by Travis Mateer
This re-posting of my first interview with Jejchelle and Angela Stevenson–sisters of Sean Stevenson–is time-appropriate because tomorrow is the two anniversary of Sean being removed from life support at St. Pats WITHOUT his family being notified.
I’d write more, but this week is gonna be busy, so this is all for now. Thanks for listening.
by Travis Mateer
The documentary is done and has been uploaded, though it’s link-restricted at this point as a few more details get put into place. I’m VERY excited for people to start watching it when I make it fully public later this week.
One of the key interviews conducted for the film was with Jesse Ramos, a city councilman who applied copious amounts of charisma to his fiscal conservative positions. Yesterday, as I was perusing Facebook, I learned that Ramos had a small part in the series Yellowstone, which just wrapped up its last episode.
For those unfamiliar with the show, Kevin Costner’s character is the family patriarch trying to insulate his ranching empire from the forces aiming to take it from him. Those forces include property taxes and gentrification.
Here’s Jesse Ramos talking about his time on Yellowstone:
There are a bunch of themes in Yellowstone that weave through our documentary, like what Veterans find when they return home from war, the entitlement of the wealth class, and drug abuse, to name a few.
While the final details are put into place, stay tuned here for the latest developments in Zoom Town. There are some big stories brewing already for 2022.
by Travis Mateer
The question posed in the title of this post has been discussed for well over a decade. In 2008, for example, the ACLU wrote about free speech and cyber bullying after a student committed suicide after being harassed online.
So-called “cyber-bullying” is the most recent threat to online speech to come into the public vernacular. The term has become popularized following the much-publicized story of Megan Meier, a teen who committed suicide after reading abusive messages allegedly sent through MySpace by a classmate’s mother. The incident has become the latest rallying cry to regulate content on the Internet.
“Cyber-bullying” is a loaded term to be avoided by anyone interested in engaging in an objective look at online speech. Like past legislative attempts to justify online censorship, such as the “Deleting Online Predators Act” (DOPA) and the “Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online Act” (SAFE Act), the term is intended to stack the deck against the First Amendment. Specifically, it is meant to imply the regulation of unlawful conduct, not the censorship of protected speech, under the guise of protecting our children.
A more recent case at Boston College has brought this subject back into the headlines. The young woman who pled guilty to manslaughter, Inyoung You, was VERY instrumental in driving her boyfriend to leap to his death from a tall building.
Here’s more about this despicable woman’s despicable behavior:
Over the years, we have discussed the prosecution of people who encourage friends or strangers to commit suicide. I have raised free speech concerns over prior prosecutions in the ambiguous line often drawn by prosecutors. The most recent case of Inyoung You, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter last week after repeatedly telling her boyfriend, Alexander Urtula, to kill himself. Both were students at Boston College and had a tumultuous 18 month relationship.
The couple met at Boston College and police say that You was highly abusive to Urtule. Her calls for his suicide reportedly began after she learned that he had met with his former girlfriend.
In a case similar to that of the Michele Carter prosecution in Massachusetts, You encouraged Urtula to kill himself. This case, however, is even worse with You sending a “barrage” of more than 75,000 text messages, including repeated calls for him to kill himself. In one text to the 22-year-old, she told him “do everyone a favor and go fking kill yourself, you’re such a fking stupid ass worthless s**t.” Urtule proceeded to jump off the top of a building just hours before his graduation with his family from New Jersey waiting to watch him walk across the stage.
In Montana, efforts have been made over the years to enact some kind of anti-cyber bullying legislation. Six years ago those efforts were coming from Ellie Hill (AKA Ellie Boldman). The emphasis is mine:
Rep. Ellie Hill, D-Missoula, proposed a measure in the House Judiciary Committee that would make online harassment of children a misdemeanor offense.
Specifically, House Bill 317 targets bullying on social media by criminalizing electronic communication of any statements, photos or information meant to torment a minor.
Anti-bullying legislation has been proposed in the Legislature five of the last six sessions. Every measure died and was opposed primarily by Republican lawmakers who said school boards should not be forced to adopt a specific policy.
“That is not this bill,” Hill said. “This bill is not about schoolyard bullying or amending school policies. This bill acknowledges that cyberbullying doesn’t just happen in school.”
It’s important to note the bill introduced by Rep. Hill would have only applied to CHILDREN, not adults. This means the family of an adult woman who engages in an extramarital affair with a politician’s husband, and is then bullied to the point of committing suicide, would have no legal recourse to bring criminal charges against that politician.
This scenario is totally hypothetical and any similarity to rumors about an actual scenario like this is purely coincidental.
The biggest challenges to the protection of free speech are usually the most reprehensible uses of language. State Representatives who would like to censor some forms of reprehensible speech should think about how these laws could be applied to them before taking up a bill like this again.
Thanks for reading.
by Travis Mateer
The sudden withdrawal of Missoula County School Board candidate, Nevin Graves, after old allegations from a former romantic partner were recast in “their” pronoun-confusing direction, reminded me it was past time for some more direct conversations with my two oldest kids about sex.
Before getting to my appreciation for what Billie Eilish recently brought to this conversation regarding consuming sexually explicit material at a pre-pubescent age, I want to discuss my concern, as a parent, about the candidacy of Nevin Graves and the broader topic of teachers and educators initiating conversations about sex with students.
