Yesterday I attended Missoula’s version of NO KINGS, a protest many people around the country seem to need on an emotional level, unlike Christy Walton, who I suspect “needs” this protest on a FINANCIAL level, since Walmart LOVES financially exploiting an economic environment in which people are poor, stupid, and desperate.
My sign was a subtle indictment of the civic ignorance of the crowd because it posed a question virtually no one yesterday could answer. I even offered a WHOLE DOLLAR to anyone who could answer the question!
The older woman I spoke to from a “very old political family” was quite annoyed at my presence and the thought I might use my bullhorn to address the crowd. Which family? I don’t know because she refused to answer that direct question, just like the organizer of yesterday’s protest, Danica, who refused to give the Missoulian reporter her last name.
People biked and marched in a massive crowd that filled the entire street chatting “This is what democracy looks like,” and “tax the rich, the mother f—-ng rich.” Workers and shoppers came out of businesses along Higgins to watch and clap for the protest.
“This is a part of a national mobilization to reject authoritarianism, billionaire rule and the idea that any one person, including President Trump, is above the people,” said Danica, an organizer of the Missoula protest who did not provide a last name. “While President Trump hosts a $100 million dollar parade in D.C., everyday Americans will gather in cities across the country to remind him we don’t do kings in America.”
I walked with the crowd as they marched down Higgins, but I stopped at the “free speech” corner where a funny plaque reminds Americans that we once gave a shit about our Constitutional principles. Sadly, those days are LONG gone, but don’t tell the protestors about the Patriot Act and how their senile President, Joe Biden, helped create it.
For a little historical perspective, here’s what the story the plaque memorializes:
A plaque commemorating Missoula’s Free Speech Corner stands in the middle of Downtown Missoula at the intersection of Higgins and Front Street. This plaque celebrates a moment in our history when union organizers with the Industrial Workers of the World stood up for free speech and worker’s rights.
After organizers Frank Little and Jack Jones were arrested for promoting radical unionism in Missoula, their comrade Elizabeth Gurley Flynn made the call for a free speech rally in Missoula. Workers from around the nation came to Missoula to practice their first amendment rights on a literal soapbox on the city corner until police took them away. The goal of this practice was to overburden the carceral system until the city police agreed to let unionists organize without interruption.
The bathroom judge, Shane Vannatta, wasn’t in visible attendance at yesterday’s protest, but Missoula’s County Attorney, Matt Jennings, certainly was, and I know that because I spoke with him on the bridge before the protest got briefly hijacked by Christopher.
Before I get to Matt’s dismay at involving his office in bathroom politics, I’ll summarize what I said to him when he asked me about my sign: I told Matt, who should know, that I think Sheriff’s are SO POWERFUL that they essentially have magic wands that can magically define any dead body that shows up in a body of water to be an ACCIDENTAL DROWNING dead body, like Joey Thompson and Rebekah Barsotti.
Now, here’s Jennings lamenting how the Republicans in Helena have made the contested jurisdictions of bathrooms impossible for his office to navigate:
A Missoula district court judge temporarily blocked enforcement of the bill in April pending resolution of the lawsuit — though that ruling came down after some institutions, including the University of Montana, had already taken steps to attempt to comply with the new law.
The county echoed the ACLU’s arguments in joining the lawsuit this week.
“It’s essentially impossible to comply with, and the Legislature knew that,” Missoula County Attorney Matt Jennings told the commissioners at their June 3 meeting, adding that he believed the intent of the law was to force people to “disappear from public life.”
Jennings, who has worked in the county attorney’s office for more than a decade, said he’s never encountered a case or lawsuit stemming from someone using a bathroom other than the one that corresponds to their sex assigned at birth. Joining the lawsuit could help the county get clarification on its obligations under the law, he said.
Judges and County Attorneys, like Mandamus Shane and Matt Jennings, have IMMENSE power to shape how laws are enforced, or ignored. For example, the man who took to the stage yesterday, who I mentioned earlier in the post, allegedly expressed himself via sharpie marker on the way by Betty’s Divine, on the Hip Strip. Here’s what it looks like now:
According to multiple eye-witness accounts, the man who took the mic for himself had a few long minutes of unrestrained communication with the 2,000 protestors before someone with a FUCK THIS GUY sign reapplied his vague statement for President Trump to Missoula Drunk Guy, which delighted the crowd, I was told.
Less delightful for the people on the bridge trying to hear the speakers speak was a different drunk guy, possibly homeless, who was listening to his loud music on his phone. A guy came over to the drunk man and shushed him, which I found to be quite amusing. It’s too bad drunk homeless people don’t better understand their place, which is to provide value as tokens for Democrats who think winning the popular vote makes you a fascist king.
To conclude this post here’s my conversation with Christopher, the man who vandalized a piece of property in Missoula and could, if Matt Jennings felt like it, find himself charged with some kind of hate crime for his actions.
Christopher has been in Missoula for 4 years, he lives in housing subsidized, I believe, by the Missoula Housing Authority, and he has a criminal record that may or may not be violent. Since violence DID break out at a NO KINGS protest in Salt Lake City, I think it’s important to get to know who is in your community, and why.
Thanks for reading!
Free Speech Corner in Missoula? I didn’t know that and may have to take advantage of it. Oh, wait! I’ve done that for years on street corners and sidewalks.
Concerning the No Kings thing. These people crack me up. Basically, they are proclaiming that they will be subject to no one, yet they want everyone to be subject to them and their beliefs and political leanings. They think that they ought to be sovereign, but will not allow that “right” to be exercised by anyone who believes differently. They are, in their own way, hypocrites and inconsistent.
I am no fan of Donald “Cap’n Warp Speed” Trump, but let’s get real. Reject and discard one leader, one messiah, one savior, and you have to produce another to take his or her place. Nature abhors a vacuum, it is said, and politics is more so. Someone must, MUST, be the Man, the King, the One Who will correct all wrongs and make everything right. Since this is so, if Trump is toppled, someone else will take his place and the question then becomes, who? And what will life look like under his or her control? Will it be better or worse? (Of course, with AI rising, we may not have to worry about the sex or gender of our Dear Leader. It might truly be It, rather than he or she.)
No Kings is a Marxist religion and revolution. It may succeed in the short term, but in the long run, it will wind up on the dung heap, exactly as did the Soviet Union which bought wholesale into the false religion that Man could save himself.