What pulled people out west? Material opportunities, like finding gold. Or other opportunities, like reinventing yourself by moving to a piece of geography where no one know what you’re leaving behind. Or running from.
What are bonds? Bonds can be LOTS of things, apparently. Here are some of them:
And what are drugs and alcohol? For many people, they are a means of escape. Until the ultimate escape from this life occurs, which is death.
Another piece of ephemera I ran across led me to a story about alcohol and death from over a century ago. Here’s the ephemera:
I didn’t find anything on Wilfred Trudeau online, but I did find a story about Special Deputy, Edmund Trudeau, and the death he experienced when he kicked out a drunk from a dance hall in 1904:
Alcohol is quite a substance, one I’m happy to continue abstaining from. I used to think my writing needed its lubrication, but as most successful writers who stop drinking admit, they most certainly do NOT need the bottle–or, for me, the cardboard Bota Box–to write.
Here’s the poem. The song version with ukulele is at the end. Have a safe Memorial Day weekend.
Harley and his booze
took a final snooze
on the concrete bed
he made his own
street kids called him pops
taking vodka shots
on the sidewalk
he declared his home
say hello to Joe
and all the bums you know
like ghosts I see them
in doorways downtown
but they are not there
the windows only care
for a Zephyr wind
blowing dark and cold
and say hello to Sean
his story holding on
though Dogma blinders
keep the public dumb
Lord, I need your help
they hit below the belt
like what was done
to your only son
Lord, look around
this Double-Standard Town
keeps the word
far divorced from ground
I will not sit back
bemoaning every crack
knowing every dam
one day will break
like a glacial lake
their lies will drain away
and maybe then
we can start anew
until then lets prepare
don't drink away your cares
stand up and find there's
good work left to do
First, let me say I appreciate Daniel Carlino’s continued dedication to his principles, but on this issue I do not agree with the characterization of the balance being sought in public parks as school kids are on the verge of summer break and the conflicts are already happening, like they did in one park last summer near the Youth Homes site by the Blue Mountain Clinic on West Broadway.
Here is the park where one urban camper was jumped by five others, then, later that same day, a fire broke out in the park. Also, someone shot arrows near the Youth Home building, which did get the guy a weapons charge. I’m not sure if anyone was charged when a man hit another man in the face with a baseball bat, something the kids actually saw happen.
When a public location like this has had this kind of violence, it doesn’t matter if the most recent urban campers are keeping a clean camp or not. I would assume the presence of ANY tents is probably not appreciated by the staff and kids (ages 14-18) who have to work and live there. And by my count, there are currently four tents as I pan just slightly to the right:
Here’s the comment so you can hear for yourself the scenarios described:
If you follow the “weapons charge” link above, you will read about a VERY concerning individual who is well known to many providers and, I’m assuming, law enforcement. Here’s what he looks like:
Another comment came from a community woman with a story about running across someone openly masturbating near the Nature Center. Here’s the comment:
Now, to try and balance my own reporting (although I do not claim to be objective), let’s take a look at the Missoulian’s coverage, since portraying anyone without homes as victims is a theme they are good at duplicating over and over again. Will this coverage jive with the sentiment expressed by Carlino that we, as a community, just criminalized being homeless in public parks? (emphasis mine):
Gibson and Small-Ray readily acknowledge that they’re living unsheltered mainly due to battles with addiction and substance abuse. But, they say, there’s not really any other options besides camping in public parks.
“I don’t blame the city for thinking that way,” Small-Ray said, when asked how he would feel if he were camping in a public park and asked to move. “But it would kind of feel like the community has let us down.”
“Like they’re against us,” Gibson agreed. “Yes, we’re homeless, but we’re part of the community, too.”
Small-Ray said that if camps in public parks are removed, more people will just camp farther out of the inner core of the city, maybe along the Kim Williams Trail.
“Some people will go along with it, but some people are gonna stand their ground,” Small-Ray said. “And that will give everyone (who’s camping) a bad name in the community.”
