of town people that are just the best people ever.”

Moser has served on the municipal recreation board for more than 30 years. He said all of his fellow board members are SSPX-associated. The entire city commission is made up of SSPX members, including Francis Awerkamp, who also represents the area in the state House. His family’s business, the Onyx Collection, is a prominent employer in St. Marys. Awerkamp did not respond to Kansas Reflector inquiries made through phone and email.

The town’s non-SSPX residents were alarmed in recent years over the shutdown of the community’s golf course and swimming pool. Residents said SSPX members were concerned about immodest swimsuits and golf skirts and people of different genders interacting.

Lack of modesty was a factor in the closures, Moser acknowledged, but so were the costs to maintain and repair the pool, which opened in the 1920s.

With deterioration and no “feasible option for a lasting repair,” according to city commission documents, the commission permanently closed the pool in 2021.

Sexual abuse investigations

When the Kansas Bureau of Investigation in 2023 released its four-year inquiry into accusations of child sexual abuse in four Catholic dioceses and SSPX, KBI officials said they were still looking into criminal allegations of sexual abuse by clergy members associated with SSPX.

Theresa Goodman, a Kansas City resident, grew up in the SSPX St. Marys community after her family, drawn by the promise of a burgeoning religious culture, moved from San Antonio in the 1980s. Her father worked as a maintenance man for SSPX at the time.

Goodman remembers telling a priest during confession when she was 9 that a family member sexually abused her. The priest told her to say extra Hail Marys, she said.

She wants to share her story to help others come forward.

“It’s something that happened to me. It’s not who I am. Releasing that trauma really means to just release it,” Goodman said. “Where you have extreme religious ideology, you’re going to definitely have these predators, for sure.”

Goodman also said she had concerns about her brother, Michael Gonzalez, who died from suicide at the age of 25 in 2000. He had accused an SSPX priest of sexually abusing him as a boy, the Kansas Star reported.

Another woman who grew up in the community said her father would beat her and her siblings for watching a movie or reading a book not aligned with the religion, or for talking with a member of the opposite sex. He also sexually abused her, she said. Kansas Reflector doesn’t identify survivors of sexual or domestic violence without their consent, and she asked not to be named.

“I did go to confession, and I did tell them that I had performed sexual acts,” she said. “And not one of them asked me with who, who did it, and not one of them questioned, ‘Why is this child telling us they’re performing sexual acts on somebody?’ And as an adult now, I’m looking back and I’m actually dumbfounded that these grown men in a confessional would sit there and listen to this little child’s voice telling them something was happening and they didn’t do anything about it.”

Instead, she said, they told her to say penance, such as 10 Hail Marys or a novena.

Michelle McCormick, executive director of the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence, said deeply hierarchical structures can create the kind of isolation that enables predators, because their victims don’t have many options for seeking help.

The people in charge of these structures want to protect their values and beliefs from the “scary outside world,” McCormick said.

“I understand the motivation behind that, and even the comfort that that would give some folks,” she said. “But that also is the dynamic that perpetrators, those who cause harm, will try to capitalize on in order to create a lack of options for those that they’re victimizing in getting help.”

During a Sunday mass in June, Father Patrick Rutledge spoke of sexual violence.

He told the story of St. Maria Goretti, the patron saint of rape victims. In 1902, the 11-year-old girl was killed by her older neighbor who stabbed her 14 times after attempting to rape her. She forgave her murderer, Alessandro Serenelli, on her deathbed and said she wanted to see him in heaven. Serenelli went to jail for 27 years, where he repented after he dreamed of her, according to popular accounts of her canonization.

“In heaven, no doubt, there will be those who have not sullied grievously their baptismal innocence,” Rutledge says. “But most likely, more abundantly shall we say, hopefully we will be surrounded by those who have sullied their baptismal innocence, but have repented for their sins, even public ones, and through confession have become victorious through the blood of the lamb.”

Kansas Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Melissa Underwood did not respond to an email or phone call before this story was published, but she responded after it first appeared online. The story has been updated to say the KBI investigation is ongoing.

Believers drive to St. Marys over the weekends to attend sermons at the Immaculata, recently finished after years of effort and fundraising by members of the Society of St. Pius X. (Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)

St. Marys used to be a typical Kansas community before the Society of St. Pius X decided to buy land in the area little more than 40 years ago. (Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)

St. Mary's Academy is a private K-12 school that gives Catholic instruction, with the goal "to restore all things in Christ."(Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)

The Immaculata, completed in 2023, is the largest SSPX-built church in the world, with members of the society attending en masse over the weekends. (Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)

The SSPX-run St. Marys Academy and College provides religion-based education. Students are separated by gender and discouraged from dating. (Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)

A sign in the center of St. Marys advertises the location of the Immaculata, a towering structure just a few streets away. (Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)

A Virgin Mary statue stands positioned at the top of the Immaculata in St. Marys. (Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)

St. Mary's Academy is a private K-12 school that gives Catholic instruction, with the goal "to restore all things in Christ."(Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)

Judith Cremer, director of the public library in St. Marys., works long hours as she attempts to fill several open library positions. Cremer says community relations have improved since last year's tension over the library lease. (Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)

The Immaculata, completed in 2023, is the largest SSPX-built church in the world, with members of the society attending en masse over the weekends. (Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)

St. Marys used to be a fairly typical Kansas community before the Society of St. Pius X decided to buy land in the area little more than 40 years ago. (Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)

Judith Cremer, director of the public library in St. Marys., works long hours as she attempts to fill several open library positions. Cremer says community relations have improved since last year's tension over the library lease. (Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)(Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)

The main street in St. Marys has restaurants and plenty of shopping options for religious literature and modest dresses. (Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)

The post In this Kansas town, an insular Catholic sect leaves some residents feeling left out appeared first on Kansas Reflector.