MINOT — In Dickinson, public comment periods have become something of an ordeal.
A group of local activists used these comment periods as a vehicle for criticism and often abusive disdain during the recall campaign for city leaders. The bumblers did manage to file enough petition signatures to put one member of the council on the ballot, but then they didn’t put a candidate forward to challenge him, so now local taxpayers are on the hook to pay tens of thousands of dollars for an unopposed special election.
Public comment periods in Dickinson have also been used by a local gadfly named Ryan Messano whose comments, per reporting in the Dickinson Press, have “included assertions that homosexuality and transgenderism should be made illegal, that women should remain at home as homemakers and that Jewish people control financial institutions and the media.”
“I think you have abused our good graces with diatribes against individuals and races of people, and you believe you have the freedom to do that but we also have the freedom to be free of you,” a fed-up Mayor Scott Decker told Messano during a recent meeting. Decker also allowed city staff to leave the meeting during Messano’s speaking time. “I am not going to let you hold people hostage with your hate speech. I’m sorry, that’s what it is.”
Per the Press, Messano has an ugly history with public meetings.
“Before relocating to Dickinson, Messano became known in Northern California for frequently speaking at public meetings and for multiple arrests related to disruptions during those sessions,” the paper reports. “In Sacramento, he was arrested twice in May 2024—once for violating a restraining order filed by a city employee and another time for refusing to leave the podium after being directed to step down. In Vallejo, Calif., he was removed from a council meeting after making statements described as homophobic and racist.”
Decker joined a recent episode of the Plain Talk podcast to discuss some of the struggles his city has had with public comment periods.
I bring up these events from Dickinson because they’re important context for Senate Bill 2180, which was introduced by Sen. Bob Paulson, R-Minot. In its original form, the legislation would mandate comment periods at every public meeting. Governing entities could not stop comment based on content. They’d only be allowed to regulate the time each speaker is allowed to speak.
This would mean an open season for any local crank who wants to turn up at a public meeting and abuse attendees with racial slurs or regale them with conspiracy theories about, say, the 2020 election.
(It’s notable that among the cosponsors of Paulson’s legislation is Rep. Daniel Johnston, R-Kathryn, who attended the Jan. 6, 2021, riot in Washington alongside his son and another North Dakota man who were both arrested and convicted of crimes for their actions that day, though subsequently pardoned by newly-elected President Donald Trump.)
The justification for this legislation lays with the First Amendment. Americans have a right to free speech. But do they have a right to an audience? Does the First Amendment mean that every citizen who shows up to a local meeting to hear discussion of a bond initiative or a new zoning ordinance must also sit through a series of red-faced, spittle-flecked jeremiads about topics that have nothing to do with the business at hand?
Public comment periods are generally a good thing, don’t get me wrong. They should be a regular feature of every governing body in our state. But the officials, like school board members, county commissioners or city leaders, should be allowed to put some guardrails in place. They should be able to limit comments to the items on their agenda, for instance. They should also be allowed to silence and expel people who make abusive or inappropriate remarks.
What stops these leaders from abusing their authority over public comment and silencing dissent? The voters. Leaders who behave unfairly can be voted out at the next election or even recalled to the ballot in a special election
But it’s hardly unfair for leaders to put reasonable limits on public comment so their meetings can remain useful and worthwhile for people who only want to attend to local business and not regale the room with Nazi-themed conspiracy theories.
Besides, people interested in that sort of thing can always head to social media platforms like X, where billionaire Elon Musk will welcome them.
Paulson’s bill has been improved by amendment, though even as changed, it still precludes local governing entities from limiting comment to items on their agenda.
Dear Mr. Port,
It was with interest that I perused your column of January 28th, where you discussed me and free speech. It is a very great shame that the loudest voices in the public forum who are paid the most frequently are ignorant of history and morality, and I’m sorry to say this is a shoe that fits you wonderfully. It doesn’t bother you too much, as you blithely write columns prolifically, ten in just the last four days. I can assure you, no wise or righteous person gives credence to what you have to say. The city of Dickinson, ND, has 22,000-28,000 residents, depending on who you are asking, and only 7,200 reportedly subscribed to the Dickinson Newspaper. So, people aren’t thrilled by what you write, and you are paid to write. What is right isn’t always popular, but in your case, wise and sensible people know to avoid your often irrational opinions.
