Zoom Chron Blog

When Forrest “Clay” Salcido was brutally stomped to death in 2007 by two drunk teenagers on the California street walking bridge, regular Missoulians were horrified and responded as you’d expect any modestly sized community would respond, as evidenced by this post from 4&20 Blackbirds.

While you can click on the link and see for yourself the entire post, un-redacted, what I am able to convey HERE, 19 years later, is impacted by a court decision last month that I’m currently appealing. That said, let me attempt to do what I’ve been doing since 2010 and write about a local issue I have direct and extensive knowledge about:

In response to the stomping to death of homeless man Forrest Clayton Salcido, Missoulians are invited to Take Back the California Street Bridge on Thursday, December 20 at 5:30 p.m. Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger will speak at this candlelight vigil, which will be followed by a rally against violence at the Badlander starting at 6 p.m. The Badlander is located at the corner of Broadway and Ryman in downtown Missoula, and this is a free community event aimed at keeping Missoula’s streets safe for all people.

The Poverello Center is the main sponsor of this event, which is a part of ‘We Are Missoula,’ the group behind the community rally held on Nov. 26 against the two anti-gay beatings that happened near downtown.

(This message was forwarded to us from Caitlin Copple at the YWCA.)

Additional information just in from _____ at the Poverello:

Speakers Include :
Lieutenant Governor John Bohlinger (who also heads the Governor’s Council on Homelessness)
_____, Executive Director, Poverello Center, Inc.
Cindy Weese, Executive Director, YWCA
Amy Carter, University Congregational Church
John Lund, University of Montana’s Lutheran Campus Pastor
Amanda Salcido, Niece of Forest Clayton Salcido

Isn’t this impressive? In less than a month of the brutal murder of a homeless man, churches, non-profits, and a statewide politician all came together to add Clay Salcido’s name to the roster of victims of violence that preceded his senseless death.

For more on how the Missoula community responded to community violence in 2007, here’s another excerpt about Missoula forming WE ARE MISSOULA:

Missoula citizens and collaborating organizations are outraged over this crime and the continuing pervasiveness of violence motivated by hate in this community.

“WE ARE MISSOULA” is the partnership of thirty (30) collaborative private and non profit organizations unified to: Speak up and Stand out against Hate Crimes. The last WE ARE MISSOULA rally in November drew over 300 participants.

Those attending the candlelight vigil are asked to bring candles in glass containers to the bridge and join speakers, singers and others to remember our homeless and the others in this community who have been victims of hate. Immediately following the vigil, participants are encouraged to warm up in The Badlander for a rally against hate in Missoula.

With sponsoring organizations like Forward Montana, Montana Human Rights Network, The Poverello Center, Montana Pride Network, ACLU, University of Montana LAMBDA Alliance, YWCA and Jeannette Rankin Peace Center, this rally will provide a venue for showing broad community support for ending
hate crimes, homophobia and other forms of systemic violence.

The goals of the rally are to educate the community about the vulnerability of homelessness, hate crimes and how to report them to the Missoula police, as well as to encourage strength and solidarity within the community.

Now, if I wasn’t restrained from what I am able to write about, I would go on with this post to describe the effort in 2014 by Caitlin Copple to pass an ordinance AGAINST those pesky homeless people, but getting into the dynamics of THAT community debate puts me at risk of violating the censors, and I’m already dealing with enough sensitive things as it is, like this new ankle accessory:

Perhaps there was a memo I didn’t get about how one should feel about dead homeless people who die in our community by experiencing violence because something obviously changed between December 5th, 2007, when Clay Salcido was murdered, and January 5th, 2020, when Sean Stevenson died after being assaulted (allegedly) by JUST Johnny Lee Perry inside the Poverello Center.

Maybe some day I’ll figure it all out.

If you’d like to help me figure it all out, please consider supporting my new GoFundMe page. Any modest amount is deeply appreciated as I navigate my new geography, which is so absurdly constrained all I can do is marvel at how desperate they’re getting.

Thanks for reading!

I would like to congratulate the CIA on winning the information war. Since it’s clearly all Mockingbird now, we might as well just sit back and enjoy the show.

Right?

