by Travis Mateer

The Montana Human Rights Network and the Montana Racial Equity Project could be helping a black family right now, but they’re not.

Why is that?

Months ago I sent Meshayla Cox at the Montana Racial Equity Project this link to my interview with Sean Stevenson’s sisters about serious questions they have regarding their brother and what happened to him at the Poverello Center and Saint Patrick’s Hospital.

I never heard anything back.

And just a few weeks ago I sent Travis McAdam the same link. So far, crickets.

I finally realized why these people are too busy to bother themselves with what happened to a black man in Missoula. They are consumed with the VERY IMPORTANT process of finding dead white guys they can call racist, then expunging their names from all the maps.

Time to find out what happened to a black man in Missoula? Nope, time to rid Jefferson Davis’ name from Montana places. From the link:

“African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social and a political blessing.”

Believe it or not, there are three places in Montana named in honor of the man who wrote those words – Jefferson Davis. 

Yes, that Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America and defender of slavery, white supremacy, and racism to his dying days.

When historical racists like Jefferson Davis say racist things, it’s obvious. But when Missoula Sheriff TJ McDermott depicts Sean Stevenson as someone NOT FROM OUR COMMUNITY just a day after he was removed from life support WITHOUT HIS FAMILY BEING NOTIFIED, it’s much less clear that something might be going on, like narrative control.

Here’s an excerpt from McDermott, as reported by KPAX, from a January 2020 post I wrote about Sean’s death:

A man who was involved in an assault at Missoula’s homeless shelter last week has passed away.

Missoula County Sheriff TJ McDermott reports that Sean Stevenson, 45, who is from out of state, died after being involved in an altercation on Friday night at the Poverello Center.

This case isn’t something the name-changers want to deal with. Instead of scrutinizing how the power structures in our liberal utopia function, we get shit like this:

Renaming these features with Salish terms celebrates the importance of the people who first cared for this land. It sends the message that Montanans understand our history and want to continue moving towards justice and inclusion for all people.

There is no objective “history” for Montanans to understand. There are different versions of history and those versions get written by narrative gatekeepers.

If the narrative gatekeepers have their way with Sean Stevenson’s story, then his death, if it’s remembered at all, will just be some vague act of violence between two homeless individuals.

It’s not too late for Montana race-based virtue-signalers to help the Stevenson family understand what happened to their loved one.

I suggest starting with the interview, because when you listen to Jejchelle and Angela Stevenson you can’t deny the disturbing implications of their questions.