“The anarchists” have been kicked out and residents’ firearms are finally returned after being confiscated. What’s going on in Greensburg, Kan.? It’s kind of hard to say.

On Saturday, May 12, four members of Kansas Mutual Aid piled into their vegetable oil-burning car and drove to Greensburg, Kan. Their mission? To assess what supplies and help were needed in the tornado-ravaged town, and then return with the appropriate gear and people. They also wanted to know what had happened to the prisoners in Greensburg … where they had been transported and how they were being treated.

KMA is a self-described “Lawrence-based class struggle anarchist collective.” The KMA was started about four years ago by members of Lawrence’s Solidarity! Revolutionary Center and Radical Library, located downtown, to provide support to Kansas prisoners. Volunteers for KMA―all of whom belong to the Solidarity! collective―work for prison reform, help prisoners file grievances to the proper authorities and generally try to act as liaisons between prisoners and authorities.

Locally, the members of the KMA and Solidarity! are more commonly known as “the anarchists.”

The picture that the anarchists painted of Greensburg after returning home to Lawrence after their initial fact-finding trip was even bleaker than most news accounts. Besides citing the obvious—a town completely and depressingly pulverized by an F-5 tornado—Dave Strano, in a written piece titled “Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Kansas Anarchists Report From Greensburg, Kansas,” described a town “taken over by the state” where relief efforts were painfully slow, FEMA and the Red Cross were as inept as ever, and the only organization that seemed to be providing any real relief to folks was AmeriCorps. Strano also claimed that Greensburg residents’ guns had been taken from them, saying, “FEMA and the police have systematically disarmed the local population, leaving the firepower squarely in control of the state.” (Strano’s account of that day can be read in full at several indy media sites on the Web; just Google the title.)

After touring the town and talking with people, the four anarchists helped a family completely clear out their basement of belongings and debris. Once the basement was empty, the anarchists say that the family thanked them profusely and asked them to bring back “fifty more” people from Lawrence to help clear debris in Greensburg.

The anarchists said they would.

The next weekend, Saturday, May 15, the anarchists returned to Greensburg, this time with five members. Though the anarchists are notoriously wary of “the man,” they knew that in order to be the most effective and helpful, they’d have to follow protocol to get back into the town, which was effectively under martial law. They checked in with the Kiowa County Emergency Response Command Post to receive official permission to set up their relief efforts.  They were given a day pass that allowed them to drive in and out of the city—the town was only open to people between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.―and then the group sought out Mennonite Disaster Relief Services, figuring that the local church would have a better handle on what aid the native population needed than would one of the many federal organizations operating in the city.

“Their church was destroyed,” said KMA member Jordan Ferrand-Sapsis, “but they treated us very warmly and seemed glad to see us. They seemed happy to have the hands. They showed us a place where we could store our supplies and tools.”

The group then trekked over to a Red Cross tent to pick up water and sandwiches that were being offered to relief workers.

That’s when the anarchists say they were approached by police officer Ty Moeder of the Olathe Police force and told to leave the city and not return. While the anarchists attempted to negotiate with officer Moeder, they say that an Officer McNemee of the Lawrence Police Department began taking photos of the inside and outside of their car.

At first, says Ferrand-Sapsis, she thought the officers were simply irked that the anarchists were taking food from the Red Cross. But as they talked with the officers, she says it became clear that the police knew exactly who they were and viewed the group as a security threat. According to Strano, Officer Moeder stated that the group was to have been turned back at the road block before even reaching Greensburg and couldn’t figure out how they’d gotten as far as they had.

Then, says Ferrand-Sapsis, the officers convinced the group that they’d better leave because if they were to be arrested, it might not be so easy to get out of jail. “They made comments like ‘they’re not giving people bail right now,’ like it might be a long, sticky arrest and you might get lost in the system kind of thing. They definitely made it sound as if it wouldn’t be a run-of-the-mill arrest. And it did sound like a threat.”

(Again, to read a full account written by KMA member Dave Strano of what happened that day, Google “Kansas Mutual Aid Relief Workers Forced Out of City by Police.”)

Ferrand-Sapsis says she wasn’t surprised that the officers recognized the members of KMA and Solidarity. After all, Solidarity has staged several anti-war and anti-recruiting protests all around Lawrence, including in front of the military recruiting office at 23rd and Louisiana Streets. Most of the group’s members have been arrested as a result of their protests. And, says Ferrand-Sapsis, the group hadn’t been at all secretive about coming back to Greensburg. “We’re very transparent with our organizing. We try to be as open as possible and as visible as possible so that anyone can come help. So it’s not surprising to me that they knew we were coming. Many of us have been arrested and photographed in Douglas County before.”

The woman who answered the phone at the Olathe Police Department was friendly and bubbly. Was there an Officer Ty Moeder at the Olathe Police Department? Yes, she confirmed, there was. “But he’s not in today,” she said. “I can give you his voice mail.”

I asked if there was someone I could talk to right then. “Sure,” she said. “You can talk to Sergeant Fellers. He’s right here.”

I was put on hold for what seemed like a long time. When the line became active again, it was Sergeant Fellers’ voicemail. I hung up and called the number the woman had given me for Officer Moeder’s direct line. I left a message on his voicemail asking him to call me back. He never did.

The media liaison at the Lawrence Police Department said they had no information on the incident and referred me to the Greensburg Command Center in Greensburg.

Well.

The “Greensburg Command Center” is nothing more than FEMA’s main trailer in Greensburg ... not a place that can be looked up in the phone book. And since the anarchists were not claiming to have been thrown out of Greensburg by FEMA, it seemed futile to try to contact them.