Sam Forstag, the Democrat candidate for Congress, got the attention of Esquire last month, and even Esquire signaled being hip to the CIA’s role in recruiting some of Sam’s predecessors for the Cold War:

A direct article from a national magazine isn’t the only way the Mockingbird media pumps up candidates like Sam Forstag. For a more subtle example of influence, a recent local article from the Missoulian about Smokejumpers caught my attention, and not just because one of the guys pictured is my former neighbor, Kurt Rohrbach

A newspaper that was once run by “retired” CIA man, John Talbot, is doing a very beneficial thing here for candidate Sam Forstag by publishing this well-timed article about a Smokejumper honor flight. The residual positive impressions an article like this creates can’t necessarily be quantified, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an impact on the minds of potential voters.

An informed electorate is pretty important when choosing the people to “lead” us, which is why the flow of information is so critical to control. When the CIA got caught training Tibetan freedom fighters in Colorado, for example, they made sure interest didn’t spread from Colorado Springs to the New York Times, and those punk-ass bitches at the NYT complied. Because “national security”.

Here’s an excerpt from a book about what happened AFTER a few unlucky locals in Colorado witnessed the departure of the CIA’s secret Tibetan insurgents against China:

And here’s an article about this secret training effort that mentions the “Missoula Mafia”:

The base was located north of Leadville, Colorado, in a secluded corner of the Pando Valley, visible today from Highway 24. The CIA training facilities on base featured a mess hall, recreation hall, barracks, classrooms and latrines, all enclosed by an unassuming wooden fence – designed as much to deter the occasional hiker or miner as to maintain an air of insignificance. CIA trainers called it The Ranch, but to the Tibetans, the mountains of Colorado reminded them of home – they called it Dumra (The Garden), and the name stuck.

One of the trainees, Bhusang – a former doctor from Lhasa whose life would later be spared by the butt of a Chinese rifle after a tragic battle in Markham – recalled the landscape vividly:

“The camp was located at the foot of a low mountain. A broad valley with a river flowing through it lay before us. The mountains were beautiful, with forests and open areas in the distance, where people would ski in winter. We could see tiny figures of skiers gliding down the slopes. A railway line ran along the far side of the valley, and every evening, we would hear the lonely whistle of the freight train in the distance.”

Training was intense and tailored to the Tibetans’ needs. CIA officer John Kenneth Knaus lectured on history, political theory and espionage. Practical training covered guerrilla warfare, sabotage, radio communications, cryptography, survival skills, hand-to-hand combat, firearms and improvised explosives.

The CIA recruited professional smoke jumpers from the National Forest Service, known as the “Missoula Mafia,” to serve as parachute dispatch officers. Among them, “Mr. Jack” personally cut and stripped trees to build the platforms used for jump practice. Everyone liked “Tony Poe,” who was always joking and rode around camp on horseback, according to Thinlay Paljor (Rocky).

Since everything is Mockingbird now, let’s conclude today’s brief post with this strategic embarrassment and I’ll explain what you’re looking at:

When you know that Governor Spanberger was a CIA agent before becoming Virginia’s Governor, and when you know that the CIA flooded black neighborhoods with crack in the 80’s, this picture of the white, liberal, female Governor “busting a move” between two black men is really quite something.

For more on Abigail’s “intelligence” pedigree, all you have to do is consult Wikipedia:

Spanberger was born in New Jersey and moved frequently during her childhood before her family settled in Virginia. She earned degrees from the University of Virginia and Purdue University. From 2006 to 2014, she was an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency. She was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018, unseating incumbent Republican Dave Brat. She was reelected in 2020 and 2022 before leaving Congress to run for governor.

If you appreciate this context from a citizen journalist NOT getting a steady paycheck, please consider donating to my new GoFundMe fundraiser as I prepare to weather another round of serious lawfare. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!

Missoula’s chief city prosecutor, Keithi Worthington, made her panhandling pitch last week to City Council because there are SO MANY people to prosecute that TWO new prosecutors are needed. To better understand the needs of Missoula’s prosecutorial team, let’s consult some of the slides from last Wednesday’s presentation:

Since the process for issuing Temporary Orders of Protection starts as a civil process–one that requires the petitioner to be a REASONABLE PERSON–prosecutors generally don’t enter the picture until AFTER that “reasonable person” has been awarded legal protection and that protection has been allegedly violated.

For more context, here’s a screenshot from a website that helps people understand how to get this legal protection for themselves (emphasis mine):

That last part about courts being “very reluctant” to limit speech made me LOL. No, that has NOT been my experience.

