Where We Stand

Expand MAPS and the Sunshine Lamp Trolley

Public transit is not a luxury. It is how people get to jobs, school, child care, groceries, medical appointments, housing, and community life.

Joplin should protect and expand Metro Area Public Transit System services and the Sunshine Lamp Trolley—not treat them as an afterthought. The City Council has been considering Missouri HealthNet non-emergency medical-transportation reimbursement and state operating assistance for MAPS and the Sunshine Lamp Trolley. These should strengthen service, reliability, access, and safety for riders. Joplin City Council agenda, Sept. 8, 2026

We demand that the Joplin City Council:

• Expand evening, weekend, and early-morning service so transit works for people with nontraditional work schedules.
• Improve routes and frequency connecting residents to hospitals, clinics, grocery stores, schools, workplaces, affordable housing, and social-service offices.
• Reinvest public transit revenue and reimbursement savings into service—not cuts.
• Provide clean, lighted, weather-protected, accessible, and safe transit stops.
• Guarantee accessible service for disabled riders and meaningful language access for riders who need it.
• Publish rider data, missed-trip data, on-time performance, service gaps, and public plans for improvement.

A city that requires people to own a car to survive is not offering real freedom.

No corporate giveaways without public benefit

Joplin must stop handing public money, tax breaks, infrastructure commitments, or utility concessions to corporations and developers without enforceable public benefits.

Public funds should create public value: living-wage jobs, safe workplaces, local hiring, strong benefits, affordable utility costs, environmental protections, transparent contracts, and penalties when corporations break their promises.

We demand that the Joplin City Council:

• Require public hearings before major tax incentives, development deals, utility commitments, or public-land transfers.
• Publish every subsidy, incentive agreement, tax abatement, projected job number, actual job number, wage promise, and enforcement action in an easy-to-search public database.
• Attach living-wage, workplace-safety, local-hiring, anti-retaliation, and paid-sick-leave standards to every large city contract and subsidized project.
• Include enforceable clawbacks when companies fail to create promised jobs, pay promised wages, or meet public commitments.
• Require disclosure and public review of major projects’ water, energy, pollution, noise, traffic, housing, and infrastructure impacts.
• Reject data-center or industrial deals that increase costs or risks for residents while producing few accountable, good local jobs.

Corporate welfare is not economic development.

Protect health care, food assistance, and bodily autonomy

Health care is a right. Food is a right. Bodily autonomy is a right.

No Missourian should lose health care, SNAP benefits, or access to reproductive care because of bureaucratic traps, disability, poverty, pregnancy, geography, identity, or political cruelty. Missouri faces new administrative burdens tied to Medicaid and SNAP policy changes, even though many Medicaid recipients already work. The Beacon; St. Louis Public Radio

We demand that Missouri leaders and local institutions:

• Protect Medicaid/MO HealthNet enrollment and prevent wrongful terminations.
• Fund enrollment navigators, appeal assistance, transportation, language access, and outreach for residents facing benefit disruptions.
• Expand community mental-health services, addiction treatment, crisis response, and harm-reduction programs that do not rely on jails.
• Defend reproductive freedom and the abortion-rights protections Missouri voters approved.
• Protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination in health care, housing, schools, employment, and public accommodations.
• Treat food assistance as a tool against hunger—not as a punishment system.

No one should have to prove they deserve to survive.

Fund housing and care — not criminalization

Joplin must respond to homelessness with housing, health care, outreach, and dignity — not punishment, displacement, or policies that simply move people from one block to another.

People do not become safe because the city makes survival illegal. They become safer when they have a stable place to sleep, access to bathrooms and clean water, mental-health and substance-use treatment, case management, employment support, and a real pathway to permanent housing.

We demand that the Joplin City Council:

• Invest in permanent supportive housing, deeply affordable housing, emergency shelter, outreach, and behavioral-health services.
• Publish clear annual goals for shelter beds, affordable units, supportive-housing placements, outreach capacity, and progress toward ending unsheltered homelessness.
• Ensure that no person is punished for sleeping outside when no safe, appropriate, and genuinely available indoor alternative exists.
• Fund sanitation, safe storage for belongings, and access to hygiene services while housing is being secured.
• Prioritize people with disabilities, families with children, veterans, survivors of domestic violence, LGBTQ+ youth, and people at greatest risk of death outdoors.
• Include people with lived experience of homelessness in planning and oversight.

Housing is public safety. A home is safer than a jail cell, an emergency room, or a sidewalk.

No voluntary ICE partnerships in Joplin or Jasper County

Joplin and Jasper County must not use local tax dollars, police time, jail space, public data, or traffic stops to do ICE’s work.

Local officers should be focused on solving local crimes, responding to emergencies, protecting survivors, and building trust, not assisting federal deportation operations. Programs such as 287(g) can allow local personnel to carry out limited immigration-enforcement functions under ICE supervision. That type of arrangement risks turning ordinary interactions with local government into immigration encounters and makes families less likely to report crime, seek medical care, send children to school, or ask for help. ICE: Missouri 287(g) information

We demand that the Joplin City Council and Jasper County officials:

• Publicly reject any current or future 287(g) agreement.
• Prohibit local police and jail employees from using local resources for civil immigration enforcement unless required by a valid judicial warrant.
• Require public notice, a hearing, and a recorded vote before any local agency enters a federal immigration-enforcement agreement.
• Prohibit sharing Flock or other surveillance data with ICE, CBP, or federal immigration-enforcement agencies.
• Protect the right of all residents to seek emergency services, report crimes, and participate in civic life without fear.

Our neighbors are not a federal deportation workforce.

End mass vehicle surveillance in Joplin

Joplin must end its contract with Flock Safety, remove city-operated automated license-plate-reader cameras, and prohibit their expansion.

No one should have their daily movements photographed, logged, stored, and searched simply for driving to work, school, a doctor’s appointment, church, a protest, a friend’s home, or the grocery store.

Joplin has already seen why “trust us” is not enough. The Police Department disclosed a possible misuse of its Flock license-plate-reader system, conducted an internal investigation, and referred the matter to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. An employee involved was no longer employed by JPD. The appropriate response is not to buy more cameras or promise better internal audits after the fact. It is to end a surveillance system that makes abuse possible in the first place. Joplin Police statement

We demand that the Joplin City Council:

• Terminate and do not renew contracts with Flock Safety.
• Remove city-owned or city-operated automated license-plate-reader cameras.
• Reject new grants, purchases, leases, or expansions of automated license-plate-reader technology.
• Prohibit city surveillance data from being shared with ICE, CBP, federal immigration enforcement, out-of-state abortion investigations, anti-LGBTQ+ investigations, or agencies targeting peaceful protest or organizing.
• Require a public hearing and a Council vote before any new surveillance technology is acquired.

Public safety does not require treating every driver as a potential suspect.

We demand the removal of all Flock and other privatized surveillance equipment that ports data to third party companies utilized by law enforcement agencies operating in Lauderdale, Colbert, Franklin, Limestone, Lawrence, Marion, and Winston Counties. These devices violate our Constitutional right to privacy and unduly shift the burden of proof from the state to the individual.

We demand an end to 287(G) cooperation agreements with the Department of Homeland Security for all law enforcement jurisdictions operating in Lauderdale, Colbert, Franklin, Limestone, Lawrence, Marion, and Winston counties. Administrative warrants issued by the Department of Homeland Security are subversion of due process and are not equivalent to a Judicial removal order. Due process is a fundamental right.