As it happens, I spoke with these campers as well. The young Native on the left is the son of an infamous street couple I knew well, but they’re no longer around. He told me yesterday about some creep approaching their camp recently trying to solicit women for sex. I asked if the guy was a white dude, and he said no, darker skin and an accent. Interesting.
I took a few pictures of trash and graffiti in this area. One picture especially got my interest, for a very disturbing reason. First, here’s some of what I observed yesterday while biking around:
This last picture has the word PANDA with a heart. Why do I find this disturbing? Because “Panda eyes” is supposedly some screwed up slang that you can look up yourself if you want, I’m not going to facilitate it with a link.
Now, before getting to MY public comment, leave it to Martin Kidston to make sure HIS readers are aware of Carlino’s comments regarding the ACLU (emphasis mine):
Advocates of the ordinance change said it’s not perfect, but most described it as a necessary step to protect the public. The measure passed committee on an 8-1 vote, with council member Daniel Carlino standing alone in opposition.
He also tried to add an amendment, which also failed on a 9-1 vote.
“This is absolutely not a solution,” he said. “I guess I’ll reach out to the ACLU and other groups who are ready to sue over things like this. You’re just trying to move someone from one space to another space. It’s not going to make our community safer. I’m very disappointed in this council.”
If adopted next month, the ordinance would take effect immediately and stay in effect for 90 days.
Now, my comments were geared toward safety and information, meaning if we had more information about who is camping, that could help with public safety. I’ll get more into the specifics in a later post. For now, you can listen to what I said below (with an appropriate tone, I hope):
On Twitter I noticed the urban camping issue has caught the attention of our LET HER SPEAK Representative, who predictably regurgitates Housing First talking points while hoping Federal money can save us:
If you appreciate the work I’m doing, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is one way to support me, and the donation button at my about page is another. Stay tuned, this conversation is far from over.
I had already begun reassessing my opinion of a specific private security firm before listening to Pat Montgomery describe his deep appreciation for how patrols in the neighborhood around the Poverello Center lessened the criminal behavior that had been causing YEARS of concern for those who live in proximity to the homeless shelter I used to work at on West Broadway.
Since I’m NOT enthusiastic about having to consider being wrong about something I felt so righteously RIGHT about, I did a mental inventory to determine what, exactly, I found so problematic about the contract Rogers International had with the city to provide security around the Poverello Center and surrounding neighborhoods, and that is the fact WE WERE NOT TOLD about the extent of the geography being covered by this security firm.
It was this failure to communicate to the public that ultimately led to suspicions from myself and some other people living on the Northside about what was actually happening with a city-funded contract for private security.
To understand this time period, you have to ALSO understand that I was working on the documentary Engen’s Missoula, which is about how Tax Increment Financing was being thrown around to rich developers, like Nick Checota, so it was unsettling to have private security constantly parked on the street where my main documentary collaborator lived without knowing WHY they were parked there.
After the news broke in February of 2022 about how private security patrols were being used in the surrounding neighborhoods, a damage-control effort by city officials ensued. I wrote this post the following month, after speaking with the principal of Lowell School, showing how few people seemed to know about the extend of these patrols, including the principal of the elementary school.
Here’s a quote from the NBC Montana article that I would have resisted believing was accurate at the time:
Rogers has been patrolling these areas since September, and so far president of operations David Pritchard says they have seen some success.
“I would say definitely if anyone was to drive by that area and look at it, it’s quite a bit different than it was three to four months ago,” Pritchard said.
…
We sat down with Pritchard, who says they have been successful in limiting some of the chaos that surrounds Montana’s largest homeless shelter.
But in our sit-down interview, he says success hasn’t come from the use of force.
“We build relationships, so if a couple of people are ready to fight out in the street, we are able to go up talk to them, separate them and mitigate that situation so PD doesn’t need to be called,” Pritchard said.
It’s not just the claims about the POSITIVE impact experienced by Pat Montgomery and his neighbors, thanks to the patrols, that shifted my thinking on Rogers International (RI), it was ALSO a conversation with a young homeless man I know that convinced me to reassess my opinions and how they were formed. This young man is VERY challenging to deal with, especially when escalated (and/or on meth), so I was impressed to hear that the head of RI put himself as the point-of-contact for this client because he had established the best repoire with him. I guarantee this relationship absolutely DID prevent calls to police for assistance.
