Inspiring Comeback Story: Kandia Milton and Dream.org
When you’ve spent your entire life in politics and then lose everything, where do you even start over?
I connected with Kandia Milton through Sabrina Morgan out of Kansas City. She couldn’t stop talking about this guy, and within five minutes of our conversation, I understood why. Kandia doesn’t just talk about criminal justice reform. He’s living it every day at Dream.org, working to change the very system that once swallowed him whole.
Born Into Politics
Kandia wasn’t joking when he told me he doesn’t know a life without politics. His mother had him out canvassing for candidates when he was literally a newborn baby.
“I’m born July 24th, 1971, and the primaries are in early August,” he said. “My mom tells the story that we were right out there encouraging folks to vote for a particular candidate. And ever since then, I’ve been in politics.”
Growing up in Detroit, his summers weren’t just about baseball practice. After the game, the entire team would go door to door dropping literature for whatever candidate his mother was supporting. Politics, sports, and school. That was his whole world.
His grandfather had played college basketball at Wayne State and coached Kandia when he was young. The man is in Wayne State’s Hall of Fame as a contributor. That basketball connection opened doors, but his grandfather made sure Kandia understood something important early on.
“He helped me understand that this is an avenue that can open up doors. We can make it about the game, or we can make it about life.”
The Youngest Mayor’s Inner Circle
When Kwame Kilpatrick became the youngest mayor of Detroit at 31, he brought Kandia in as executive assistant to the chief of staff. Kandia was 30. They were young, hungry, and working until the parking garage closed at 11 PM. Then they’d move their cars to the street and go back upstairs.
“That was just the level of energy and enthusiasm we had for what we were doing,” Kandia explained. “We were a dedicated group of people who nobody knew. We hadn’t built the political cache. We had a chip on our shoulders that we needed to prove ourselves.”
And they did. Detroit hadn’t seen a new hotel in 20 years. Under their watch, seven new hotel deals closed. They got $82 million from Congress to replace the city’s decrepit bus fleet. Another $40 million for homeland security infrastructure post-9/11.
Then it all came crashing down.
The Walls Cave In
If you followed Detroit politics in that era, you know investigations were popping up everywhere. Kandia’s situation was different though. He’d made a bad decision around a land deal in 2006 that had nothing to do with anyone else’s troubles.
“I had built a reputation of integrity,” he told me. “Folks would say, ‘But that Candia guy is the go-to guy who tells it like it is.’ The Shakespearean comedy of it all is that I played on that reputation. I betrayed the trust of the hardworking folks at the city. I betrayed the citizens. I don’t take that lightly.”
The feds didn’t come knocking until 2009. Three years had passed. Kandia thought he’d moved past it. Then his wife called while he was in a meeting.
“She’s calling me again and again. When I take the call, she says, ‘Candia, what in the heck did you do now?’ She didn’t use ‘heck,’ by the way. The FBI had just showed up at the door.”
He worked with his attorney to accept responsibility. In late summer of 2010, he self-reported to Morgantown, West Virginia.
Walking Onto the Compound
The self-report experience is weird. You’re literally driving yourself to prison.
“It’s surreal. When you go through that check-in, it’s very invasive. Violating. It was like indoctrination so you know this is what this is going to be about. You got no power. I don’t care where you came from.”
They gave him khakis, flat shoes, the big orange hat. Then he walked across the compound while everyone sized him up.
“I walked through the indoor basketball court to check it out, see what the competition was going to look like. Folks were sizing me up. This guy’s 6’4”, got a little bit of a walk to him, he might not be bad. They’d pass you the ball so you could shoot it.”
Common courtesy mattered more than anything on that compound. Chewing with your mouth open was an expression of disrespect. The written rules were one thing. The unwritten rules were what kept you alive.
The Relationships That Changed Everything
I’ve said it a hundred times on this show: some of the most thoughtful, kind, intelligent, and creative people I’ve ever met were in prison. Kandia felt the same.
“What I learned is that everybody wants the same thing that everybody outside those walls wants. It’s just a matter of their exposure in life on how to get there.”
One guy changed Kandia’s entire trajectory. They were in the visiting room, and this tough guy was playing with his two young boys. Jumping around, laughing, loving on those kids. At the end of visitation, when everyone lined up to go back, the kids grabbed his ankles, bawling. He wiped tears from his eyes.
