Small No Kings event puts love ahead of politics in rural Kansas town where immigrants are detained

Kay Krause holds a "comfort frog," which likened to a weighted blanket for kids, at the Oct. 18, 2025, No Kings event she organized at her home in Cottonwood Falls. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

COTTONWOOD FALLS — Kay Krause was searching for a way to make a difference with so much “craziness happening around us.”

So she meditated.

That’s how she came up with the idea to try to make life better for immigrants who are housed at the Chase County Detention Center a half-mile from her house.

“You don’t have to take a political stand to support people that are imprisoned,” she said. “That’s a love stand.”

Krause has collected more than $5,000 to support the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees, providing them with postcards and stamps. The jail can hold about 150 detainees who are in transition to larger facilities elsewhere in the country, with some only there for 48 hours and most gone in two weeks. That’s not enough time for them to be assigned a federal ID number. Without the postcards and stamps, their families wouldn’t know where they are or where they are going, Krause said.

Krause also has organized jail-sanctioned donations of soccer balls, games and other items through an Amazon gift registry, and she is planning a pizza party for detainees during Thanksgiving week.

On Saturday, she expanded her efforts by hosting a “love in action” rally at her house. The gathering of 13 in the rural town of about 800 people was among the smallest of the 42 No Kings events that were planned across the state as part of a nationwide uprising.

Krause’s event was different because it focused on kindness rather than the anger toward the Trump administration that brought the attendees together around a campfire in her backyard. Trump won about 75% of the Chase County votes in last year’s election.

“At some point, this whole mess is going to be over, and then what are we going to do?” she said in an interview earlier in the week. “We’ve got to start building bridges. We’ve got to start seeing our neighbors as neighbors and not enemies. We’ve just got to start reaching out and looking for the good in each other, because it’s there. It’s just covered up with all this craziness.”

The attendees included a couple from Wichita, a local folksinger, a professional musician from Colorado, and a Topeka man who was protesting Trump for a 164th consecutive day.

Rodney Bates prepares to play his dobro, which is amplified through a cone of spun aluminum, at the Oct. 18, 2025, No Kings event in Cottonwood Falls. He lives near Strong City. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

A tortoiseshell cat and two large dogs listened in as Randall McKinnon, of Fairplay, Colorado, and Rodney Bates, who lives just east of nearby Strong City, played Kris Kristofferson’s “Here Comes This Rainbow Again,” which was inspired by a chapter from “The Grapes of Wrath,” and John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

McKinnon was in between gigs in Kansas City and Wichita. He said he appreciated the rally’s focus on “acts of love.”

“There’s enough hatred going on out there,” McKinnon said. “I could have gone to some of the metro area protests, where they have a little different flavor to them, but I left my inflatable frog suit at home.”

His comment was a reference to viral images of protesters dancing in costume outside an ICE office in Portland, Oregon.

Bates, an 80-year-old who arrived with a dobro, said he has been “negative about monarchy” since he was in grade school. He lamented the way politics have “degenerated into gang warfare,” where people wear either a red or blue bandana.

“I think this is more extreme than even the ’60s,” he said. “For a long time, I thought it was kind of like the ’60s all over again, but I think it’s gone farther, more extreme.”

Marcia Freund, of Wichita, said she believes the Trump presidency is different from others because “the power grab is so much worse.”

She said Trump isn’t taking care of America, and she worried about people who are at risk of losing food assistance because of the government shutdown.

“Here we’re having these little protests, and he has an insurrection, but he acts like we’re the hateful ones,” Freund said.

She attended with her husband, Dave, who said: “You can’t print what I want to say.”

Thomas Muther holds a sign at the Oct. 18, 2025, No Kings event in Cottonwood Falls. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

Thomas Muther, of Topeka, said he has protested in towns from northwest to southeast Kansas, as well as in Missouri and Arkansas. He plans to continue his streak of 164 consecutive days of protests until Trump leaves office.

Why?

“I’m a fan of democracy,” he said. “I’m not a fan of autocracy.”

“But there are lots and lots of reasons,” Muther added. “I think immigrants should be treated fairly. I think the law should be followed by everybody, especially including the president.”

Krause led the group in meditation. She asked them to take deep breaths, to be aware of the smell of the campfire and the sounds around them, and to try to lift their problems off their shoulders for a moment.

“It’s so easy to fall into the muck pond, where things are hard,” Krause told them. “We get overwhelmed with fear, anger, at things happening around us. We miss those opportunities to be fully present to what is. And in this moment, right here, right now, all is well.”

After the meditation, she walked down the street handing out roses on her way to the Dollar General store, where she paid for a man’s order.

“Just for a moment, people smiled,” she said. “And these days, I’ll take it.”

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