I have since talked directly with RI’s David Pritchard and it was an incredibly illuminating conversation for a number of reasons I won’t get into here. Instead, here’s a tweet:
To further emphasize this failure, which is a SHARED failure by BOTH city officials AND local media, take a look at what Holly Michels tweeted earlier today. For context, here’s her role within local media:
Yep, this is the HEAD of the Montana State News Bureau, which makes this tweet even MORE impressive to me:
I agree with Holly Michels, this is actually a drug hub and working kitchen LARPing as a refuge for poor, desperate campers with NOWHERE ELSE TO GO. It’s encouraging to see someone in the Montana media information-sphere acknowledge reality.
Later today, after this posts, I’ll be attending the committee meeting where the emergency ordinance to deal with urban camping is being discussed. Here’s a screen-shot of a portion of the referral for this emergency ordinance (emphasis mine):
How will this play out? I don’t know, but stay tuned for my coverage, which I’ll post tomorrow. Will I make public comment today? Of course, and I’m even going to attempt to provide a productive suggestion about something relatively simple that COULD be done to help with this all-around breakdown in effective communication.
If you appreciate my work, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is one way to support me, and making a donation at my about page is another.
With no clear plan on how to proceed with the impending City Council meeting later in the day, I sat in my car wondering what to do. Maybe I should call the Lemhi County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO), I thought, because if there’s a chance of someone knowing Glen “Harley” Stephens, the Sheriff’s Office would be a good place to start.
During my days working at the shelter, when Harley was on the streets, I recalled him mentioning Salmon, Idaho, and work he had done cutting timber. Did he still have family there? When I called the LCSO, the woman who answered wasn’t familiar with the name, but took a look anyway and, sure enough, found an old report from 2003. There was the name of a woman on the report as well, and she worked in Salmon at a grocery store, I was told, so I decided to take a day trip South on Highway 93.
It was an uneventful drive, unless you consider catching a glimpse of the famous Yellowstone ranch from the show an EVENT. My first few stops in town were obviously grocery stores. The last one is where I surmised the woman worked, based on the response of the customer service person, so I left my contact information. If that had been all it would have made the trip worth it. But then I stopped in the Lantern
I almost left town before doing the most obvious thing if you’re looking for family of a chronic alcoholic who died on the sidewalk in Missoula, Montana, and that’s check a local watering hole for stories, so I did and found out a few things about “Buddy”.
Since the bartender’s family went three generations back, he knew Harley’s father, who was also named Glen, so that’s who he thought I was talking about at first. After realizing that Harley–known to the bartender as “Buddy”–was the elder Glen’s son, it made more sense to him, since “Buddy” was known to be homeless on the streets of Missoula.
Harley’s dad had a nickname, which was “Heavy”, and he was known as a tough son-of-a-bitch. Before becoming homeless, Buddy was known to be a hard worker. I confirmed that was something Harley told me, but the car accident in East Missoula was the catalyst for Harley making the streets his new home, because he couldn’t work anymore.
Even though Buddy was a hard worker, he had mean streak, and almost killed a man named Lance when he stabbed him 4-5 times. The bartender also had a tussle or two with Buddy kicking him out of the bar. Sounds about right.
Speaking of BARS, these METAL ones I took a picture of outside The Badlander are a part of Harley’s street notoriety after he tore similar metal bars out of the brick and concrete with his bear hands:
It was this incident that made former Municipal Judge, Kathleen Jenks, desperate enough to have me in her office in order to provide what insight I could on how to address Harley’s extremely unmanageable street presence on the streets. If my memory serves me correctly, Harley had around 85 open cases in just her court alone.
Did I, or DO I, have any magical solutions for someone like Harley? No, but I’m in the process of ensuring his hard life on the streets might inform SOMETHING productive going forward, and this step of finding scraps of his past life is important because I get the feeling there’s ALSO a credibility crisis happening when it comes to our elected leaders, their operators within the Homeless Industrial Complex, and the general public being shamed and coerced into throwing more money at the problem.
