The post Defending Montanans’ Right to Privacy first appeared on Melissa Smith.

I could make a “laundry list of outrage” – Putin’s aggression, 1,000,000 US COVID-19 deaths, criminalizing the unhoused in Tennessee, “Don’t Say Gay” in Florida, “parental rights” as a way to undermine public education, the war on women, human trafficking…but those terrible abuses fuel me to fight back, to be better, to help.

This malaise, however, is different. It’s like the brain fog of PTSD or long COVID. It saps my strength. It makes me vulnerable to sink into hate and to scream and rage. Tears. Hopelessness. It’s a terrible place to be. It’s the pit of madness from “The Heart of Darkness” – ugly, evil, sick.

Why would I choose the pit?

Because of the overwhelming tiredness of caring too much? Of witnessing the wretchedness of humanity almost every minute of every day? Experiencing the wanton destruction of our natural world to enrich the very few? Yeah. Probably.

Half of our country has chosen to live in the madness of despair. To believe false leaders and misinformation. To crush the vulnerable and “others” as the sacrifice that must be made to justify privilege. To selfishly believe that once they have their security, money, shelter, food – everyone else less fortunate deserves none. To break people – and if they can’t fix themselves, to criminalize their failures and incarcerate them for profit. That is hell.

Why dwell in Hell?

It seems so miserable and undesirable.

Last week I dropped into a warming shelter in Great Falls. I posed for pictures, shook a lot of hands and made sure I was seen by community leaders. On my way out, I met a man who was sitting on the sidewalk outside of the shelter. I stopped and told him the warming center was open. He said it was too chaotic inside for him and while the sun was shining on his face, he felt warm. It was around 20 degrees but the early evening sun did make us feel warm. We started talking. He told me about his life on the Wind River reservation and his struggles to stay connected with his family. He told me about his beautiful niece he’d see soon in Billings – her name was Melissa too. We talked about how we were drawn to the mountains, but we only breathed deeply on the prairie. We talked about our struggles with pain. We laughed about our missteps. Our hearts connected. I gave him my card and some cash. He promised to call me to tell me he made it to Billings. We hugged not once, but several times. It’s as if we knew this fleeting fragile connection would only last for this moment.

I didn’t get a call. But I think about those brief minutes on a cold Spring evening with the sun on our faces, sharing our connections and feeling love, Agape.

Go gently, brother.

That’s the world I want to live in. Where we see each other. Where we help each other. Where moments of kindness transform our pain. Where hugging a stranger keeps your heart engaged for days. Where there is joy. Where there is abundance. Where there is love for mankind, Agape.

That’s what I’m fighting for. To choose to live outside the pit of darkness. Never forgetting it is there. Not numbing existential pain with avoidance. Instead, living fully in light and hope, goodness and truth. That world is here and it is possible.

We all have a choice. We can start to restore the common good by who we vote for in each election. Vote for candidates who embrace a world of justice, peace, prosperity, and goodness.

Otherwise we will be forced by our silence to live in a cesspool of hate, fueled by fear, fostered by the cynical manipulation by the powerful of the willfully ignorant.

The post Why is Hate So Appealing These Days? first appeared on Melissa Smith.

Earth Day.

The world’s attention, however, is elsewhere.

This beautiful blue marble, floating in a sea of stars, fragile and isolated, has sustained such an amazing array of life for eons. We have only just begun to understand how lifeforms are connected on Earth. How much DNA we share with plants and animals and with each other.
How much intelligence is stored in nature.

Trees have underground networks in their root systems. Mushrooms have their own language. Whales sing and dolphins click while navigating their way in deep oceans. Birds follow centuries-old migration routes. Bees pollinate flowers so that plants flourish and we are nourished. We haven’t even discovered all of the life forms Earth sustains.

And yet, for some reason, we seem hell-bent on destroying the mechanism that supports life. A mass extinction is already underway. A barren, dry land with acidic oceans seems inevitable — threatening all life as humans have experienced it.

We know the Earth itself will survive. Eventually life will reappear. It’s happened before. The tenacity of life is undeniable.

Will those new life forms be as fascinated with humans as we are with dinosaurs? Will the compression of our bones and waste under layers of earth fuel another myth of unlimited growth? Another catastrophe, mass extinctions, destruction?

I’m still hopeful that we will survive. That we’ll change our value system before the worst has come to pass. We will make honoring our Earth a daily practice.

Want to join me in preserving what’s left of life, in all its splendor, while we still can. All you have to do is believe that you can be the change the world needs to thrive and be well.