For a different scenario that has caught national attention, the Lego legal drama playing out in Utah between “corporate” and a YouTuber named “Reckless Ben” is nicely summarized in this Salt Lake Tribune article. For the purpose of this post, here’s where a protection order enters the picture:

Videos posted to Schneider’s YouTube account show multiple confrontations with American Fork police, where Schneider alleges he was attempting to resolve the legal dispute by going to Johnson’s Utah County home. Those visits, Schneider says, were part of a legally required “good faith” effort to fix the problem privately.

In a video, Schneider also pushed a theory that the police officers were protecting Johnson and Best, along with the corporate owners of Bricks & Minifigs, because they all appeared to be members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Schneider was charged in March with stalking and residential targeted picketing after the interactions at Johnson’s home, court records show. Johnson was also granted a protective order against Schneider on May 20, which requires he not contact Johnson and stay away from his home, according to the filing.

Schneider also faces charges of disorderly conduct and trespassing near a Provo business park, court records show. His next court appearance is scheduled to be held online on June 8 at 11 a.m.

Schneider said in a video that he has fled to Mexico.

While the legal tools to restrain “Reckless Ben” are applicable to what I’m experiencing in Missoula, the situation overall is not comparable because I’m not an outside YouTuber swooping in to stir shit up for clicks with a Mexico escape plan if it gets too hot.

In fact, when it came to a similar attempt by “Anonymous” attempting to hijack the plight of some homeless couple in Missoula for click-farming, I’d like to think my quick response helped run that bullshit off.

You’re welcome, Missoula law enforcement.

To wrap up today’s post I want to include one more slide from Keithi Worthington’s pitch for more municipal enforcers in order to “protect” the reasonable public.

I have a theory about what I think this simple graph shows, and, though it might be totally wrong, I’m going to drop it anyway because it gives me hope.

What I think the catching up of hearings HELD vs. hearings SCHEDULED means is that people are actually FIGHTING BACK and NOT just letting the intimidation tactics go unchallenged by accepting whatever shit plea deal comes down from Worthington’s current stable of prosecutors.

If anyone with a better head for statistics wants to chime in, the comment section is always open (though delayed for new commenters).

Finally, I’m going to keep pitching MY humble panhandling effort for monetary legal support through GoFundMe here, at the end of each post, unless I’m told doing so will send me back to the University of Lawfare. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!

On May 4th I wrote this post about the effort to clean up some nasty urban camps near Buckhouse bridge, reporting that the function of the main camp appeared to be a bike chop-shop. I even managed to identify one of the homeless campers involved, who I connected to the dark world of meth abuse. Over a month after that cleanup started, there is STILL lots of trash sitting in stagnant water.

So, who will pay for the rest of this cleanup?

If the answer is the University of Montana, then that means YOU, the taxpayer, will somehow be on the hook for completing what Missoula Works has left unfinished. Lovely.

Missoula Works is a subsidiary of the Missoula Interfaith Collaborative, a “non-profit” that I helped the Executive Director, Casey Dunning, establish when I was still directing the Homeless Outreach Team for the Poverello Center. After my own stint of homelessness, in which I couldn’t reach out for services due to the lawfare against me, it’s nice to see that Casey Dunning is getting a decent salary for his role in employing homeless people and sex offenders, like J.D. Partain, who had to close up his youth boxing organization after being caught surreptitiously recording his adopted daughter undressing in her room.

The REAL value of an organization, like the Missoula Interfaith Collaborative doing the work they’re doing, is HOW they do it, and that’s with all the sensitivities of narrative control in mind that the donors expect. Paying some former homeless people to kinda clean up homeless trash is just PR work, intended to occur beneath the radar of community awareness.

To better understand this narrative-control function of a non-profit like the Missoula Interfaith Collaborative, let’s see what kind of organizations are donating money:

When I see “charitable” money from Gianforte and Town Pump, I think of the human trafficking LARP being carried out by Lowell Hochhalter, a man I’ve written plenty about, like how he shared a deep desire with Guy Baker to find Jermain Charlo, according to that CBS 48 Hours article I referenced in yesterday’s post about PIs in Montana.

