Daniel Mills

I am voting no on November 3 because our community deserves a better conversation about safety and how we respond to harm. I am a licensed social worker and a therapist. I have sat with people terrified of being taken away from their homes and their families by the carceral system. I have supported people harmed by incarcerating systems that promised safety while delivering abuse and terror.

My loved ones have been imprisoned. These experiences have made it clear to me that jailing is about so much more than a building.

Every person we cage is in their own crisis. They are removed from their families, their loved ones, their jobs, their homes, their safety nets. They deserve more from us than a continuation of the same old strategies of punishment and coercion. We owe it to them to surround them with community when they are at their most vulnerable. And if we are going to have a conversation about our jail, then we owe it to them and to ourselves to have the hard conversations about how we build a world free of human caging.

The plan we have been presented skipped that conversation, skipped the work of bringing people together across our community. I am voting no because I want to dream big dreams in Johnson County.

I am voting no because I want us to set ambitious goals. I am voting no because I want us to prioritize belonging, compassion, and transformation.