Month: August 2018

by William Skink

If you are a Westside resident of Missoula with an experience regarding the topics listed in the title, your presence is requested at City Council tonight. Here is the Facebook request a friend shared with me:

“PLEASE come testify to City Council about Crime/Transient/Drug concerns
I’m a longtime (27 year) resident of the West Side and am deeply disturbed to see what’s been happening in terms of transients/drugs/crime here. I am organizing a group of residents and business owners to testify at the City Council meeting on Aug. 13th about what has been happening here and to beg them for their help and attention to the situation. They are currently considering next year’s budget requests so we need to get to them now, and I believe it is important to show up in droves in a public forum to get the results we want. Talking points are simple: 1) Here’s what I’ve experienced 2) We need your help. No shaming/blaming or even offering solutions–we’re not trying to tell them how to do their jobs (I’m hoping we will get some creative solutions through an advisory group of stakeholders I’m also trying to spearhead). We just want them to know what we’re dealing with, and that if they don’t help us get a handle on it now we’re going to lose the neighborhood. Please let me know if you can make the meeting, which is at 7 pm on Aug. 13th. The public comment period is first, so you don’t have to sit through a bunch of other agenda items. Also, please pass this along to anyone else you think might come and speak. And if you can’t make it, you can always write a letter and have someone read it aloud so it is entered into the record. Thanks!”

by William Skink

The widespread sexual abuse of children is not something people really want to know about. Pedophiles are too often depicted as lone pervs with scraggly mustaches and 80’s style glasses driving vans around looking for vulnerable kids to snatch.

While these types of monsters do exist, the real evil of child sexual abuse is that its systemic and more likely to include powerful and prominent members of a community than socially isolated perverts who can be locked away when caught.

The system of abuse can’t be locked away. It must be dismantled. But before that can happen people have to face up to how rampant sexual abuse is within the halls of power. And I’m not just talking about the Catholic church.

A decade old report detailing abuse by UN Officials should be common public knowledge, if protecting children was actually a priority for the corporate media storytellers who gate-keep the scope of abuse from emerging. Despite the recent move by UK’s parliament to release the full report, I suspect these gate-keepers will continue gate-keeping (go to the article for links):

A groundbreaking United Nations report compiled in 2002 never saw the full light of day, until now. The UK Parliament recently published the entire document, which details the sexual exploitation of refugee children by those distributing “humanitarian aid,” as well as peacekeepers and personnel in positions of power in crisis-affected areas.

The publication of a summary version of the report caused a global furor in 2002, eventually leading to some policy changes. However, these efforts have proven woefully insufficient in light of ongoing scandals, including but not limited to the recent Oxfam debacle, the Zoe’s Ark scandal, allegations of horrific sexual abuse in the Central African Republic by UN forces, and the Laura Silsby incident. All of these cases (and many others) occurred after the partial publication of the UNHCR report, pointing to one unsavory conclusion:

Aid work is not a vehicle of charity, but is, in a very real sense, a cover for atrocity. It is a weapon, a blunt instrument of power that is wielded to exploit the most vulnerable populations in crisis around the world. We can now state that sentiment as fact, not opinion.

If people understood the scope of what is happening to vulnerable minors across the globe, I think even the tribal identification of party politics would start losing cohesion. Donald Trump and Bill Clinton have billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in common, after all.

by William Skink

Earlier this month Dan Brooks directed the focus of his weekly column at Missoula’s Union Gospel Mission, piggybacking on Derek Brouwer’s earlier piece about a recent decision by UGM to discontinue providing lunchtime meals to their homeless clientele.

Brouwer’s piece first introduces us to Terri Wood, a Christian woman apparently more in line with the spirit of Christ because she is persisting in providing food, where UGM is not:

Wood sees Set Free as filling a gap in basic services for Missoula’s homeless, but UGM no longer shares the same philosophy. Executive Director Don Evans says the mission decided to discontinue its free meals program as part of an effort to “attack” what he describes as a “culture of entitlement” among some homeless people that he believes the service may have helped foster. UGM provided a small fraction of the meals served by the Poverello, but the mission’s more lenient policies attracted people who were too drunk or disruptive to eat at the Pov.