The woman who I traveled to Salmon to find called me back on Tuesday, and WHY her name popped up in an old report from 2003 is now puzzling both of us, especially since she (let’s call her Ruby) was only 2 years old at the time. Ruby was familiar with the name “Buddy”, but since she was so young at the time, there wasn’t much else she could add. I did get her assurance she would ask around, since she knows a lot of the old timers in town, and for that I am very appreciative.
Finding next of kin is important for a number of reasons. For me, there’s a chance at some closure, and for the community, there’s a chance to take an unknown and scary reality, which they are being told to just accept as their NEW NORMAL (can’t remember which City Council member said this), and make it a little less unknown and scary by showing the monetary cost of this one man’s impact, and identifying WHY he was so impossible to contain in the first place.
If this sounds like a worthy endeavor, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is one way to support my work, and making a donation at my about page is another.
Over the last week, the ineptitude of the Biden administration claims to be mobilizing in order to address homelessness by targeting six geographic areas across the country. Here’s how one local news source in Seattle reported on this spurious federal effort (emphasis mine):
The Biden Administration unveiled a new initiative on Thursday to partner with six places — including Seattle — to address the ongoing homelessness crisis.
Seattle will be joined by Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and the state of California. Labeled the “All INside” initiative, it will embed a federal official in each locale to “accelerate locally-driven strategies and enact system-level changes to reduce unsheltered homelessness.” Federal teams will also work to identify funding streams, while philanthropic and private sector organizations step in to help as well.
The overarching goal of the White House is to reduce homelessness by 25% by January 2025.
Why am I cynical? Because I’ve heard this shit before, and everyone within the Homeless Industrial Complex REALLY WANTS you to think that ending homelessness is as simple as just providing some housing with this new ingredient of “support”.
Here in Missoula, the impact of Tax Increment Financing on property taxes–which leads to MORE EXPENSIVE housing, including for renters–is continuing to be strategically ignored after SB 523 was tabled during the legislative dumpster fire last month. A recent comment by JC on this post illuminates what Mayor Hess can only allude to in a recent article about housing and homelessness:
This comment makes what comes next even more galling, because JC is absolutely right. The TIF mechanism absolutely DOES drain the General Fund by diverting the incremental increases in tax value within Urban Renewal Districts to the Missoula Redevelopment Agency so that critical projects for Missoula–like new windows for a Mexican restaurant and a building facelift for the Radius Gallery–can be greased with public dollars.
So, what is the justification for giving $55,000 of public TIF dollars to a homeless shelter? I bet Martin Kidston’s Missoula Current will explain it to us.
From the link:
The Missoula Redevelopment Agency’s board of commissioners on Thursday agreed to reimburse the city $55,000 for the cost of turning an old Midtown building into the Emergency Winter Shelter.
The city-owned facility, located off Johnson Street, needed a number of improvements before it could serve as a shelter, including a fire system and an air exchange unit, among other things.
Now, with little money available to address future shelter needs, the city is looking for funding wherever it can. The TIF revenue approved Thursday will provide some funding from Urban Renewal District III.
“The use of TIF funds for this purpose is allowable since this is a publicly owned building,” said MRA Director Ellen Buchanan. “It’s important for the city to preserve as much funding as possible to continue to support operations for those in our community who are without housing or in crisis.”
Would it be unfair of me to call this money a bribe? Or hush money? Because if that would be an unfair characterization, I’ll certainly refrain from making it.
At City Council on Monday, after Mayor Hess discussed the decorum rules (and after approving the minutes was postponed) I made a subdued comment about the passing of Glen Harley Stephens. The result of my road trip to search for next of kin will be the subject of Wednesday’s post.
Later in the meeting, after I left, the topic of urban camping came up and all the members of Council made comments about how much they are hearing from the constituents. This will be the focus of upcoming committee work on Wednesday, so expect a more robust report here on Thursday.
If you appreciate this content I hope YOU won’t refrain (like I’m trying to do at Council) from supporting my efforts, which you with Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF), or by making a donation at my about page. I SO MUCH appreciate the donations rolling in.