After Charlo disappeared, her family took matters into their own hands and contacted local organization The Lifeguard Group for help. Volunteers came out in support to search for Charlo. This was just the first of many searches the community would hold over the months and years to come.

“We’ve told the family that we’re not going to stop no matter what. And we will search for Jermain as if she’s alive, until we find her,” said Lowell Hochhalter, president and co-founder of The Lifeguard Group.

Words are funny, partly because they’re so easy to throw around. Actually putting ACTION to those words? Yeah, that’s where things get tricky, because then you have to start dealing with a phenomenon I like to call reality.

Here are some words on the Missoula Works website that explains the idea of what they’re doing:

And here is the reality:

The question of “who pays” is a derivative of the time-proven “deep throat” adage, FOLLOW THE MONEY, because following the money will almost always show you the REAL influence behind stated “values” and “missions”. With that in mind, I’ll conclude today’s post with Otto Bremer, a German-born banker, like Klaus von Stutterheim, who’s legacy is a foundation that trickles down his banker money to non-profits, like the Missoula Interfaith Collaborative.

What does $7 million dollars in “philanthropic” German banker money buy you in Montana? Quite a lot, I would imagine. Yet somehow, with all this charitable money floating around, the garbage of reality persists.

If you’re inspired by my ability to do what Deep Throat suggests, my money-ask is a much more modest affair, and has garnered three donations already that I GREATLY appreciate, since financially, I’m quite a loser on paper.

But being a financial loser is where the sting of my authenticity exists, because I can genuinely say, thanks to being a financial loser, that NO big-money organization is interested in supporting the work I’ve been doing for ten years at this blog. Any money I’ve received has been individual donations from individual people, and for that support I am greatly appreciative.

Thanks for reading!

I’m late to posting something today because I had an unexpected seminar to attend at the University of Lawfare and it lasted ALL WEEKEND. Sure, I lacked the commissary resources to get earphones to FULLY engage in the Jesus opportunities that exist at this special University, but that just gave me more opportunities to network!

Natives use the term “cousin” pretty loosely, so when I say that I met a “cousin” of Jermain Charlo, well, let’s just say this University isn’t the kind of place you ask a lot of unnecessary follow up questions.

For those of you who don’t know the name “Jermain Charlo”, she’s the missing Native woman that Guy Baker still thinks about, since he never found her and, well, it was his job to do just that. Thankfully we have CBS’ 48 Hours to help keep interest in the case alive.

The Missoula Police Department’s investigation began the day Morigeau reported her niece missing. However, the first detective assigned only worked the case briefly before he had scheduled time off. It wasn’t until June 26, 10 days after Charlo disappeared, that Det. Guy Baker was assigned to the case. He would doggedly lead the investigation for the next six years, determined to find Charlo.

“I’m very much committed to finding her,” Baker told “48 Hours.” “I wanna bring justice to Jermain and hold accountable who’s responsible.”

There’s wanting, and there’s doing, and I’m pretty sure what Guy Baker is doing these days is much more important. Right, PI Guy?

If there’s any worry that Private Investigators might not be up to the task of investigating in the private sector the way they fail to do their job with PUBLIC dollars, former Sheriff of Mineral County, Mike Toth, is TAKING ACTION!

A Billings private investigator is launching a new professional association aimed at uniting and strengthening Montana’s licensed private investigator community.

Mike Toth, owner of Elite Investigations, founded the Montana Association of Licensed Investigators to create a statewide network and hold investigators to a higher standard than what state licensing alone requires. Toth says there are about 200 private investigators in Montana.

What, you say? The Sheriff who came before Ryan Funke as Sheriff of Mineral County is launching a “professional association”? Yes, that’s correct, and considering Mike Toth’s role in the “investigation” of the Rebekah Barsotti case, I’d say this move by Toth is something I’m going to have to think more about.

This post is short because class just got out and I’m going to do some homework now, studying in closer detail the many Travis exclusion zones that exist around this very amazing.

Also, I’m fairly positive this creation I spent hours making and which contained me, as a Lego figure, has been stolen. And the kicker? If I speculated what I think happened, I’d be forced back to University.

If this was taken by who I think it was taken by in the parking lot of the Great Burn brewery after my required classes, it’s a truly sad statement about what people are doing behind the scenes to hurt me.

Yeah, this one hurts.

But what’s a little theft when you’ve already stolen so much from so many people?

Thanks for reading!