The post Earth Day 2022 first appeared on Melissa Smith.

The post I’m visiting Neighborhood Council 6! first appeared on Melissa Smith.

Where: Cascade County Courthouse Lawn, 2nd Avenue N, between 4th and 5th Streets, Great Falls, Montana

When: 5:00 PM, Thursday, January 6, 2022

January 6, 2022, marks a full year since a violent mob was incited to attack our Nation’s Capitol in Washington, D. C., in an attempt to overturn the results of a democratic election. As ongoing House investigative committee hearings reveal more about those responsible for the insurrection, grassroots groups across the nation are planning vigils to mark the date as a Day of Remembrance. Community and faith leaders from around Great Falls will offer prayers. Participants are asked to bring battery-operated candles to hold during the vigil, and dress warmly. The event is free and open to all, and should last no more than an hour.

Contact: (for more information or to offer a prayer):
Melissa Smith, 406-315-3733, mls3ster@gmail.com

The post We the People: Jan 6th Day of Remembrance and Action first appeared on Melissa Smith.

I am running for House District 20 because I want Montanans to thrive. I have decided to run because I have been involved in community organizing for the past four decades; however, I felt 2020 was the right time for me to step up and try for a seat at the table where laws are enacted and budgets are passed. I am running as a Democrat because I work for justice: environmental, racial, social, and economic. My campaign focuses on three core issues: conservation, education, and public safety.

Montana has a vital, multi-billion-dollar outdoor industry. The preservation and conservation of our public lands is key to maintaining that industry. Furthermore, our access to Montana’s public lands is just one of the ways we Montanans maintain our health and well-being.

To help Cascade County thrive, I will advocate for the creation of more jobs for Montanans through the development of clean energy technologies. We have everything we need here to become a national leader in clean energy: water, sun, and wind, combined with Montana ingenuity. There is an excellent program at the College of Great Falls/MSU for wind turbine technicians. We can continue to train people here in Great Falls, and then retain them in our community, with more wind farms in Cascade County.

We can also increase our prosperity by ensuring that we have good quality schools for our children. I will support public pre-school programs, dual-credit classes, as well as vocational programs leading to apprenticeships for high school students.

All citizens in Cascade County must feel safe. I support our police as first responders, and am respectful of the difficult job they perform to keep our communities safe every day. But our community must also support citizens across the spectrum of experiences they have with law enforcement; it is our responsibility to ensure that all citizens receive equal treatment under the Law.

Helping all citizens feel safe in our County also includes enforcing non-discriminatory practices, and seeking restorative justice. I support these endeavors.

Finally, food security is essential to a feeling of safety in Cascade County. I will promote food security by encouraging the sale of locally-grown food products. Right now, only 10% of the food grown in Montana is consumed by Montanans. We can change that equation, and provide good paying jobs, by supporting small scale processing plants for local agricultural products in Cascade County.

As the owner of two small businesses (Renditions Music Services and Dia Desserts), I understand the challenges facing small business owners everywhere, including those in Cascade County. I will support legislation to help small businesses thrive here.

Montana is at a crossroads. The pandemic has exposed many fractures in the ways we always thought our institutions should work: our government, our social safety net, our food security, our housing, and our educational system, to name just a few. I stand ready to work with all who would lead Montana through these difficult times.

The leaders we elect next will need to be resilient, forward-thinking, and bold. I will be such a leader.

The post E-City Beat Candidate Essay first appeared on Melissa Smith.

I was raised in Havre, with my summers spent with my grandparents in the Flathead Valley, resulting in my deep love and respect for Montana landscapes, from the high plains to the glacier valleys. I received a first-class education here, from Kindergarten in Havre through my BA from the University of Montana.

As the story goes, the first time I was asked to run for office in Montana in the 1980’s, I did run, but by running away from the state for 31 years. Even though I lived elsewhere, though, I never really left Montana, where my family and deep roots were. I spent the majority of my summers here over the past few decades. In 2015, I started a Summer family business with my sister, who lives in Belgrade. Our business, Dia Desserts, produces gluten-free cheesecakes in Mason jars. We have sold our product at Farmer’s Markets in Belgrade, Bozeman and Great Falls. We have participated in classic Montana summer festivals, including the Red Ants Pants Music Festival, Bozeman’s Support Local Artists and Musicians (a.k.a. “SLAM”), the Manhattan Potato Festival, the Missoula Bacon and Brew Festival, Great Falls’ Downtown Night Markets; and the Virgelle Flea Market.

