Kansas City Council members must represent everyone, in the 6th District and beyond | Opinion
There is a nationwide effort by a zealous, powerful minority to exterminate transgender people like me and my wife from public life. They are in charge in Jefferson City and Topeka. We have to stop them here in Kansas City.
I came out as trans in the summer of 2020, and moved into Kansas City’s 6th District later that year. I now live in a close-knit, welcoming community. Cookouts on our patios, long conversations in the laundry room and evenings sitting in the park next door made me certain that my neighbors were people who genuinely saw and cared for me as I am. They let me know I was home.
The movement to erase me from my community now wants to prevent my access to health care and stop me from using the bathroom. These people want to stop kids like me from playing sports and are telling my neighbors I’m a danger to their children. They want to ban books about people like me so that my neighbors won’t see stories that treat me like a human being. They want me to hide from my neighbors, so that they’ll never know about my goofy cat, or that my grandma just turned 80, or that I love the flowers on their porch. They don’t want you, my neighbors, to see me.
On April 13, I feared I’d have to flee my home. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced that in two weeks, he would stop any doctor who might help me to live authentically as myself. He withdrew the emergency rule banning medical care for trans people last week, but the General Assembly could easily take it back up.
On May 11, my city decided that my health, safety and existence are worth protecting and chose to make Kansas City a safe haven for gender-affirming health care.
On June 20, my neighbors in the 6th District have another choice to make.
While running for City Council to represent me, Dan Tarwater talks a lot about communities feeling safe, but it’s clear he is committed to safety only for those he deems worthy — not our community as a whole. He opposed the mask mandate in Jackson County during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. He sided with Jefferson City against abortion rights. In his zeal as a county legislator for a prison to hide more of our neighbors, he didn’t seem concerned by the harm caused by displacing the residents of the Heart Village mobile home park. When confronted, he laughed in their faces as he sent them packing, as the renter rights advocate group KC Tenants documented on Twitter. I guess he thought there would be plenty of room for them in the new jail.
Tarwater’s vision of safety seems to begin and end with police and prisons. But the sight of a cop’s hand on a holstered gun or flashing lights in my rearview mirror make me anxious and scared, not safe — especially knowing that the state-run Kansas City Police Department would be tasked with enforcing bans on the way I dress or the medicine I take.
I feel truly safe when I’m connected to my neighbors, knowing we have one another’s backs. Johnathan Duncan is committed to that real sense of safety: not one held at gunpoint, but rooted in community care. His experience is personal — solidarity saved his life after returning home from service in Iraq. Johnathan’s commitment to co-governance ensures that my neighbors and I would have a say in how we build a safer community. His commitment to bodily autonomy means that he’ll oppose efforts by the minority rule in Jefferson City to get between me and my doctor — and between you and yours — about personal health decisions. His work as an organizer with KC Tenants gives me faith that as a member of the City Council, he would continue to foster relationship-building in our district, helping us to connect against those who would harm and divide us.
His vision for Kansas City, one where everyone has what they need to thrive, is one where I feel truly safe. That’s why I’m voting for Johnathan Duncan for the 6th District City Council representative. I hope my neighbors will join me.
Aaron Ratigan is an engineer. They live in Kansas City’s 6th District.
