WICHITA, Kan. - Beginning the first week in November, Kansas poets and those with ties to Kansas will begin a twenty-city reading tour to commemorate the publication of Begin Again: 150 Kansas Poems, published by Woodley Press.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Poet Laureate of Kansas, organized the book publication and the reading tour, and will attend several readings. This project, which celebrates the Kansas Sesquicentennial, started in April, National Poetry Month, with poets submitting work that related to Kansas.

Information about the twenty-city reading tour is available on the poet laureate web site. Two reading events, one at Eighth Day Books and one at Watermark Bookstore and Café, will kick off the tour in Wichita. A reading in Manhattan is set for Nov. 4, and one in Lawrence will take place on Nov. 6.

TOPEKA, Kan. - Kansas women are truly "going through hell" living, working and coping with the repercussions of Brownback's chosen policies, but we must keep going! NOW is not the time to give up!

The grassroots response and outcry surrounding the recent domestic violence debacle in Topeka reminds us of the power that we hold. Women's rights advocates and supporters are capable of changing public policy. This is possible in our local communities and at the state level. We must be diligent, ever watchful and forceful in our response to injustice.

Dr. Margaret Flowers, of Physicians for a National Health Program, will bring her expertise and discuss her experiences at a free presentation, "Medicare and The Deficit: How to Improve Health Care and Save Money at the Same Time," 7 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2011, at the Murdock Theater, 536 N. Broadway, Wichita, Kansas. A reception will follow the presentation. For more information call 316-440-3271.

WICHITA, Kan. - Margaret Flowers, MD, mother, pediatrician, human rights activist, crackles the phone line with her passion as she speaks about single payer health care. Dr. Flowers, of Baltimore, Maryland, is the mother of three teenagers. She trained and worked as a pediatrician until 2007, when she left her practice to become an advocate for health care reform with Physicians for a National Health Program. Because of her advocacy and activism, she was arrested when she spoke out at the Senate Finance Committee Roundtable on the Expansion of Health Insurance Coverage.

WICHITA, Kan. - Governor Brownback has certainly been no friend to reproductive justice in Kansas. He has signed numerous anti-choice bills into law, which have resulted in several lawsuits. The women of Kansas have discovered that we must fight harder than ever to keep what remaining rights and access we have within our state. This fight does not begin and end with each legislative session, it must carry on throughout the year. Kansans must stand in support of those organizations fighting for reproductive rights in spirit, with action and with contributions.

It is a full time, high energy fight for our very rights and freedoms. Freedoms that are seemingly eroding by the minute. As the roasting of our rights commences from the governor's mansion, Kansas NOW is planning a fundraiser to enable them to continue to fight for the women of Kansas.

Join us as we serve up some BBQ, dish some dirt on the radical right and party like socialist swine...

A moving moment that year came when McCutcheon, Tom Chapin, and others, with Linda Tilton signing, led the crowd in the grandstand in a rousing rendition of, "The Great Storm Is Over." Everyone in the crowd that night needed a chance to come together, without the bitterness of politics and hate, and sing as one voice.

WICHITA, Kan. - It's in the air along about the middle of August. Even though we're still in the heat of summer, and this particular summer has been brutally hot, an undercurrent signals sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of the Walnut Valley Festival, which has taken place in Winfield, thirty-five miles south of Wichita, on the third weekend in September for the past thirty-nine years. This coming Sept. 14-18, forty years of bluegrass will once again fill the Winfield air and double the population of the town for one weekend.

To the Winfield natives and those of us who have attended for most of those years, the Festival is just known as "Bluegrass," as in, "Are you going to Bluegrass this year?" Or people will ask, "Will I see you at Winfield this year?" We know what they mean and, yes, I will be there.

WICHITA, Kan. - The Kansas Tequila Party inaugural event in Wichita will take place on July 29th, 2010 at 6:30 p.m. (CST) at Nomar Plaza, 204 E. 21st Street.

We will be rallying and registering new Hispanic voters at our registration booth. We will have speakers and entertainment available where our speakers will be discussing the unifying issue to Latinos from all political backgrounds -- the immigration issue.

Tea Party politician Kansas Representative Virgil Peck stated earlier this year that a way to handle the illegal immigration issue is to "shoot immigrants like feral hogs".

Our rally will be a rallying point and a rally cry against the bigotry facing the fastest growing population in the nation.

TOPEKA, Kan. - Join us August 6 as we STAND UNITED in a Celebration of Fairness, Equality, Patriotism, and Freedom for ALL!

UNITED WE STAND in our opposition to the Brownback administration's devastating policies that damage the quality of life of all Kansans.

UNITED WE STAND against policies aimed at forcing narrow, ideological extremism upon all Kansans.

UNITED WE STAND for equality, for jobs, for healthcare, and for quality education.

UNITED WE STAND to remind Governor Brownback that dissent is patriotic.

MANHATTAN, Kan. - The Monthly Film Series, sponsored by the Manhattan Alliance for Peace and Justice, presents The Dark Side of Chocolate on Wednesday, July 13th at 6:30 pm at the Manhattan Public Library Auditorium. The public is invited to attend.

Film Synopsis: While we enjoy the sweet taste of chocolate, the reality is strikingly different for African children. Since the '90s numerous non-governmental organizations working in the Ivory Coast and Ghana have reported the use of children as slaves on cocoa plantations. The Ivory Coast alone produces about 43% of the world's cocoa beans. The simple truth is that all the heavily advertised chocolate, M&Ms, Hersey, Godiva, and Nestlé, is made by child slave laborers.

Estimates placed the number of cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast at approximately 600,000. The number of children working these farms is estimated as high as 15,000. Young boys from the age 12 to 16 are forced to work on cocoa farms in order to harvest the beans from which chocolate is made. Most boys that are forced to work on these farms come from Mali were slave trader agents hang around bus stations looking for children who are alone or begging for food.