In 2018, my mother turned 88, and needed more help, closer by. My husband David and I packed up our California life, and moved to Montana, relocating to Great Falls. Mom now lives at the Grandview Assisted Living facility in Great Falls, and every day that the three of us live in the same town I count as a blessing.

Now, it’s time for me to give back to Montana – the state that has nurtured and sustained me throughout my entire life, no matter where I roamed. I’m running for House District 20 because I want Montanans to thrive. To achieve this goal, I intend to focus on three core issues: conservation, education, and public safety.

As a Conservationist, I’ve long been a passionate advocate for clean air and water, and the preservation of our public lands and national parks. I’m a member of Great Falls-based Citizens for Clean Energy, and had the great honor of presenting an energy conservation resolution (Resolution 10333) at a February 2020 Great Falls City Commissioner meeting. We are still working to pass this Resolution – on hold by the Commission during the Coronavirus emergency. I’m also excited to announce that my garage solar panel installation was completed in the Spring of 2020. I will advocate for the creation of more jobs for Montanans through the development of clean energy technologies throughout the state. We have everything we need here to be a national leader in clean energy: water, sun and wind, combined with Montanan ingenuity.

I will fight to maintain access to our public lands. Once, in California, a Montanan told me the difference between California and Montana lay in the fences: in Montana, fences are for keeping animals in, whereas in California, they are for keeping people out! That hit home for me; as an appreciator of Montana’s natural beauty, I knew well that I was extremely privileged to be able to explore that beauty with very few restrictions. In addition, Montana’s economy depends in part on open access to our public lands for tourism, hunting and recreation.

On education, it is my strong desire to ensure that all students receive a first-class education like I did, in our public schools. I fully supported the 2020 Mill Levy for Great Falls Public Schools (a.k.a. “KEY: Kid’s Education – Yes!”). I have seen the abuses of vouchers in education funding, especially for charter schools. In California, the flaws of funding schools with property taxes were obvious – poorer districts could never raise the tax base necessary to adequately fund their schools. In Montana, too, this model exposes the limits of property tax funding for our rural schools. The dedicated teachers in our rural areas are doing extraordinary work, but the shortage of funds means that these schools are unable to attract new teachers and retain them. And it’s not just in the rural areas; the problem extends to Great Falls as well. The model that we have been using to fund our schools creates inherent inequality of opportunity for a quality education for all. I want to work with educators and legislators from across Montana to develop a funding model for our schools that is equitable, sustainable, and which creates the best opportunities for education throughout Montana.

All Montanans should feel safe to gather anywhere, free from the threat of violence – especially the most vulnerable among us. To this end, I vow to work to pass a statewide nondiscrimination ordinance. I support Marsy’s Law, which ensures that victims of crime have equal, Constitutional rights on par with those accused and those convicted of crimes. I applaud the Legislature for their work to create laws and partnerships with tribal authorities that address the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women epidemic. I want to strengthen laws that protect families from domestic violence. I believe in the Second Amendment, though I do not believe that its authors ever intended for guns to be omnipresent in all public spaces. Every community should be able to decide for itself where guns should and should not to be permitted.

I’m a fierce advocate for our Montana way of life. I want all Montanans to thrive – and we will! –with dedicated public servants like me, fighting tooth and nail to preserve the last, best place.

The post My Campaign Biography first appeared on Melissa Smith.

On Sunday, November 28, 2021, there were simultaneous rallies in ten Montana cities, organized by the Montana Mises (sic) Caucus, a Libertarian organization protesting the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. I attended the Great Falls rally.

By 2:00 pm Sunday, about 30 people had lined up on 10th Avenue South in Great Falls, between 9th and 13th Streets. Most held homemade signs opposing the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.

I approached individual protesters, and calmly started conversations with them, as a person who was perplexed by their positions. Pictured above is one of the sealed masks I offered to each of the vaccine protestors.

Some responses from protestors included:

• “There is no pandemic – it’s manufactured”
• “More people die from getting the COVID vaccine than from COVID itself”
• “We’re all going to die someday”
• “Your car kills, so don’t you dare drive your car!”
• “I don’t believe in COVID, but I have natural immunity because I had COVID”
• “Healthcare workers have never brought COVID-19 into health care facilities”
• “You should be so grateful that I’m out here for your freedom”.

Suffice to say — we did not find any mutual points of agreement.

So, why did I subject myself to such unwinnable debates?

I believe we cannot let these voices be the only ones speaking on behalf of our community. We must be brave, and commit ourselves to talking with neighbors we disagree with.

