by Travis Mateer
Before my former employer gets the idea I’m sneaking around their facility on West Broadway, I’m publicly offering to give the Executive Director the full story that put me inside the emergency shelter I used to work at for just a few minutes on Friday afternoon. I’m actually pretty annoyed myself, since I had simply been asked to help drop off a donation as a favor, and planned on spending as little time as possible to achieve that simple task.
Since the universe, or synchronicities, or God all appear to enjoy fucking with me on a near-constant basis, a woman entered the building to drop off a flyer, which the staff member happily put up without question. Because why not? Free coats in the winter time are very important, especially considering meanies like me and the Flathead County Commissioners want to punish the houseless by denying them the proliferation of enablers who don’t understand the larger forces at play.
Anyway, I should have known a well-timed run-in was brewing, since the owner of this empty Taco Johns recently took the stand in the murder trial I covered to discuss helping out Detective Guy Baker with security footage, showing Lee Nelson before he was beat to death outside her business. Back then it was an actual business, but now it’s empty and has been for awhile. Why? That’s what I asked Kari as she was getting into her Cadillac Escalade after she told the homeless shelter staff about free coats being handed out starting at 10am on February 4th.
I told her I would be there to write about it as a journalist, so she gave me her business card.
That’s right, Kari Anderson works for Dr. Khanna’s Returning Youth Initiative, a bizarre outfit I wrote about last June after I started seeing flyers pop up around town. The claim is this organization has stuff going on in all 50 states helping people get back on their feet after incarceration. How is this accomplished? By finding people to open businesses so Dr. Khanna can get a percentage.
In Hamilton, where Montana’s Khanna operation is based, businesses like Marvel Vision were opened. Looks pretty nice, right?
From one source I spoke with, this storefront didn’t last long. Why not? It sounded like a good idea when the Ravalli Republic reported on it:
A new Hamilton eye care center affiliated with a national program focused on people who have found themselves on the wrong side of the law aims to offer just that.
Returning Youth Initiative is a vision that can have a positive impact on the lives of those who have served their time.
The official title of the effort is Post Incarceration Juvenile Justice Reformation Act Initiative, an undertaking of Voice of the Kids, Inc., a national non-profit by Surajit Khanna, Ph. D. The entrepreneurship initiative helps post-incarcerated people own their own business, provides training, job opportunities after young adults serve their time in prison.
“We are helping post-incarcerated young adults get back to work and get integrated back into society,” Susan Hau Uc Dickinson said.
I emailed someone from the main office about the closing of Marvel Vision, but as of this writing I have not had a response.
Back to the free coats.
I showed up on Saturday at 10am and sure enough there was free stuff, including pastries and coffee. And coats. I spoke with two of the three people on site and got a better idea about why Taco Johns is still empty. Kari had told me it was because of problems with the building, but on Saturday I was told the Bistro being planned fell through because the person they were going to partner with backed out. That sounds more like it.
While the reason for the business not opening seems more legit, the claim of this outfit being a non-profit does not, as this result at the Secretary of State’s business search clearly indicates. From the link:
Does any of this matter? Probably not. We’re the wild west, dontchya know, and you have to get pretty exploitive with enough people for something minimal to happen, like the scrutiny that sent Jason Stevens scurrying away from his Glacier Hope Homes scam.
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Thanks for reading!
