Keep Your Eyes On Montana

Today was one chapter in the story of whether Montana will be a home for all or just the most powerful. What happens next matters.

Update: April 26th, 2:00 Mountain Time. I have revised this piece to reflect the news that the Montana House of Representatives passed a resolution to ban Representative Zooey Zephyr from the House floor, requiring her to vote remotely for the remainder of the session.

Previous note:

Hi all. I don’t normally publish two public posts a week. Here’s why I chose to do so this time around. While I don’t fear that there will be a paucity of discussion about “what’s happening in Montana” this week, but I do worry that a lot of that discussion will be stripped of context. I fear that it will just be one more piece of evil-sounding news that comes across millions of feeds. Liberal and left-leaning people will scroll past “the Montana news” and say something like “This is awful! It’s just like in Tennessee!” or “the cruelty is the point!” Everybody will get to be angry at conservatives in another flyover state and then go about their day.

That’s to say, I felt like I needed to write more today because I love my home state more than I will ever be able to articulate, and I want more for this place and its people than just a fleeting blip of angry attention.

Also: As always, The White Pages is a reader supported publication/activist project. I know there are so many good and necessary places to put our time and money right now and I don’t take your support for granted.

This afternoon, the Republican-led Montana House of Representatives voted to ban Representative Zooey Zephyr, the first out trans woman in that body’s history, from the House floor. For the remainder of the session, Representative Zephyr will be required to submit her votes remotely.

You have likely been following this story, but if not, the Montana GOP (both its legislative supermajority and its Christian Nationalist tech millionaire Governor) has been on a tear this session. They have passed tax cuts for the wealthy and are considering bills to increase gun access (in a state with the highest rates of suicide by firearm in the nation). They are doing everything they can to gut the state Constitution and to try to make our upcoming U.S. Senate election less democratic.

Most of all, though, they have attacked LGBTQ+ Montanans. Bills have passed one or both chambers banning minors from attending drag performances, restricting the ability of trans Montanans to access gender affirming healthcare, and banning public school employees from sharing any materials that might be considered obscene (essentially, anything acknowledging gayness).

Zephyr’s crime— for which she was first silenced and now has been censured— was that she spoke out against the bill regarding gender affirming care. She accurately stated that bans like this one have and will have devastating impacts on trans youth, including increased suicide rates. She used the term “blood on your hands.” I’m glad she did, because sadly, she’s correct.

I couldn’t sleep last night. And yes, a lot of that is because I am a proud uncle to an incredible trans Montana teen (who happens to be one of Zooey’s constituents) and of course I’m scared as hell for them and their friends and so many other trans Montanans I love.

But that’s not all. Because my heart isn’t just breaking as an Uncle. Its breaking as a human being. Its breaking as somebody who knows that there is a version of this state that isn’t this heartless.

Helena, Montana is pretty tiny, as far as state capitals go, but when I was growing up it felt like the biggest, most important city in the world. My family would drive in from Clancy for church or groceries, and I remember staring from the back seat as the creeks and gulches of our Jefferson County home gave way to houses and businesses— at first a trickle, then a flood. We’d turn West onto Prospect Avenue and start climbing the hill that would eventually become Mount Helena. A commercial strip would give way to a dense, leafy residential neighborhood and then, out of nowhere, I’d be staring at the Montana State Capitol.

I loved the Montana State Capitol Building because it was beautiful and it made me proud that our tiny state was capable of erecting such an important-looking building. I loved its copper dome and the floral display on its sloped front lawn and the statue of our freedom fighting Irish territorial Governor, Thomas Francis Meagher.

I loved it even more because my Dad worked there. He worked in Revenue, which for him meant finding ways to get more money to the services that would make Montana a more caring place and ensuring that Montana’s richest residents and biggest companies didn’t try to cheat out on their fair share. He was doing his part to contribute to a larger, multi-generational populist movement. He was trying to help make a beautiful but stolen place less cruel. That’s been both of my parents’ life work, and they’re not alone.

Like all places, Montana has never been one thing. As might be expected from one of the most gorgeous, sacred places on an entire continent— one where there has always been both beauty to appreciate and money to be made— this has long been a contested space. It was a place where multiple Indigenous Nations sometimes lived in peace but sometimes didn’t. It was a place where White supremacy arrived with the same cruelty that it did everywhere else.