By providing a different COVID-19 narrative, some doubt may seep in; when asked why I was wearing a mask, I said, “to protect my 91-year-old Mom, and to protect you”. Many had the grace to look ashamed, but others told me to go home if I was so afraid to live.

Perhaps, though, if a tiny seed of compassion takes root from a different example, a new idea could take root: that of seeking freedom through the common good and a connected community, rather than a selfish adherence to the idea of “personal freedoms”.

UPDATE: A Federal judge has halted President Biden’s Vaccine Mandate for Health workers, pending judicial review:

washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/30/biden-vaccine-mandate-judge-block

One of my favorite authors, Chris LaTray has this to say about the vaccine mandate:

“…The authoritarianism I see in the Covid response, at least in the USA, isn’t coming from the pro-vaccine crowd… It is [coming] from the racists and fascists who worked people up to try and overthrow the government on January 6th. It is the type of “Christians” who hate anyone who isn’t CIS, hetero-normative, and white like them. It is the people who spread fear and threaten violence at school board meetings. It is from people stewing in their own cruelty, inhumanity, and lust for power and wealth at any cost….”

“I don’t trust the government. I don’t trust corporations or the capitalistic nature of our society. I don’t trust “experts” bloviating as talking heads on corporate media or websites. But I do trust my friends and acquaintances who work in the healthcare industry who just want to go to work, help people, and then go home to their families. They are the ones reporting that intensive care facilities are overrun. They are the ones telling stories of people’s last dying moments, begging, too late, for vaccines. They are the ones saying masks and vaccines save lives. They are the ones exhausted and, in many cases, dying alongside their patients.”

“I have a smaller circle of people I interact with on a regular basis now than at any point ever in my life and yeah, it sucks sometimes. Covid is only part of it. I rue many of the circumstances that have created this situation and sometimes crash emotionally because of it. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to give up. It doesn’t mean I am ready to stop loving the world.”

– Excerpts from “Arrogant and Entitled”

An Irritable Metis (subscribe at ChrisLatray.substack.com)

It all seems pretty bleak. I think LaTray is right. In these circumstances, we have to love more, not less. We are measured by what we do when times are tough, not when the going is easy.

Be gentle, get vaccinated, and wear a mask.

Do it for others.

The post Vaccine Mandate Protest Rally first appeared on Melissa Smith.

I’m filled with profound grief regarding your statement that you will vote against President Biden’s vaccine mandate for businesses with more than 100 employees. I realize that you believe you are representing the will of Montanans, and that is your job, but in this case, those Montanans are wrong.

The cynical manipulation of a vaccinated news media (Fox News employees were required to disclose their vaccination status, as reported in August) fostered a massive disinformation that has only made the pandemic worse.

The science is correct, the anti-vaccination people are wrong. The SARS Covid virus will continue to mutate and Covid will be with us, just like it is for Covid long haulers, for all of our lives. We had a chance with a vaccine to achieve herd immunity and contain variants of the Covid virus. We chose a different path. A path of selfish “freedom” over the common good.

In short, we chose death over life.

Covid is no longer a political battle, but a moral one. The old adage of “if everyone was running off a cliff would you join them?” applies here. By opposing a life-saving, safe vaccine, you have chosen some short-term political expediency over truth, justice, and Montanas’ lives.

My personal Covid story includes the deaths of many loved ones and the consequences of social isolation on the elderly. My 91-year-old Mother suffered terribly when she was in lockdown several times at her assisted living facility in Great Falls. Sometimes the lockdowns occurred when staff brought the virus to work. My Mother went months without human contact because of the horrendous behavior of willfully ignorant, anti-mandate, pandemic-denying, individuals. This may seem like a small thing to you and to them, but this social isolation resulted in a rapid decline in my mother’s mental health, accelerating her dementia. And her case is not an exception.

The measure of a society is how we treat our most vulnerable. We have failed. We have failed our kids, our elderly, and ultimately ourselves by allowing utter nonsense and a “freedom of choice” ideology during a worldwide pandemic to dominate the narrative. I implore you to change your mind and vote for the mandate. If not, at least insist that Covid testing be done every single day before any employee can go to work — vaccinated or not. I take a Covid test to see my Mother. Everyone else should have to as well.

Please consider the suffering of the voiceless Montanans instead of kowtowing to the shouting of the misinformed.

Be a moral force for the common good in Montana.

Sincerely.

Melissa Smith
Democrat, Great Falls

The post An Open Letter to Senator Jon Tester first appeared on Melissa Smith.