Love & Hate in the Heavenly State of Montana

NUSRAT ON THE ROAD IN AMERICA.
Starting April 7, 2019 Nusrat is on the road in the American heartland visiting small towns, meeting ordinary people to bring their stories to the rest of country and the world.

Whitefish, Montana

Last time I was in Montana there was a fugitive on the run and the place was in a panic. He had escaped prison with the help of his girlfriend and the trigger-happy couple were shooting up people near St. Marie. I happened to cross paths with them in an internet café and was horrified to find out later on CNN they were armed and dangerous. The next day, Aug 11, Bob Dylan was singing me Happy Birthday under a full moon at close range in Billings, when a tall, asshole redneck stepped right in front me, blocking my view saying “you are having too much fun for an outsider.” (Yes, it is true, Dylan sang me HBD. Unbelievers can check-out the set list for the night of Aug 11, 2010 on his website.) Of course, I told the redneck to go fuck himself, and kicked him in the nuts, and he begged forgiveness, but that’s another story.

This post is about the terrible and beautiful contradiction that is the state of Montana. A place of epic, cinematic gorgeousness that is cursed with drug addiction, poverty, intolerance, narrow-mindedness and hatred. While places like Whitefish (where I am staying) are favored by David Letterman and Connie Chung, it is also home to neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, and Flathead valley is a hotbed of extreme white supremacy and ground zero for “guns and God” pastor Chuck Baldwin and many whites-only intentional communities. Many Native-American communities of Montana live in abject poverty and decades of oppression and neglect have resulted in suicides and alcoholism on reservations across the state.

You can be knifed for being half-Filipino, called “Jewbitch” for looking “brown” and tormented for being gay under these heavenly skies, under the watch of silver-coated mountains. Ask Kedryn E. who was bullied mercilessly in high school, suffered years of online abuse for being gay and eventually started “Love Lives Here”, a non-profit building tolerance for marginal communities, as well as FLY, an LGBTQ Youth Organization. In person, this extraordinary young man possesses the beauty of the young Boy George and the Godliness of Lord Krishna. It’s only appropriate - providing safe haven for the persecuted and diffusing hate with love is supposedly God’s work.