Wichita’s Safe Streets opens downtown office amid influx of support after the election
A week after former President Donald Trump was reelected, and Kansas Republicans maintained its supermajority in the state legislature, community organizers at Safe Streets opened their doors to its new downtown Wichita office.
Community groups such as Safe Streets are seeing a slew of support and requests after the election, in part out of fear that access to resources like emergency contraception and drug assistance could become more limited moving forward.
Along with handing out emergency contraception, Safe Streets is most well known in the community for handing out naloxone, a lifesaving opioid overdose reversal medication, and fentanyl test strips at no cost.
“Since the election results, I’ve been seeing a lot of women posting like, ‘I’m buying Plan B, a bunch of it,’” organizer Morgan Jennings said during an open house Tuesday at 224 N. Ohio. “I’m like, ‘Don’t buy it… we have so much.”
In the past year, Safe Streets has grown substantially, from executive director Aonya Kendrick Barnett handing out naloxone and fentanyl test strips out of the back of her car, to a fully stocked office that’s able to dispense thousands of resources when it’s needed.
Kendrick Barnett said she began working with Safe Streets during the first Trump presidency.
“For [Kansas], because we’re so behind, we’re gonna at least get a little bit closer to hopefully, the basics, like sterile syringe [exchanges],” she said. “But going with Trump, I think we’ll at least be able to maintain the naloxone and other things.”
Colorado to the west and Oklahoma to the south have legalized sterile syringe programs. The programs are still illegal in Missouri, and Nebraska’s legislature passed a bill to legalize it last legislative session before its Republican governor vetoed the bill.
Kendrick Barnett compared the group’s new office to that of the Chicago Recovery Alliance, which regularly opens its doors to community members to get naloxone and other resources.
But the new space is also sentimental to Kendrick Barnett — her uncle, Willie Kendrick, used the space before her to run his Popeyes franchises. He died earlier this year.
“I have so many artifacts and letters from him about how he stimulated the Kansas economy. He employed people that typically would not get a job, for 30 plus years,” she said.
A room that used to be Willie Kendrick’s personal office is now filled with sewing machines, which Kendrick Barnett said she wanted to use to make clothing items for those in-need during the winter.
“I love that it’s going to be a community maker space, once we get it all together,” she said. “I’m going to do a lot of cute things here, focused on community and culture.”
Safe Streets also shares the new space with ICT Treehuggers, a group focused on food sustainability and gardening.
“The space really looks like collaboration, community, staying true to our culture and really helping the people that need the help,” said Sarah Meyers with ICT Treehuggers.
Right now, the office is open by appointment, but organizers said it’ll have regular office hours starting in the spring.
“I think that’s what it’s become like, not just ‘the Narcan people,’” Safe Streets organizer Cat Butler said, “but like, letting ourselves be like a vessel and a vehicle for all these other people and their ideas, and us just lending our voice and support to them.”