True public safety comes from meeting people’s basic needs and strengthening our capacity to care for one another – not from punishment, prisons, or surveillance. When communities are housed, healthy, and supported, harm is less likely to occur in the first place.

If we are serious about preventing harm, we must expand access to mental health counselors, therapists, social workers, and crisis responders in our schools, neighborhoods, and public spaces. Too many people experiencing a mental health and substance abuse crises are met with handcuffs instead of care. Jail is not treatment, and punishment is not prevention. We need trauma-informed, community-based responses that de-escalate harm and help people heal — because safety means fewer people reaching a breaking point, not more people locked behind bars.

True public safety does not require mass surveillance. As artificial intelligence and predictive technologies are increasingly weaponized against working people, activists, immigrants, and communities of color, we must draw a clear line: our rights do not end where new technology begins. As someone who has seen under the curtain of the surveillance industry, I support restoring and strengthening the Fourth Amendment for the 21st century, ensuring that privacy, due process, and freedom from unreasonable search and surveillance are protected in an age of AI, facial recognition, data mining, and digital policing. Public safety built on constant monitoring does not make us safer — it is control.