In August 2016, Gerald Stanley encountered a
group of young men in his farm yard attempting to steal his property.
In February 2018, Sam
Olson got on his digital gofundme horse, reared it, and neglected to mention
that the vehicle carrying “a group of young men” was in fact carrying three young
men and two young women who had spent the day doing what many young people do in
this country, particularly in rural areas, and that’s drive around, go
swimming, shoot highway signs, drink alcohol, and when things get messy, like a
flat tire, try to fix it, which can also get messy -- but is by no means an act
that deserves to be met with framing hammers and semi-automatic weapons.
Olson concludes his already
erroneous first sentence by stating that the group who arrived on Stanley’s
farm intended to steal Stanley’s quad, when in fact only one of the young men jumped
on the quad and tried to start it. We have no reason to believe that this young
man tried to steal the quad, just as we have no reason to believe that he would
ride off on this (one-seat) vehicle and leave his friends behind.
This young man was, as
the English say, in a “holiday mood”, and jumping on Stanley’s quad and trying
to start it belongs not to theft but to the nature of that mood. For anyone to
think otherwise is someone whose biases are fixed, clung to
and sharpened daily. And I am not talking of Stanley’s bias against indigenous
people so much as his bias against young people, a bias that might well have
been formed in Stanley’s own youth through his exposure to and participation in
a culture of violence, a bias that clearly extends to his son who attacked the
vehicle that the four young people arrived in, an action that, rather than
defuse the situation, only accelerated it.
Unfortunate events to follow led to, what was
proved to be, a freak accident, which cost the life of one of the young men.
What followed from this
first act of violence on the Stanley farm that day -- Stanley’s son driving a
framing hammer into the driver’s side of the front windshield -- led to the
driver putting the vehicle in reverse, backing up and, in trying to leave the
farm in a forward gear, backed into another Stanley vehicle. This is the freak accident, Sam Olson, not the one you can't bring yourself to mention in the “Story” portion of your gofundme campaign. It was only
after this freak accident that an enraged Gerald Stanley fetched a semi-automatic pistol, fired a
couple of shots at the fleeing quad jumper, then made his way to the vehicle that the young
people arrived in and, despite what Stanley says about trying to pull the keys out
of the ignition, shot Colten Boushie in the back of the head.
It was a terrible situation and circumstance
and it was entirely
preventable if Gerald Stanley is the kind of man that you, Sam Olson, would
like us to believe he is. But Stanley is not that man, and on
Friday February 9th 2018, Gerald was acquitted
not
of the charge he acquired
but of second-degree murder.
That you struggle to write a sentence is not what I take issue with here. What I take issue with, apart from
what I have written thus far, is that in not stating the charge laid against
Gerald Stanley, you are in fact erasing it, as if it was a mistake, when it was
not a mistake. Sure, Stanley was
cleared of any and all wrongdoing surrounding
the events of that day
but he did do wrong that day, and so did his
son, who contributed to these events when he introduced violence to the narrative
in the form of a hammer to the windshield of the vehicle that these kids rode in on.
As I can imagine, the Stanley family has spent
thousands upon thousands of dollars surrounding this ordeal.
I have an imagination too, Sam Olson. But no
one with any sincerity initiates a gofundme campaign by imagining what someone
has spent on something. If you really want to help the Stanleys, you would quit
fueling this fire, stop asking people to help them
recoup some of their lost time, property and
vehicles that were damaged, harvest income, and sanity during this entire
difficult situation they have been dealing with over the past two years
and focus your efforts on derailing the cycle
of violence that produces a Gerald Stanley, who in turn passed on that violence
to his son. Because what you are doing in initiating this gofundme campaign is increasing the upset, sharpening the biases that Stanley, his son and
others like them have sharpened all these years, and will continue to sharpen, hammering and shooting at anyone or anything that sits on their fucking quad. Your solution
is unsustainable, Sam Olson. Your effort to compensate the family of the man
who killed Colton Boushie is only making a
terrible situation
worse.
