More and more the American people feel that their elected officials don’t listening to them. If you don’t have a lobbyist, you don’t exist. Even in the few town halls that happen before elections, our politicians only answer the questions they want, and ignore the rest.

Not anymore. After our Summer 2020 LawMaker Challenge in Kansas City, Missouri, the three winning LawMaker policies got a real response. On August 6, 2020, Mayor Quinton Lucas addressed all the winning policies in a public Facebook Live session. He spoke about how KCMO is addressing each policy and took questions from KC residents. This is why we built LawMaker and why the residents of Kansas City took part in the Challenge. How often to Americans get to hear a direct response from their politicians about policies that were proposed from the grassroots?

In the final four days of the 2020 Kansas City LawMaker Challenge, Joel Awaken’s pandemic-related policy mandating the wearing of masks indoors was near the top of our leaderboard. A simple but popular policy, it read: “When indoors in public, patrons and staff are required to wear masks in stores deemed essential.” Joel’s policy went on to win the KC Challenge days later.

On June 26, 2020, Mayor Lucas amended his city’s emergency order to announce that people will now be required to wear masks while indoors at any “place of public accommodation,” including, but not limited to grocery and retail stores, special events, and public transit. The official text of Mayor Lucas’ amended emergency order can be found here: https://www.kcmo.gov/home/showdocument?id=5225

On January 16, 2018, Councilman David Ryu and Council President Herb Wesson introduced Jamie Tijerina’s winning policy idea from our LawMaker Challenge as a motion before the Los Angeles City Council.