If readers are capable of ignoring the issue of pronouns and gender confusion for a moment, I’d like to describe a social concept known as “boundaries”. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:
If you haven’t raised kids you might not understand the importance of establishing healthy boundaries with your children as a means of giving them the tools (like a healthy self esteem) to form boundary-respecting relationships with others.
The importance of this becomes even more critical when you introduce the idea of sexual grooming because kids with low self-esteem are easier targets for sexual predators. Why do you think Jeffrey Epstein targeted POOR young girls in Florida for his insatiable appetite? Socio-economic stresses can provide early corrosion to the boundaries kids need to be safe.
After the 12/29 post I had a chance to read Graves’ full statement. Here are some parts I find troubling (emphasis mine):
The truth is that I was 18, and Everett was 15. A three-year age gap. I acknowledge that dating him was the stupidest thing I have ever done. I also remember him threatening my life, beating and stabbing me, and frequently self-harming while forcing me to watch. I remember praying to God that Everett would get better, that if we could just get him through small-town life and into space where he could heal, that everything would be okay.
First, let’s establish a fact: Nevin Graves is NOT a mental health professional, and therefore has NO BUSINESS playing an active, direct role in assessing what his accuser needed, at the time, as a supposedly troubled youth, especially if the behavior was as extreme as physical violence.
Second, the association of “small-town life” as a contributing factor to the 15 year old romantic partner Nevin Graves was trying to “help” seems more than a little disingenuous. I would go so far as to say Nevin Graves seems like “they” might be hoping the use of this rural stereotype of intolerance will help insulate them from the fallout of accusations of grooming and sexual assault.
Another thing to consider, since Graves’ accuser was instrumental in the recent UM Law school witch hunt, is why Nevin Graves did NOT come forward to raise the alarm about a mentally unstable law school student involved in this campus movement to cancel educators at UM.
The age of Graves’ romantic partner when the grooming allegedly began is around the same age Billie Eilish was when she started consuming porn. This was a topic of conversation when Eilish was on Howard Stern recently (because of course it was) but what Eilish says is insightful and heartbreaking.
Here’s how one media outlet reported on Eilish’s admission:
“I think porn is a disgrace. I used to watch a lot of porn, to be honest. I started watching porn when I was, like, 11,” the Bad Guy singer said, saying it helped her feel as if she were cool and “one of the guys”.
“I think it really destroyed my brain and I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn,” she added, saying she suffered nightmares because some of the content she watched was so violent and abusive.
I told my kids how much Eilish, who can’t even legally drink alcohol yet, regrets the impact of porn’s neurological impact and what the grooming ultimately led to when she was intimate with another person.
Eilish said she is now angry at herself for thinking it was OK to watch so much porn.
“The first few times I, you know, had sex, I was not saying no to things that were not good. It was because I thought that’s what I was supposed to be attracted to,” she said.
The grooming my kids could be exposed to isn’t just coming from individuals, it’s ALSO coming from vulgar capitalist enterprises, like Porn Hub. That link is to an Opperman Report episode on the blatant trafficking and abuse happening right in front of authorities watchful eyes.
This isn’t a topic I relish having with my kids, but as more activist educators with terrible boundaries seek to initiate conversations about sexual orientation (and boasting about it on social media), I can’t afford not to.
Thanks for reading.
by Travis Mateer
I’m writing this missive with the new year just three hours old. And it’s COLD outside. A mere 9 degrees, by my thermostat’s estimation.
There’s nothing like a cold, sleepless New Year’s morning before the sun even rises to make one appreciate living inside and having heat. I ALSO appreciate that the authority to displace me from my warmth is not as tenuous as a renter of a warm box managed by the soulless urchins at Plum property management.
Since I’ve had to deal with these fuckers before (in a professional capacity) I wasn’t surprised to see this December 31st tweet from a Missoula local about her rent getting jacked.
Sadly, the ire of this Twittiot is directed toward the Republican Governor, who was sworn into office last year, and NOT Mayor Engen, who has been in his position for 16 years.
BEHOLD THE POWER of the narrative controllers!
How do they accomplish such feats of avoiding accountability for failure?
Perhaps its by employing professional ninjas of distraction who blur the lines between their County COMMS job and the tedious banality of thinking, writing, then publishing tweets like this:
As a communications coordinator for Missoula County, it’s @MissoulaAF’s job to take what’s natural–human to human communication–and render it something else–power to peon communication. This comes in many forms now, but used to be conventional things, like press releases to local media.
No press release from Missoula County will be announcing the end of homelessness in 2022–the TENTH YEAR of that infamous TEN YEAR PLAN to end homelessness–and no headlines from local media will be calling for the figurative heads of public officials and non-profit influencers who have failed so spectacularly to do anything other than find scapegoats to avoid the pitchforks.
Because there’s more important things to think about for publishers of failing newspapers getting sued by Alden capital.
The cold reality of truth is the monopoly money all these grifters have been selling out for is a ponzi-scheme run by sociopaths, and even a conniving handler of a top-tier honeypot with the last name Maxwell is being publicly retired to avoid further damage to these self-anointed masters of the universe.
2020 was THEIR vision for humanity. 2022 needs to be humanity’s CLEAR response. And there’s no better place to start than your own backyard.