It took a few days for the immensity of the Southern Poverty Law Center scandal to sink in. They were doing WHAT? They were PAYING and literally CREATING the white supremacist threat they claimed to be fighting?!? When the shock wore off my mind started taking in pieces from the last six years of my life and what I saw, reassembled in my mind’s eye, was the clearest picture yet to try and “solve” the case of Sean Stevenson and Johnny Lee Perry, both dead via actions taken by the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office.
On the surface there’s nothing to solve. Sean Stevenson met a woman and left his subsidized housing in Denver to come to Montana for a fresh start. In Missoula, while getting services from the homeless shelter I once worked at, he met an Oakland kid with an attitude problem called “meth” and what I’ll call “nigger Tourette’s”, meaning he said the word “nigger” a lot. I even had this independently confirmed by a downtown business owner who once saw a tirade of explicit “N-bombs” dropped by Johnny as he walked down the sidewalk that he felt warranted a 911 call.
On January 3rd, 2020, an alleged fight ensued between (supposedly) only Johnny Lee Perry and Sean Stevenson. Sean—though much larger, physically, and despite Johnny’s impairment (confirmed via security footage later reviewed by the family)—was out-maneuvered as Johnny positioned himself behind Sean. At this point in the altercation, so the story goes, Johnny executed a “rear-naked chokehold”, rendering Sean unconscious. On January 5th, 2020, Sean was removed from life support inside St. Patrick’s hospital by the authority of the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office and—this is the part I’ve never been able to understand—this terminal action was taken WITHOUT ANY informed consent from his family.
How could this happen?
Pulling back the lens, a common stumbling block thrown down by a skeptic when considering the merits of a large conspiracy is that, to pull it off, too many people would need to be involved. Even if the retort of “compartmentalization” is thrown back at the skeptic, it’s still easy to lose credibility the more complicated a proposed scenario must become to address inconsistencies and/or improbabilities, kind of like telling someone a few weeks ago that the Southern Poverty Law Center was having to literally make White Supremacists because they didn’t actually exist to the extent that they NEEDED THEM TO EXIST in places like Colorado, where a black man by the name of Sean Stevenson lived, and Montana, where he died.
In May of 2021, a year and a half after Sean Stevenson’s death, I had come to know enough about the events of 1-3-2020 to be rightfully suspicious of the “lone perpetrator” theory positing Johnny Lee Perry as the sole aggressor that evening in the men’s dorm of the Poverello Center. The main evidence are autopsy pictures that, to publish, would be a violation of the Confidential Criminal Justice Information (CCJI) statute in Montana’s code of laws, called Montana Code Annotated. Those images, which I have seen, show significant damage to Sean’s body, like bruising and other marks, that directly undermine the cover story of what happened, who was involved, and why Sean’s coma was turned permanent by the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office.
When I reached out to Rachel Carrol Rivas, someone I knew from my time as a student at the University of Montana (2000-2003), it was because the organization she directed for years, the Montana Human Rights Network (MHRN), had become involved in Mayoral politics in Missoula. Jacob Elder, a candidate for Mayor appeared to be the RIGHT kind of black man for MHRN to care about, since he was being accused of having militia ties by an intern at their organization.
Since I didn’t think an intern should be engaging in this kind of political discourse while working for a non-profit, I had initially been communicating with Travis McAdam before reaching out to Rachel. Here’s my email exchange with MHRN’s Program Director:
To clarify the context of this email exchange, what I am essentially telling Travis McAdam in May of 2021 is that I had caught their intern, Maggie Bornstein, using MHRN information to facilitate a letter-to-the editor, published in the Missoulian, accusing mayoral candidate, Jacob Elder, of having rightwing militia ties.
Travis McAdam didn’t know I had already talked to Bornstein on the phone and that she had already eagerly disclosed to me where she got the information to make her public claims because, she assumed wrongly, she thought I was an ideological ally. Notice how quickly McAdam wised up to what I knew, pivoting in an attempt to do some preemptive damage control. Instead, like a naive asshole, I just tried to get him to care about the dead black man who I thought shouldn’t have been euthanized by the Sheriff’s Office like one would euthanize a cat or dog.