Two weeks later, the guy was still in self-imposed isolation. Kandia walked over.
“I said, ‘Herb, man, this has got to be it for you. Those kids are depending on you. You can’t come back here again.’ He looks up at me and says, ‘Milt, I’m gonna do my best, but I can’t promise you nothing.’”
When Kandia asked how he couldn’t make that promise, Herb explained that the first time he got out, he committed to never coming back. Janitorial jobs were fine while getting on his feet, but nobody would hire him for anything else.
“He said, ‘I had to go back to do what I knew how to do. My uncles hustled, my mother hustled, my cousins all hustled. And if I knew my father, I’m sure he was a hustler, but the only hustling he did was get out of there.’”
Coming Home to Silence
Kandia came home ready to get back into society. He had a notepad with 25 names. People who’d told him to call when he got out. People he’d helped move projects through city government. People who owed him.
He made all 25 calls. He applied for 50 jobs online.
“I got only two callbacks. I didn’t get one call back for an interview from those 50 applications.”
That experience brought Herb’s words rushing back. Kandia had thought Herb didn’t understand. Turns out Kandia was the one who was out of touch.
“There’s a group of people who could use the experience I’ve had in government, working at the intersection of policy and politics, to move the kind of policies that will make their lives better.”
Starting Over From Zero
One of those two callbacks came through a friend who ran a political consulting firm. He kept seeing Kandia sitting on his porch and finally said something.
“He told me, ‘Man, I keep driving by here and seeing you on the porch. This is a waste of your talents.’”
The friend invited Kandia to bartend at a charity event. There, he met staffers from the Gary Peters congressional campaign. They started asking questions. His friend told them Kandia’s story. They invited him to work on the campaign.
But Kandia kept putting his toe in the water and pulling it back. The campaign manager finally gave him an ultimatum: commit or leave.
“I came in as a canvasser. All the way back to my baseball days, dropping literature for candidates. Every day I would sit in the car for 20 minutes agonizing about what I had in front of me. Then a 30-second pep talk. Get yourself together. This isn’t just about canvassing. This is about who you are.”
Despite starting 20 to 30 minutes behind everyone else, his numbers were higher. His feedback was more substantial. After Gary Peters won, he offered Kandia a job in his official office.
With one condition.
Telling the Story
“He said, ‘I need you to be out in community sharing your story, encouraging young kids to avoid the pitfalls that lead to incarceration.’”
It took Kandia three months before he could do it. He’d prepared a canned speech, the typical “if I could just reach one of you” stuff. But when those kids walked into the auditorium, he saw little versions of himself.
“I didn’t utter one word of what I’d prepared. Because in all that preparation, I had avoided the real story.”
He opened differently than he’d planned.
“I said, ‘If I miss any one of you, I’ve failed you all.’ Because think about it. If you have 45 kids and you only reach one, that’s not success. Even baseball, you hit three times out of ten and that’s a good batting average. You ought to be fired if you only reach one.”
He talked about everything. Not just the bad decision, but everything that led to it. The steak dinners. The concert tickets. None of that was illegal, but it primed him for the moment when someone asked, “Would you take this money in exchange for this?”
One career day visit turned into an all-day event. They kept asking him to speak to the next class, and the next class, and the next. He didn’t leave until school ended at 4 PM.
Dream.org and Sacred Work
Today Kandia is the policy director at Dream.org, working with state and federal officials to change the criminal legal system. It’s not glamorous work.
“I recognize that I might not see all the benefits of this work. I can change 20 laws today, but until we change the culture, that’s a longer struggle. I might have to pass it on to the next generation.”
He sees it as sacred work. He shares a sacred trust with those who came before him and those who will come after.
“It’s important for me to build on what those who’ve gone before me have built. I might not get to the promised land, as Moses didn’t get there. But if I can get us closer, then I can pass it on to the next generation.”
That’s the thing about power and change. You don’t build it alone.
“I’m a movement by myself, but I’m a force when we’re together,” Kandia said, quoting Ne-Yo. “Being in community is what makes us a force. Power doesn’t invite powerless to the table. You get that invitation because you’re seen as a force.”
Reach Kandia at kandia@dream.org.
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