Month: January 2019

by William Skink

I recently finished watching 13 Reasons Why on Netflix, the show about a teenage girl who kills herself, but not before recording why on 13 cassette tapes. The show is pretty terrible in terms of accurately depicting the reality of suicide among youth, and trots out every tiring teen trope to maximize the drama, but as awful as the show is, it’s nowhere near as awful as what is happening in reality, here, in Montana, with suicide prevention efforts.

First, a little history. Before the re-branding campaign that produced Project Tomorrow, suicide prevention was happening under the clunky name Western Montana Suicide Prevention Initiative, or WMSPI. Here is a description from the Project Tomorrow website:

Originally known as the Western Montana Suicide Prevention Initiative (WMSPI), the organization was founded by the Missoula City-County Health Department, United Way of Missoula County, the Institute for Educational Research and Service (IERS) at The University of Montana, and Living Works Education in 2014. In 2016 the organization rebranded and adopted the name Project Tomorrow Montana.

The initiative was established to reduce the number of suicides and suicide attempts in Western Montana through collaborative efforts that promote, support, and increase awareness, prevention, intervention, and recovery. Under this model, Project Tomorrow has educated hundreds of health care professionals, school counselors and community members on how to identify suicide warning signs and safe intervention strategies. Together, we are fighting for a better tomorrow, for Missoula, for Western Montana.

This effort is important, has done great work, and involves community leaders from lots of key areas of influence across Missoula. Suicide rates in Montana are terrible for lots of reasons, so any effective effort at prevention needs to be collaborative and–this is important–non-partisan. This last part is especially tricky when one considers the high percentage of guns that are involved in completed suicides.

The hope this project could remain non-partisan evaporated when sometime last year Nancy de Pastino took the helm (for some reason, her name is no where on Project Tomorrow’s website). Why? Because de Pastino also established the Missoula chapter of Moms Demand Action, described here:

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America is a grassroots movement of Americans fighting for public safety measures that can protect people from gun violence. Moms Demand Action campaigns for new and stronger solutions to lax gun laws and loopholes that jeopardize the safety of our families. Moms Demand Action has established a chapter in every state of the country and, along with Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Students Demand Action and the Everytown Survivor Network, it is part of Everytown for Gun Safety, the largest gun violence prevention organization in the country with more than 5 million supporters and more than 350,000 donors.

The goal of Project Tomorrow is not the same as Moms Demand Action. Sure, there is overlap, but suicide prevention encompasses much more than just gun violence. If allowed to be co-opeted by a gun-control advocate, not only does the direction of Project Tomorrow change, but there could be adverse effects.

The push to get red flag laws in Montana is now being conflated with suicide prevention efforts. I think it’s a great disservice to those who don’t share the same zeal for imposing misguided gun control measures that this is being allowed to happen to Project Tomorrow.

by William Skink

Today is the 8th of January, 2019, and the Missoulian has continued to not report on the opening of the Salvation Army warming center. As a consumer of news and blogger reluctant to make too much news myself, I would like to know more about how those efforts are going.

I’ve heard around 30 people are being served nightly when the Salvation Army opens their doors at 10pm. I can’t imagine how challenging it must be to try and serve both homeless individuals who might be under the influence of drugs and alcohol and families who can’t be served by other programs.

Another story you are not yet hearing being reported by local media is the simmering outrage over Mountain Line’s decision to remove benches in their bus shelters in just a few locations that just so happen to be by the Poverello Center.

Instead of benches, Mountain Line spent money to install leaning posts, pictured here:

Two people spoke at this week’s City Council meeting on Monday about Mountain Line’s decision to remove these benches, which you can watch here. The first person mentioned the fact one of the bus shelters is right next to Bruce Blatner apartments, which is housing specifically for people with qualifying disabilities. From the link:

Located at 1225 West Broadway, near the Clark Fork River, in Missoula, Montana, Bruce Blattner Apartments is an affordable, accessible apartment building for people with qualifying disabilities that is truly independent living. Residents have the privacy of their own apartment and can arrange their own supportive living services if needed.

Another person spoke quite articulately about his own medical condition and how Mountain Line’s decision to remove these benches negatively impacts his ability to access public transportation in Missoula. Despite this compelling testimony, neither the Missoulian, nor upstart online rag Missoula Current, felt it newsworthy to report on this (yet).

Boy, do I ever miss the Indy.

What Mountain Line is doing is not new. There is even a term for it: hostile architecture. From wikipedia:

Hostile architecture is an urban design trend in which public spaces are constructed or altered to discourage people from using them in a way not intended by the owner. Hostile architecture is a subset of attempts to ‘design out crime’ and ‘anti social behavior. Also known as defensive architecture, hostile design, unpleasant design, exclusionary design, or defensive urban design it is most typically associated with “anti-homeless spikes” — studs embedded in flat surfaces to make sleeping rough, uncomfortable, and impractical. Other measures include sloped window sills to stop people sitting, benches with armrests positioned to stop people lying on them, and water sprinklers that “intermittently come on but aren’t really watering anything.” Hostile architecture also seeks to deter skateboarding, littering, loitering, and public urination. Critics argue that such measures reinforce social divisions and create problems for all members of the public, especially seniors, people with disabilities, and children.

With no Indy to balance the pro-gentrification sentiments of local media, the story that dominated the headlines was the public money directed by MRA to hotel developers and parking lot developers in a pro-tourism declaration for Front Street downtown.

