daisyifyoudo68 (@Daisyifyoudo68)

#Arkansas Paint, Labels, and the People We Refuse to See There’s something deeply wrong happening when a government paints over its people with a label and calls it justice. In our rural community, the state has decided to build the largest prison in its history—right next to our homes. Not with our consent. Not with transparency. And certainly not with care. When we raised our voices in concern—hoping for honesty, dialogue, and basic human decency—we weren’t met with respect. We were met with a label: NIMBYs—“Not In My Back Yard.” That label was meant to dismiss us. To make it easier for the state to bulldoze forward—literally and figuratively—without having to face the people it’s harming. But this isn’t just about a label. It’s about the deeper, more troubling story behind it. The state has not been honest with the public. Plans for this prison were kept quiet, details buried, and voices from our community deliberately left out of the process. And now, with the truth beginning to surface, they are scrambling to defend a project that is already proving indefensible. The site itself is poorly chosen—remote, without proper infrastructure and complete lack of workforce. The cost? Staggering. Billions of dollars that will come out of taxpayers’ pockets—money that could be used for schools, healthcare, mental health treatment, or real solutions to reduce crime and rebuild lives. Instead, we are being told that this is the only way. And when we question it, we’re not met with facts or accountability—we’re met with a brush dipped in blame, and the word NIMBY is painted across our faces. That kind of labeling is dangerous. It reduces real people to a stereotype. It erases our stories, concerns, and rights. It turns neighbors into nuisances. And in doing so, it allows those in power to justify harm, without ever having to face the truth of it. It reminds me of something horrific from the past: a story about a group of young children who murdered a baby. Before they did, they threw paint on the child—to make it look less human. That’s how they were able to go through with it. When you stop seeing someone as a person, you can convince yourself that what you’re doing isn’t really that bad. That same instinct—though far less visible—is at work here. By calling us NIMBYs, the state is attempting to silence and depersonalize us. To paint over our faces, our families, our history. To avoid confronting the reality of what they’re doing—not just to our community, but to the entire state. This plan is not just unfair. It’s unsound. It’s costly, careless, and cruel. We’re not against justice. We’re not against rehabilitation. We’re not against solutions that help make our state stronger and safer. But we are against being sacrificed in the process. We are against dishonesty, and rushed decisions that put lives and futures at risk. We are not roadblocks. We are not labels. We are mothers, fathers, grandparents, neighbors, We are the people—and we deserve to be seen and heard.