For much of its post-colonial history, though, Montana has been defined by a single, roiling conflict: Whether it will be a fiefdom run by and for the people who can make the most money off of its rivers and forests and copper-and-gold-filled hills and its oil-choked plains, or if it will be a home for all of its citizens.

For much of our history, the oligarchs have won the upper hand. This was a state that was once literally run by its richest citizens— Butte’s power-hungry Copper Kings. That crew of 19th Century millionaires (who built the “richest hill on Earth” on the backs of a multicultural immigrant working class community) set the blueprint for future generations of Montana captains of industry. Our current oligarchs run tech companies rather than mines and dress in John Dutton-style cowboy cosplay rather than Monopoly Man top hats and monocles, but the story is the same.

Representative Zephyr’s de-facto expulsion makes her only the second member of that body to receive that punishment. The first? A legendary anti-corruption reformer, Senator Fred Whiteside. His crime? Uncovering the anti-democratic misdeeds of one of the Copper Kings, William Clark.

In Montana’s generations-long battle between the money men and the people, the oligarchs have often won. But not always. I grew up on the stories of Montanans who fought for a different of what our state could be— the Indigenous leaders who continue to carve out spaces of dignity for their communities on occupied land, the I.W.W. activists who organized our timber mills and mines, the prairie populists who united farmers against big agribusiness and banks, and the citizen legislators who, in the 1970s, scrapped the Copper King-written Constitution and replaced it with one of the most beautiful people-centric documents in the country.

These are dark days in Montana’s history. The GOP supermajority— aided by a rush of conservative in-migration and a working class left reeling by a Yellowstone-and-remote work-fueled affordability crisis— has done everything they can to make progressive Montanans feel powerless, which is why they are attacking some of our state’s most vulnerable residents.

Supporters of Rep. Zooey Zephyr stand in front of the State Capitol on Monday, April 24, 2023. [Credit:Mara Silvers / MTFP]

Earlier this week, my Mom and Dad— proud grandparents to a beautiful trans Montana teen and lifelong believers in what this sacred place can be when it is called upon to be kind— texted me from Helena. They had driven in from Missoula, back to the State Capitol where both have put in so many thankless hours. This time, they were protesting. They were standing with Zooey. They had to get back on the road before the action inside of the building occurred, the one that led to arrests.

They will be back, though. They won’t stop working, fighting and continuing to show up. And they won’t be alone.

Montana deserved your attention today. It will continue to deserve your attention tomorrow. As I wrote earlier this week, the work is not just catalyzing single moments of outrage, but supporting each other for the long fight ahead.

As we mourn today’s anti-human, anti-democratic horror show and prepare for the long work ahead, I beg you to remember: No state is a single story. And no moment, even a dark one, is ever just about defeat. There has always been a movement for love and justice and people in Montana. That movement is still there. It will always be there. And it deserves your support.

Rep. Zooey Zephyr on the Montana House floor as protesters chant "let her speak," on April 24, 2023. Zephyr, one of Montana's first transgender lawmakers, is blocked from speaking on the House floor after she condemned Republicans for advancing anti LGBTQ legislation. Shaylee Ragar/Montana Public Radio

End notes:

-Now that Rep. Zephyr has officially been banned from the legislature, I have no doubt that there will be many opportunities to support pro-democracy, pro-trans efforts in Montana, and I promise to keep you updated in coming weeks. In the meantime, here are a few places to start:

-Organizers in and around Missoula are holding a “24 hours of queer joy and resilience” celebration/action on Friday, April 28th. More details (and many, many ways to help, including from afar) here: https://queerjoymissoula.com

-There is a GoFundMe set up to support the legal fees for protestors who were arrested at the capitol earlier this week.

-Please read (and support) local journalists like the Montana Free Press (there is a separate piece to be written about the oligarchs who have destroyed our once mighty daily papers in Montana). The Free Press’ coverage of this legislative session has been excellent. Today, they published a heartbreaking article about one of the Montanans harmed by this cruel legislation– Governor Gianforte’s own non-binary child.