Billboards and Marriages in Lakota: The commitment to goodness that makes any community great

First of all, I want to congratulate a very nice couple I have come to know through all this crazy Lakota stuff. Good things do happen, and sometimes not in the most obvious ways. When it comes to marriage, sometimes people shouldn’t be together, and some people should. And I am very happy to see that Matt Miller’s ex-wife has found a nice person to partner with in all the most brutal ways humans do: through marriage. During Christmas of 2022, she remarried to a very nice guy whom I have come to know through all these trials and tribulations involving the Matt Miller case at Lakota schools, pretty well. And I think they are both very nice people who deserve a chance in life, and it makes me happy to see them make that commitment. A chance at happiness is always worth the shot. Even when we fall short of our goals, just the opportunity for happiness makes it all worthwhile. And speaking of happiness, I was very happy to see the billboards for ProtectLakotaKids.com go up all over the district. Nothing makes me happier than to see people stand up for themselves and to see the Lakota community respond with those billboards after the threats that have been made against whistleblowers who have been appalled by what they learned about Matt Miller during his messy divorce. There has been a lot of really bad behavior against whistleblowers that I have found objectionable, as if the original problem wasn’t bad enough. So just a few days after Christmas in 2022, billboards advertising the website went up in several locations around Lakota to break the apparent media confinement that the Lakota school district utilized to protect their employees from public opinions they were clearly justified in having. Robbing people of that voice has been the worst thing of all.

I was one of the people who received that lawsuit notification letter; honestly, it really angered me. At best, I see it as a case of witness intimidation. I felt I had been more than fair during the process, but after I saw what was said to the police, that crossed the line for me. I didn’t ask for Matt Miller’s personal life to be so well known to my own. But once you know something, you must do something. A community must do something if things are obviously wrong, especially when kids are involved. And what we witnessed in the aftermath are all the bad things that I have always said were wrong with public schools, and much more. The letters from Matt Miller’s attorney that went out to so many critics of Matt Miller can only be viewed from one point of perspective, and that is witness tampering, which I consider to be a serious matter. A severe matter. I do not take it lightly. When kids are involved in anything, the public is obliged to justice; they don’t just shut up their windows and hide from authority figures. Now, if the answer to such questions is no, everyone can return to their lives. But if it’s yes, well, now something has to be done, and that was the path that was taken. And when the law circles the wagons as they did with Matt Miller on several fronts and makes threats against witnesses, that presents a big problem that must be solved. 

I have received countless comments and concerns about the lawsuit letters, and my response to them all is that this is why we have a First Amendment. People have a right to feel as they do about things. And authority figures do not have a right to suppress opinions. Now, of course, we are reading and seeing all over the nation these days examples of just that kind of intrusion against the First Amendment. The same progressive society is taught at Lakota schools and is the general philosophy of the staff and administrators at that public school and all public schools. Yet many of those same people have offered generous donations to fight the lawsuits that Matt Miller has proposed and the Libs of Lakota “Skippy” gang. My comment to them has been to hold their money, buy some nice Christmas presents for their kids, and let’s let this thing play out. Offers of $25,000 and more have been available and will continue to be available because many people out there like to fight back against these kinds of things, especially if they can invest in the face of a movement. They may not want their names in the paper, but they want to do something, and frequently, valiant funding efforts are just the sort of thing they are willing to do. So defending lawsuits or taking legal action against Lakota schools isn’t a financial restriction. But as I have been telling them, there is more cooking than the pie that is in the oven, visible with the light on. I think there are much more severe considerations, and this witness harassment is serious stuff. Playing and reacting to their game of information suppression isn’t the way to deal with this kind of problem. Instead, different strategies should be utilized.

But regarding the offers, as I said, this is a First Amendment case that any first-year law student could figure out. It’s the foundation of our society to be able to use free speech to regulate the action and offer criticisms to authority figures, ultimately keeping them in check. Once that fear for them is removed, then they have nothing to control their behavior, which is why liberals are so keen to do so and what the overall message behind the legal actions of Matt Miller was intended to do, smash free speech, suppress opinion, and harass the witnesses to actions they found objectionable. 

So it brought me quite a lot of delight to see the ProtectLakotaKids.com billboards go up all over town. With the wet blanket controls that can be hired these days from law firms, PR firms, and even law enforcement, the institutions of liberalism have illusioned themselves with the belief that they can control all thought and deed on a matter. But the billboards are an obvious removal of that control and putting free speech in the realm of market capitalism in all the ways that socialism is terrified of. The freedom to choose and understand information is a capital all its own, and when all the trusted authorities have said to the public, “nothing to see here” except what they are telling not to see are obvious problems like a superintendent having fantasies in a sexual way about children, then something has to be done. Everyone, including me, wanted some context to the Matt Miller statements uncovered in the police report. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt until the fact proved otherwise. Then, at that point, you are complicit in the action if you fail to do something about it. And instead of allowing themselves to be stuffed down into a public relations-controlled conspiracy, people have utilized other measures to get the message out, and these billboards are the start of it. And seeing them made me proud of people for standing up for themselves. Ultimately, that’s what counts and how bad things can be made good again, like the marriage of Matt Miller’s ex-wife to new opportunities. Nobody can get a chance at happiness or justice if they don’t commit. And when people take that step, whether it’s a billboard to push back against witness intimidation or a new life with another person, the action of doing something good and right is worth all the value of the world and is a good sign of things to come.

Rich Hoffman