“If we limit those types of resources, then they’re going to think about their direction in life,” Evans says.

And here is Brooks piling on, quoting scripture to Christian-shame UGM’s decision:

The Jesus of the gospels fed everybody. That was one of his signature moves. The idea that helping people can make them lazy didn’t enter Christianity until a few generations later. “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat,” Paul the Apostle wrote in 2 Thessalonians 3:10. It should be noted that Paul was not one of the original 12 disciples. He uses “we,” though, to imply that his words were those of Jesus, too.

Maybe the Union Gospel Mission should change its name to the Union Pauline Epistle Mission. Paul’s position on feeding those who don’t work is more popular today, among Christians and secular authorities alike. It is an article of faith among conservatives and even moderate liberals that giving things to people who can’t pay makes them feel “entitled.”

Here’s an idea: Maybe people are entitled to food. I’m not just talking about people who would like to work but can’t find jobs, either. I mean the drunks, the malingerers, the able-bodied jerks who won’t contribute and think we’re suckers for making them sandwiches. These people should not starve to death on our watch, because whether they eat is not a measure of their characters. It’s a measure of ours.

The big problem I have here with this tag-team criticism of UGM’s decision is that the narrow focus on the loaded term “entitlement” used by Evans frames this as an ideological issue instead of a practical one. And I get it. A Christian organization criticizing itself for creating a culture of entitlement is too ripe for a weekly like the Indy not to pick up on, but it’s definitely not the whole story.

To understand the practical necessity of doing something different one would first have to understand what is not working. I think it is very difficult for anyone without direct experience serving the clientele UGM has served for years to understand this. My personal opinion is UGM is putting their own volunteers and staff at risk by serving who they are serving in their current space.

Entitlement to someone without direct experience is an abstraction to be discussed in theological or philosophical terms. Entitlement to someone like Don Evans could be having a sandwich thrown at you by a serial inebriate because it’s peanut butter and jelly instead of egg salad.

UGM is doing very difficult work with clients even the Poverello Center can’t safely serve. And UGM is not alone in acknowledging they can’t keep doing what they have been doing in the way they have been doing it. It was reported just this week that the Pov is also making some changes to how many they can safely serve:

The Poverello Center announced a new cap on the number of overnight residents it will accept, citing safety issues.

The nonprofit released the announcement Tuesday, saying that as of Aug. 6, the overnight shelter census will be limited to 150 residents. The shelter will allow up to 175 people during cold winter months.

Amy Allison Thompson, Poverello executive director, says the cap is a difficult choice, made with the input of staff and clients.

In a statement, she said:

“We are working hard every day with folks to try to get them permanently housed through the Missoula Coordinated Entry System. Sleeping numbers beyond the capacity of our staff and building puts everyone’s safety at risk and makes it much harder for us to achieve our ultimate goal, which is finding permanent, stable housing for those of us who are most vulnerable.”

I think both the Poverello Center and Union Gospel Mission have had to get more realistic about what they can and can’t do with the resources they have, or don’t have. It is not the responsibility of either organization to solve complex issues fueling chronic homelessness, like mental illness and addiction. These are community problems that require community solutions.

I hope more attention gets directed toward why our community continues to fail to close gaps in services for chronically homeless individuals. I also hope UGM and other service providers get the credit they deserve for doing what they can in the face of dwindling resources and increasing need.

by William Skink

Anyone who celebrated the news that Alex Jones was de-platformed by tech giants is a short-sighted fool cheering on a tech-censoring spree that will have serious chilling effects on free speech.

There are still a few independent-minded people capable of understanding the potential implications, and James Conner at Flathead Memo is one of those people. Conner says it best when he writes:

Suppression is a confession that the suppressed speech is more powerful than the rebuttal to it.

Martyring Alex Jones will not expunge his paranoid world view, it will do the opposite. Supporters of Info Wars will see this as confirmation of the potency of Jones’ truth telling. Nothing positive was achieved by this move.