A few days later I messaged Rachel Carrol Rivas again, this time letting her know what I was planning to disclose about her organization. This was her response:
Five years later, post-SPLC scandal, a source sent me some screenshots last week with publicly available data on political donations made by Travis McAdam and Rachel Carroll Rivas as they distributed SPLC money to Montana politicians. I was also sent a copy of Rivas’ resume. Here’s the info:
To show how this SPLC/MHRN relationship functions with an academic like Tobin Miller Shearer, a white man teaching African Studies at UM’s campus and who quickly positioned himself upon arriving in Missoula as a victim of conservative targeting via TPUSA’s professor watch list, this 2020 article from KGVO was published just eleven days after Sean Stevenson was removed from life support.
The University of Montana African American Studies Department is preparing for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with special events and activities.
Director Tobin Miller Shearer spoke with KGVO News on Thursday and provided details of how the university and the community can take part.
“This year, we are trying to focus on King’s legacy,” said Dr. Shearer. “We’ve invited the campus community to think about how they are promoting his legacy in terms of the many different roles we fill here in the Missoula community.”
…
Shearer said he will also be speaking in February as part of Black History Month.
“I’ll be speaking about the precarious position of minority rights during the Alumni Lecture Series that our university hosts,” he said, adding that the legacy of Dr. King does live on here in Montana. “I absolutely believe it does, especially when I see it in the many people who are pushing back against the rise of white nationalism that we’ve seen, not only in our state, but across the country, particularly concentrated here in the Pacific Northwest. I see that in groups like Missoula’s Idea for Racial Justice, Montana’s Racial Equity Project, the Montana Human Rights Network, and the Love Lives Here Coalition in the Flathead area.”
Three years after helping Tobin’s mission of “pushing back against the rise of white nationalism”, the Montana Human Rights Network rebranded itself as “Catalyst Montana” in 2023 after merging with Montana Women Vote, a change I caught when attending their agitation meeting against City Council for establishing an Urban Camping ordinance.
While MHRN rebranded, Rachel Carroll Rivas moved directly to SPLC via Zero to Five, a regional initiative connected to United Way of Missoula County, an organization directly involved in the lawfare against me.
I’m worried the scope of what the Southern Poverty Law Center has done won’t be dealt with because it’s too big a scandal for Americans to process. Last week this is how the New York Post reported on the scandal:
The Southern Poverty Law Center is accused of funneling millions of dollars to at least eight leaders and members of hate groups — including a Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard and a fundraiser for a neo-Nazi group — to act as informants, which one nonprofit leader likened to paying an arsonist to help put out a fire.
The Alabama-based non-profit was charged by the Department of Justice with wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering conspiracy on Tuesday for allegedly hiding from donors the fact that it doled out more than $3 million over the course of nearly a decade to “field sources” tasked with infiltrating violent extremist groups, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced Wednesday.
As I kept reading I came across a name I knew from the book, The Silent Brotherhood, by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt. Here’s the quote from the Post article that references the author of the infamous Turner Diaries:
One former chairman of the National Alliance was paid $140,000 from SPLC between 2016 and 2023 while being featured as part of the nonprofit’s “Extremist Files,” the indictment claims.
The page lists William Pierce as the founder and chairman of the group until his death in 2002. Erich Gliebe and Shaun Walker were subsequent chairmen.
And here’s some context from the book that has more than a few Missoula references in it:
It’s no coincidence that Tobin Miller Shearer is packing up and leaving campus at the same time that Susan Hay Patrick is retiring from the United Way. They know the con is being exposed now and they don’t want to be around to see someone like me proven right about how deeply corrupt this community has become thanks to their manipulation.
Coming up in Part II of this series, I’ll be telling a more complete story of the Missoula County Sheriff’s role in trafficking drugs, so stay tuned because it’s quite a story.
If anyone would like to help my dire financial situation, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is ready for your donation (thanks Cheryl!)
Thanks for reading!