When will “progressive” Missoula stop slobbering over everything gentrification while continually fucking over the most vulnerable in our community? I don’t know. If the media doesn’t even report on it, who will even know this is happening?

by William Skink

With politicians getting down to business at both the state and federal level, I’m wondering which authority is going to be first in violating my first amendment right to boycott the apartheid state of Israel. Montana, or the Federal Government? There is good reason to believe the federal government will get there first. This week should provide some insight into how shredded the first amendment will be after American politicians sell out the constitution to protect the racist, genocidal state of Israel. From the link:

Something that has never happened before is about to happen in the U.S. Senate: there’s going to be a wide-open battle over Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), as part of efforts to end the government shutdown, no less!

Tomorrow the Senate is due to debate S.1, the first Senate bill of the new session, and it contains legislation to limit advocacy for BDS. And everyone is letting down their hair. Republicans are seeking to portray the Democrats as the party that is abandoning Israel, while many Democrats are already lining up against the bill as counter to American freedoms. They know the Democratic base is plainly against this bill, with Ayman Mohyeldin saying it violates our civil rights on MSNBC.

It’s truly despicable and ominous for either federal or state authorities to attempt to criminalize a boycott movement modeled after the successful resistance to South African apartheid. What Israel has done and continues to do to human beings called Palestinians is beyond unconscionable. Does the first amendment not mean anything to Israel Firsters?

In Montana, the threat will only become law if the Governor flips from D to R. Without the veto power of the Governor’s office, Montana will surely become one of the next states to shred the first amendment for Israel.

by William Skink

US troops are not leaving Syria, and the US-backed slaughter in Yemen will not stop. Committing war crimes and violating international laws are just the casual, normalized ways US foreign policy imposes a world order to benefit its capitalist titans and the obscene wealth they have accumulated.

That the world order is shifting to a multi-polar global struggle for resources is not well understood by the American taxpayers who are footing the bill for the .01%, who seek to enslave them and maintain their global dominance.

One reason we don’t understand what is going on is because a form of State media exists that Americans don’t recognize as State media. Sure, liberals think Fox news and Breitbart are terrible propaganda organs of right-wing oligarchs, and they are not wrong, but what about NBC/MSNBC?

In a scathing indictment of his former cable news network, journalist William Arkin lays it out in an email explaining why he is leaving NBC. Here is a portion:

To me there is also a larger problem: though they produce nothing that resembles actual safety and security, the national security leaders and generals we have are allowed to do their thing unmolested. Despite being at “war,” no great wartime leaders or visionaries are emerging. There is not a soul in Washington who can say that they have won or stopped any conflict. And though there might be the beloved perfumed princes in the form of the Petraeus’ and Wes Clarks’, or the so-called warrior monks like Mattis and McMaster, we’ve had more than a generation of national security leaders who sadly and fraudulently have done little of consequence. And yet we (and others) embrace them, even the highly partisan formers who masquerade as “analysts”. We do so ignoring the empirical truth of what they have wrought: There is not one county in the Middle East that is safer today than it was 18 years ago. Indeed the world becomes ever more polarized and dangerous. …

Windrem again convinced me to return to NBC to join the new investigative unit in the early days of the 2016 presidential campaign. I thought that the mission was to break through the machine of perpetual war acceptance and conventional wisdom to challenge Hillary Clinton’s hawkishness. It was also an interesting moment at NBC because everyone was looking over their shoulder at Vice and other upstarts creeping up on the mainstream. But then Trump got elected and Investigations got sucked into the tweeting vortex, increasingly lost in a directionless adrenaline rush, the national security and political version of leading the broadcast with every snow storm. And I would assert that in many ways NBC just began emulating the national security state itself – busy and profitable. No wars won but the ball is kept in play.

I’d argue that under Trump, the national security establishment not only hasn’t missed a beat but indeed has gained dangerous strength. Now it is ever more autonomous and practically impervious to criticism. I’d also argue, ever so gingerly, that NBC has become somewhat lost in its own verve, proxies of boring moderation and conventional wisdom, defender of the government against Trump, cheerleader for open and subtle threat mongering, in love with procedure and protocol over all else (including results). I accept that there’s a lot to report here, but I’m more worried about how much we are missing. Hence my desire to take a step back and think why so little changes with regard to America’s wars. …

So the wars will go on, supported by liberals whole-heartedly now that any remnants of being anti-war has been lethally associated with right-wing populism.

These are your crimes too, citizens of America. And you’re not going to do a damn things about it because the grey matter inside your skull is occupied territory.

by William Skink

So, 2019. Ok then. I don’t have any big predictions or grand hopes for better things to come. Will the financial house of cards start toppling in earnest this year? Will American troops actually vacate a war zone? And what will go down in Missoula this year? Will the massive convention center finally break ground? Will gaps in services get sustainable solutions or more bandaids and lip-service? And what will the long-awaited housing recommendations produce this spring?

Over this last holiday weekend, as 2018 bled out, the Salvation Army opened up its warming center for the overflow of homeless individuals and families other programs can’t currently serve. I read about this latest development when the Missoula Current reported on it, nearly 4 days ago. Despite claiming to want a community conversation around this issue, the Missoulian has not reported on this development yet. There was, however, a prominent story about a refugee family having a baby.

Let me again explicitly state I am not against helping refugees. America’s atrocious foreign policy of death and destruction to maintain imperial hegemony in an increasingly multi-polar world necessitates helping those displaced by America’s violent obsession to control global resources.

That said, I think Missoula’s efforts to keep economic refugees from freezing to death on the streets is a more important story than a refugee family having a baby.

What stories get told, and what stories don’t, is critically important. This past year has seen the capacity for stories that don’t benefit corporate shareholders take a serious hit with the shuttering of the Indy and the folding of Last Best News. I know there are efforts to do something about that, but my limited capacity means I’m not directly involved.

The best I can say for my hope for 2019 is that something better may emerge from the worsening bad that will continue its trend. For my part, I don’t plan on going anywhere.

Thank you for reading, and stay tuned. There are more stories to tell.