When it comes to targets for suppression of speech Alex Jones is just an appetizer. The main course is Julian Assange. At Consortium News John Pilger excoriates media on Assange silence:

Nothing in my time as a journalist has equaled the rise of WikiLeaks and its extraordinary impact on journalism. It is probably the only journalistic organization that has a 100% record of accuracy and authenticity! All of WikiLeaks’ revelations have been authentic. And it has been done “without fear or favor.” Although there has been a concentration on, say, the release of the Hillary Clinton/Podesta emails, or the Iraq and Afghan war logs, WikiLeaks has released information that people have a right to know across the spectrum. It has released something like 800,000 documents from Russia, and now WikiLeaks is accused of being an agent of Russia!

All the reporters and journalists freaking out over every Trump taunt deserve to be referred to as enemies of the American people if they continue to remain silent on Assange. Will they defend the 1st Amendment or will they continue to be stenographers for government power? Especially despicable are the media giants that accepted Pulitzers for stories enabled by Wikileaks, but ignore his increasingly dire plight as Ecuador gets ready to throw Assange to the wolves.

Here is more from Pilger:

I was looking this morning at a report by Media Lens in Britain describing how the British press has reported on Julian Assange. It describes the tsunami of vindictive personal abuse that has been heaped upon Julian from well-known journalists, many claiming liberal credentials. The Guardian, which used to consider itself the most enlightened newspaper in the country, has probably been the worst. The frontal attacks have been coming not from governments but from journalists. I described this recently as “Vichy journalism,” a term which now fits so much of the mainstream media. It collaborates in the same way that the Vichy government in France collaborated with the Nazis.

There used to be spaces within the so-called mainstream for unbiased discussion, for the airing of real grievances and injustices. These spaces have closed completely. The attacks on Julian Assange illustrate what has happened to the so-called free media in the West. I have been a journalist for a very long time and I have always worked within the mainstream, but the journalism I see now is part of a rapacious establishment and one of its prime targets is Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. This is precisely because WikiLeaks is producing the kind of journalism that they ought to be doing. WikiLeaks has in fact shamed journalists, which might help to explain the deeply personal abuse he has suffered. WikiLeaks has revealed what journalists should have revealed a long time ago.

Amen, John.

by William Skink

I admit it, I checked out the comments on Missoulian articles all the time. Before they stopped allowing them, every article about homelessness would have a few people referencing whatever had happened, saying that’s why they don’t go downtown anymore. I’m sure walter12 was one of them.

I’m going to try and not sound like one of those commenters.

I was downtown enjoying First Friday this weekend when an altercation occurred that resulted in me dialing 911. Luckily my family wasn’t with me when a rough looking 50 year old dude on a bike hit me from behind as I was standing on the sidewalk. I wasn’t injured, but I called out the dude for hitting me. At first the guy denied it, then quickly started getting aggressive. I told him to walk away, but he came after me instead, so I called 911.

I’m not sure if the guy was drunk or not, or if he was homeless or not. After talking to a few police officers, I went back to where I had been hit. I talked to an old client drinking openly by the Palace Apartments who had seen the guy come after me, and he said he thinks he’s camped out in one of the parking garages.

The next day, Saturday, again downtown, I witnessed a very obviously intoxicated white male just walk into traffic at Broadway and Higgins. After multiple cars blasted their horns at him, he made it to the other side and plopped down next to a few other street people.

I mentioned my experiences at work today and a co-worker mentioned a Facebook post from the co-owner of Curves, located on West Broadway. She was complaining about finding more and more needles and trash, and even took pictures. Someone told her that homelessness downtown is going to be on the City Council agenda next Monday.

I’m sure it will be.

This time of year gets especially antagonistic because actual transients (as opposed to year-round homeless residents of our fair city) do start blowing through at greater frequency. I’ve noticed more gutter-punk types starting to show up recently, and they can cause all kinds of hell for everyone. The summer of 2013 stands out as particularly bad for that element.

Will I stop going downtown? No. I won’t keep my family from enjoying the good parts downtown Missoula has to offer. But I won’t hesitate to cross the street or call 911 if I see someone I think is too drunk or mentally unstable to expose my kids to.