Carisa Stejskal (pronounced stay-skull) lives in Lawrence now, but she grew up in Greensburg, as did her husband. Though her parents moved away from Greensburg a couple of years ago, her brother still lives there. Luckily, his house was one of only about 5 percent that received minor damage.

I asked Stejskal if people in Greensburg were frustrated with the relief efforts there.
“No,” she said. “I haven’t really heard that.” But, she continued, “Greensburg people aren’t the type to complain. I don’t think they’d ask for anything. They’re just not the kind of people to ask for help. They’re a very humble community.” Did her friends and family from Greensburg have any beef with FEMA? “Honestly,” she said, “I haven’t heard complaints about FEMA other than they were offering loans that weren’t very great.”

I told Stejskal about the story I was working on, explaining who the anarchists were and how they’d been thrown out of Greensburg. I mentioned that one of their concerns was the Greensburg prisoners. Stejskal laughed a little, saying that there’s usually only one person in the Greensburg jail and the nighttime jail keeper is a single mom.

Then I mentioned that the anarchists said that everyone’s guns had been confiscated in Greensburg.

“That’s true,” Stejskal confirmed, and, she said, many of the people of Greensburg were none too happy about it.

Greensburg citizen Larry Brennan still doesn’t know which government agency gave the order to gather up every single gun in Greensburg, which amounted to several hundred. And he’s asked, many times.

Brennan says he knows that some people in this world are against guns. He also understands that in an emergency situation, unsecured guns are better off in the hands of the authorities than lying on the ground where some kid or criminal could pick one up.

But Brennan says that his guns were in a secure, locked case where they’d be safe and dry for a couple of days until he could get to them. When he was allowed into the city to look over his property, he found that his gun case had been broken into and left open to the elements. “They don’t have the right to break into the remains of your house and take your guns,” he said. “They went house-to-house, room-to-room, closet-to-closet, even in structures that were still standing, for three days before they let anybody back into town. If I had three sacks of rare coins in a closet or room (that authorities broke into) and when I came back to retrieve my belongings, if my coins are gone, did they go away with the tornado or did someone take them? We don’t know.”

Brennan then began asking the powers-that-be in town if he could have his guns back. For several days, he was told “No.”

“I called every politician I could think of,” says Brennan. “None of them cared. They said, ‘You’re in an emergency situation.’”

So Brennan—and several other Greensburg citizens—called the NRA. “They were here the next day from Washington, D.C.,” Brennan says.

And they brought a film crew with them.

The NRA wired Brennan with a mic and followed him and others as they went to local authorities asking for their firearms to be returned. The citizens of Greensburg figured out that their guns were being held in a trailer. Brennan says that for three days, people lined up outside the trailer, asking for their firearms to be returned to them. Finally, authorities relented.

When gun owners went to pick up their guns, Brennan says they found them simply piled to the roof of the dark, wet, 40-foot trailer. None of the guns had been labeled, and Brennan says that guns were returned to anyone who claimed to own them.

“I asked, ‘Which ones are mine?’ ‘We don’t know,’ they told me. You sifted through rows and rows terribly rusty, mostly unrecognizable guns. I said, ‘I could take this $1200 Browning over my $800 Remington.’ And they just shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘Yeah, you could.’”

Brennan says that while he’ll still be able to go hunting with his guns, their appearance has been forever damaged. He’s also confident that some people took guns that didn’t belong to them, while others gave up trying to recover their guns altogether. “Most everybody now in Greensburg have recovered everything they could and they have jobs and they’ve moved on. But I’m sure that there are many guns left in that trailer.”

Brennan also said that any gun taken from the ‘gun trailer’ that didn’t have proof of registration had to be registered on the spot.

“Every gun that I retrieved is now registered with the federal government,” Brennan said. “It was gun control. They saw an opportunity in a small community with thousands of guns and they saw an opportunity to seize as many guns as they could.”

NRA officials are about as tight-lipped about the gun incident in Greensburg as the Lawrence Police are about the anarchists, but they seem to be satisfied that the folks in Greensburg are at least having their firearms returned to them. When asked if they thought resident’s guns had been handled improperly, they declined to say.
But they did issue this press release, which is posted on their Web site:

‘Last week, NRA reported that we were investigating allegations of gun confiscation in the aftermath of the tornado that ravaged Greensburg, Kan. NRA received a number of phone calls from troubled NRA members in Greensburg who were concerned that law enforcement had inappropriately removed firearms from their homes after the deadly tornadoes. In response, NRA sent representatives to Greensburg to gather as much information as possible, spoke with area law enforcement and local elected officials to determine what had transpired.

After investigating these complaints, there was no evidence of any illegal gun confiscations or seizures. However, there were firearms recovered by law enforcement that are now in the process of being returned.

Gun owners whose firearms were recovered by area law enforcement may claim them at the ‘gun trailer,’ located east of Davis Park on the north side of US 54.  Please bring proper identification. The trailer is open from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Monday through Friday until all firearms are returned.

NRA will continue to monitor the situation in Greensburg, and we will remain vigilant in investigating any future complaints of illegal gun confiscation wherever it may happen.  If your firearms were recovered by law enforcement following the tornado in Greensburg and you have any trouble retrieving your firearms, please call us at 1-800-392-8683.’

An NRA official did say that if it became necessary to release the film they took while in the small Kansas town they would, but that right now they didn’t think that was the case.

On the weekend of May 26, the anarchists returned to the Greensburg area and helped a farmer clear debris from his field. They didn’t even try to enter Greensburg proper.