WICHITA — Protesters interrupted the second of Gov. Sam Brownback’s town hall meetings on childhood poverty Wednesday, standing up during the keynote speech and reciting some of their objections to Brownback’s policies.
One of the 14 protesters was arrested and another was detained for a short period.
The protest began as Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation fellow invited to give the keynote speech, delivered his remarks advocating marriage as a key way to end poverty. Protesters, most of them members of Occupy Wichita, stood silently with their backs to Rector for about 10 minutes, then began chanting their grievances once he completed his speech.
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Rector, a popular and outspoken figure among social conservatives, delivered essentially the same speech he gave in Kansas City, where the first meeting was held Monday. Rector said it is time to start talking about the “mystery factor” behind poverty.
“The number one factor behind poverty here in the state of Kansas is the death of marriage,” he said, noting that 38 percent of children in Kansas today were born to unmarried women, compared to about 5 percent in the 1960s. “This is the most dramatic social transformation in the 20th century.”
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http://www.khi.org/news/2011/nov/16/protesters-disrupt-governors-childhood-poverty-for/
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