Ami Chen Mills, founder of Santa Cruz County’s Get the Flock Out campaign and current lecturer at UC Santa Cruz, is running for Santa Cruz mayor.
As of publication, Gillian Greensite, Chris Kohn, Ryan Coonerty and Joy Schendledecker have also announced their candidacy. Elections will occur on June 2.
“To be honest, I wasn’t happy with the candidate,” Mills said in reference to her motivation to throw her hat into the ring. Before Mills and fellow candidates announced their campaigns on March 4, Coonerty was the only nominee.
Mills has been a Santa Cruz resident for over 30 years and ran for county supervisor in 2022. She serves the community as an author, global speaker, mental health coach, educator and host of the radio show and podcast “Moment of Truth with Ami Chen Mills” on KSQD. She is also an award-winning journalist for her investigative and environmental reporting, where she wrote about the detrimental effects of penis enlargement surgery and the decline of the salmon fishing industry.
On the campus front, Mills is the active lecturer for the two-credit course, “Building an Inner Sanctuary.” The course seeks to instill resilience within students, as well as the confidence of knowing that they hold the key to their own success. For the greater community, she is in pursuit of expanded mental health services, especially for the unhoused. One of her goals is to reopen the Mental Health Client Action Network, which abruptly closed in August of last year due to funding issues.
Ezra Thaler, a first-year sociology student who took Mills’ class, spoke on key takeaways from his time in the course.
“Through high school and getting to college, I’ve definitely struggled with mental health,” he said. “The class was really helpful as a space to talk things through, with resources and teachings from Ami.”
Mills is currently serving on the District 3 Santa Cruz County Democratic Central Committee, and has formerly worked on the Westlake School Site Council, as well as the city’s Community Advisory Committee on Homelessness. Last month, she announced her transition from appointed to electoral politics.
“As a mostly white, liberal community, we could often do better than we do,” she said. “There’s a lot of talking, and then policies don’t always reflect what we say we’re about.”
A closer look at the pins on Mills’ shirt nods at a few of the organizations she supports, including Santa Cruz Metro and CalCare, that advocate for transportation and healthcare.
Mills does not shy away from speaking her mind on issues that matter most to her. She participated alongside graduate students during the 2019 COLA strikes, supporting the fight for livable wages for graduate student teaching assistants.
In September 2023, Mills and other community members wrote an op-ed for Lookout Santa Cruz criticizing Moms for Liberty, a group of parents who advocate against vaccine mandates and teachings of multicultural and LGBTQIA+ history in schools that formed in Watsonville.
Mills’ Work With Get the Flock Out
Mills is also a notable figure in Santa Cruz County’s anti-surveillance campaign, Get the Flock Out. Mills founded the campaign to protest the implementation of automatic license plate readers (ALPRs). The devices were created to aid police in finding vehicles associated with traffic violations or criminal offenses, and are used by police stations around the country.
As of last month, all ALPR cameras in the city of Santa Cruz were removed, but recent claims about ICE using surveillance data to obtain immigration status information in the county left many community members wary of misuse.
“The Flock campaign was eye-opening for me because the city voted those cameras in without thinking twice. As a person of color, I understand what it means to be dehumanized and othered,” Mills said. “When there are cameras that are surveilling everyone, even if it’s just the police using them, I’m concerned, because you know there’s a history of racial policing and police brutality.”
Though Mills’ fight against surveillance is far from over, she continues to serve as a watchdog for the wider Santa Cruz community.
“We have tech fascism in our nation, it has crept into our community in the form of Flock,” Mills said. “I support us getting organized in our communities now.”
Increased surveillance through self-driving Waymos and the Ring doorbell – whose parent companies cooperate with Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security, worries Mills for undocumented and marginalized communities. Mills endorses existing programs that support these vulnerable communities, such as Santa Cruz Welcoming Network and Childcare Safety Plan Coalition.
Mills’ Blueprint for Change
Mills feels compelled to lead the charge within the broader Santa Cruz community. She specifically rebukes private equity asset acquisition, such as the University of California’s purchase of Hilltop Apartments and additional real estate from Greystone Private Equity.
“People get so wealthy, then cease to care who’s impacted by this or what’s happening,” Mills expressed. “We need to be supporting local businesses and not global private equity firms.”
Mills’ campaign proposes a variety of solutions to community issues: increased affordable housing for low-income and student populations and expanding rental assistance voucher programs utilizing state and federal funds. Mills also seeks to make existing tenants’ rights groups accessible to more citizens.
“Affordable housing will help students. Supporting Metro will help students. In terms of student housing, we need to put pressure on the university to build more housing on campus for first-year and second-year students because [the university is] still trying to grow,” Mills said.
Mills says she will not allow community members to sit back and watch Silicon Valley and billionaire influence overtake the town she has called home for over 30 years.
With so much change both on and off campus, many students are left feeling hopeless. Ami Chen Mills reminds students that their voices matter and are essential to create a version of Santa Cruz where future Banana Slugs can thrive.
“Registering to vote in Santa Cruz is an important thing that a lot of college students don’t do,” said Luke Goodman, a second-year agroecology student. “It’s important to have involvement or at least be knowledgeable about what is going on in the place that you’re living.”