by Travis Mateer

In the fake-it-till-you-make-it category, we have reluctant journalist, Travis WILLIAM SKINK Mateer, taking this totally sane-looking selfie and inadvertently appearing to be flipping off the camera lens, which was NOT his intention, I am told.

Travis is of course ME, and my ALL ACCESS pass wasn’t cheap, but, like everything I’ve done since the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office euthanized Sean Stevenson, I consider it an investment in a story that is bigger than anyone can possibly imagine.

My fun began at the ZACC, where I was barred from attending an event in 2022, and it continued at the Roxy, a venue that cancelled my attempt to show MY documentary at the end of 2021. Gee, do you think I hit a nerve by exposing the Tax Increment Financing scheme that magically transforms fire fighters into panhandlers?

At the ZACC an attendee of the festival asked about my involvement, and I explained my goal of breaking local narrative control, then shit-talked a certain Detective and, wouldn’t you know, the couple sitting in front of me (who had turned around to listen at this point) were able to guess who I was talking about on their FIRST TRY!

That was over the weekend, before my first sad attempt to network at the private event where several reporters were mingling, reporters who work for media outlets that helped local law enforcement keep THIS STORY very quiet until a coroner’s inquest JUST CLEARED the 8 cops involved in shooting and killing the guy with the fake gun.

To be fair, the Missoulian did try to ask some questions in September of 2022, and twelve days later the name of the deceased was finally released. Here are my articles on this incident

SPECIAL REPORT: You Know Something Stinks When The Missoulian Calls Out ALL The Jurisdictions Involved In Killing…Someone? (September 2nd, 2022)

While Y’All Gossip On A Friday Night A Person Made Dead By Some Jurisdiction Has Still Not Been Named (September 10th, 2022)

Name Of Man Shot Near The Airport On August 27th Finally Released…But Not Much Else (September 14th, 2022)

Now, suddenly, the coroner’s inquest process has produced this:

Vance Ledeau, 34, was shot nine times by eight different police officers after he barricaded himself inside a building at the Missoula Smokejumper Base. He had robbed two gas stations with a fake gun earlier in the day.

Officers testified under oath that Ledeau walked out of the building and held a pellet gun toward them. The gun looked realistic, they said, and one officer said he didn’t know the gun was fake until the inquest, more than a year later.

Officers told Ledeau to drop the gun. When he didn’t, they responded with 30 bullets in one volley. Nobody was sure who shot first.

In total, three Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks wardens, two Missoula Montana Airport police officers, two Missoula Police officers and one Ravalli County Deputy/SWAT member simultaneously shot Ledeau.

I’ll be writing more on this, but some of it might be getting into the weirder side of my research, which can be found here.

Getting back to my goal of breaking narrative control and all the fun I’m having at the film festival, here’s a diagram from Ellen Schneider, the director of Active Voice Lab and former executive producer of the PBS series, POV:

As you can see, this Venn diagram is called the “Ecosystem of CHANGE”, or, as I like to think of it, the bubbles of institutions and people I’ve pissed off locally by exposing the corruption of TIF and SO MUCH MORE. Apparently, according to Ellen, these are the people you’re supposed to make friends with. WHOOPS!

After that I watched a film that included a historical scene of JFK using a wand tipped with radioactive uranium to unleash the commemorative dirt for reactor 9 at the Hanford Nuclear site in Eastern Washington, an area of America where I investigated a node of the Dream Center last fall. The Dream Center is an interesting organization that I became familiar with because of our local LifeGuard Group, and the rabbit hole just keeps going downhill from there.

I’m interested in JFK for a number of reasons, and one of the weirder ones is a conversation I had with Cyril Wecht during that same crazy road trip, but that’s all I’m going to say about that right now. Gotta save some material for the documentary, right?

I didn’t piss off the WHOLE Venn diagram, but is it really worth partnering with a Koch Brothers entity to stop the REAL abuses of Tax Increment Financing? I don’t have an answer to that question, but I do have some interesting posts to help measure MY “impact”, which is what the theme of yesterday’s doc-shop sessions were all about. Here they are:

Are We Seeing The Sunset Of Tax Increment Financing Abuses In Missoula? (March 28th, 2023)

While I Track TIF (SB 523), Those LifeGuards Track The Traffick (HB 112) (April 7th, 2023)

What Should I Say About Tax Increment Financing To Convince Legislators To Vote YES On SB 523? (April 13th, 2023)

SB 523 Is Not The TIF Apocalypse They Want You To Think It Is (April 19th, 2023)

Week In Review: April 17-21, Part I (April 23rd, 2023)

Zoom Chron Week In Review Part II, The Actual Podcast (April 23rd, 2023)

Another part of the conversation that the moderator made sure to keep me moderated on included the responsibility of film makers to their subjects, especially when they are from vulnerable populations. Like addicts? Yes, like addicts, which means it’s a GREAT time to highlight my coverage of the Montana Meth Project over the years, including what happened to Craig.

Montana Meth Project Persists, Despite Failure (March 4th, 2016)

The Problem Of Meth And The Problem Of Technocratic Solutions (April 28th, 2021)

Craig’s Story: From Montana Meth Project To Spitting On Teens In Missoula (December 22nd, 2021)

To wrap this up, I think the moderator of the second doc-shop session didn’t quite understand why the word FEAR popped into my head when we, the audience, were told to share the first word that came to mind after hearing this word: IMPACT.

Yes, she said, it does take courage to do this, or something like that. Did she think that it was ME who was afraid? No, no, no, that’s not it at all. It’s THIS TOWN that is afraid, afraid to acknowledge HOW FAR the reality I describe deviates from the supposed progressive ideals the political majority here espouse, ideals exemplified by this race-baiting coward who just LOVES to virtue-signal this time of year. Here’s some Kaimin coverage of the Black Solidarity Summit to highlight what I’m talking about.

The word “woke” has attained a controversial connotation among politics in America throughout history and has stirred controversy among different political parties, according to Shearer, who has taught at UM for 16 years. 

In the past year, prominent right-wing political figures have shared their stance on people who are “woke.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis claimed, “The woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural Marxism,” during the launch of his bid for the Republican nomination for the upcoming presidential election, going as far as declaring a “war on woke.” 

Where would this WAR ON WOKE take place? Places the moderator (who I clearly annoyed) had never heard of before. What’s Rumble, she asked? A place conservatives go for THEIR confirmation bias, I said.

Anyway, if you enjoyed this article about all the FUN I’m having, consider donating to my IMPACT Fund, because the bang you get for THAT buck is substantial.

Thanks for reading!