“F**k I.C.E” In Great Falls?

Over the weekend I received some pictures of a protest in Great Falls on Friday, June 6. The protest was supposedly to support veterans and was promoted as an event on Facebook.

The image on the left is the one that is most concerning in my opinion. I have blurred out the faces here because they appeared to be underage. I have also blurred out some letters in the images, but rest assured those letters were not actually blurred out on the signs when they were proudly displayed for anyone driving by on the Central Avenue bridge Friday afternoon to see.

Holding that sign up in our town in a heavily travelled traffic area is offensive and inappropriate. And once again, this protest was brought to us by the same circle of local partisan ideologues who very recently preached to us all that “Hate Has No Home Here”.

‘F**k ICE’ is hate.

It’s hateful to the folks who serve in our country’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and their families.

It’s hateful to all law enforcement and their families – including the local folks who serve this community in the Great Falls Police Department and Cascade County Sheriff’s Department.

‘F**k ICE’ is also a potential incitement to violence against law enforcement. Don’t think so? Look what happened in L.A. over the weekend. Five LAPD officers and six CHP officers were injured in the violence inspired by the ‘F**k ICE’ message and agenda.

The image on the right is Mathew Pipinich, a candidate for the Great Falls city commission and Vice-Chair of the Cascade County Democratic Central Committee, holding a sign expressing a version of the FAFO meme.

I would ask Mr. Pipinich to explain to the voting public in Great Falls what ‘find out’ means and who it applies to on his sign.

Beyond that, is it appropriate for someone who wants to be a city commissioner to be holding up a sign in public with a bold ‘F**K’ written on it? Again, the middle two letters were not blurred or replaced with asterisks, as I have done here, on his protest sign.

I have no problem with using some salty language in the right place at the right time, but in heavy traffic on the Central Avenue bridge in broad daylight where drivers and others, including children, are blasted unannounced with a big old ‘F**K’ as they go by is not the right place or time.

‘F**K ICE’ and assaulting kids eyeballs with the ‘F’ word on our streets is not who we are in Great Falls.

Freedom of speech doesn’t mean that all speech is necessarily right or appropriate, or that there are no consequences to those who exercise it or the communities they live in.