I am responding since the local newspaper snipes from the sideline. Let me recommend, if you feel so strongly about what I say for fifteen minutes, then why don’t you arrange to discuss what I said, as your remarks make it very obvious there is quite a bit you don’t understand, or why don’t you come and speak at the City Council, instead of hiding and sniping from the shadows. If you have so much to say, get up in public and say it without being paid. You, reporters are either deceived mercenaries or corrupt degenerates; I cannot yet judge which you are
Let us address your badly misguided remarks, which, unfortunately, will be taken seriously by those who lack critical thinking skills. To begin with, there are limits on free speech, as the Founders designed it, but they aren’t the limits you advocate for. Free speech doesn’t allow profanity, racial slurs, or pornography. The Founders were very clear that virtue was necessary for liberty, and virtuous people abhor and despise profanity, racial slurs, and pornography. But you don’t understand that free speech is for all speech that doesn’t violate the tenets above. So it doesn’t matter if you find my comments offensive, hateful, or not on the city business. Interestingly, I spoke for 45 minutes and had to travel over three hours. You didn’t attend one minute of the meeting but feel free to appoint yourself to judge what can and cannot be said. Let me be very clear with you, Mr. Port: free speech comes from God, and it isn’t subject to you, any judge, any court, any politician, or any individual. With that out of the way, I’d like to address the many misconceptions your letter was littered with.
To begin with, you label me a gadfly. This is very lazy reporting by you, as you not only don’t attend local meetings, you don’t speak with those of us who talk to get our side, and you are too lazy to research both sides accurately. You confidently repeat the results of your Google searches, but it doesn’t dawn on you that there is more to the story. Also, may I remind you that the two men the American Founders had in mind when they created the First Amendment were Socrates and Jesus, the former who called himself a gadfly, and the latter, a man no doubt you’d call a gadfly.
Let us quote Socrates. As his student Plato wrote him as saying, “And now, Athenians, I am not going to argue for my own sake, as you may think, but for yours, that you may not sin against the God by condemning me, who am his gift to you. For if you kill me you will not easily find a successor to me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by God; and the state is a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you. You will not easily find another like me, and therefore I would advise you to spare me. I dare say that you may feel out of temper (like a person who is suddenly awakened from sleep), and you think that you might easily strike me dead as Anytus advises, and then you would sleep on for the remainder of your lives, unless God in his care of you sent you another gadfly. When I say that I am given to you by God, the proof of my mission is this: if I had been like other men, I should not have neglected all my own concerns or patiently seen the neglect of them during all these years, and have been doing yours, coming to you individually like a father or elder brother, exhorting you to regard virtue; such conduct, I say, would be unlike human nature. If I had gained anything, or if my exhortations had been paid, there would have been some sense in my doing so; but now, as you will perceive, not even the impudence of my accusers dares to say that I have ever exacted or sought pay of any one; of that they have no witness. And I have a sufficient witness to the truth of what I say—my poverty.
Just as Socrates was a gadfly to call out the evils of the state, this is the duty I find myself called to do. And, just as corrupt leaders and their media lackeys hated Socrates, I find myself in the same predicament today.
You then move on to haphazardly denounce views I hold that you likely haven’t sat down and honestly pondered for two hours of your entire life. It doesn’t even appear likely that you took the time to listen to my 45 minutes of speaking and then to question if what I said was true or not. It seems likely that you heard about what I said, haphazardly skimmed what others said about me, which you learned from a Google search, and then, considering yourself enlightened, you set to work attacking ideas you hardly understand. To be fair, we are the first generation exposed to the internet, and tens of millions of Americans have the same problem. If they have a question, they run to Google and Wikipedia to find out. It doesn’t strike you as odd that Sergei Brin and Larry Page, the founders of the former, and Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales, the latter’s founders, belong to the same tribe?
Let us consider what you wrote.
“included assertions that homosexuality and transgenderism should be made illegal, that women should remain at home as homemakers and that Jewish people control financial institutions and the media.”
First, homosexuality was illegal in America from 1776 until 2003, when a rogue Supreme Court legalized it with the bogus “Lawrence vs. Texas” ruling. There are two great reads on this: the first by the recently deceased Judith Reisman, who was Jewish and wrote “Sexual Sabotage,” and the second is a book by E. Michael Jones, “Libido Dominandi.” Another interesting aspect is the book written by two homosexual proponents in the 1980s called “After the Ball.” The book describes the propaganda campaign that would be used to normalize homosexuality, and it worked so well that less than five decades later, it is now considered “hateful” to criticize homosexuality, which has been deemed degenerate to nearly every society of note in history. A final read on this is agnostic anthropologist J.D. Unwin’s magnificently researched “Sex and Culture.” Unwin was a huge admirer of Freud (how interesting Freud is a member of the same tribe that the founders of Google and Wikipedia are members of, wouldn’t you think?) and set out to research to prove Freud’s assertion that repressing sexual desire is harmful to individuals and societies. When he was done THOROUGHLY (a word which doesn’t describe your research into topics) researching, he concluded that the evidence pointed to the exact opposite conclusion, namely that the 86 greatest societies in human history all abstained from sex before marriage and confined it in heterosexual marriage when married.
Second, women thrived as homemakers. The entire push to give women the vote and to push them into the workforce was deliberately done to destroy the family in America, an agenda that has succeeded wonderfully. The birth rate has collapsed, and the crime rate has soared. These are related. You can find a book by President Wilson’s confidante Edward Mandell House, written anonymously in 1912, the year Wilson was elected, titled “Philip Dru: Administrator,” where House details how a small clique of men can rule the world. Women voting and working are part of the plan, as they are easier to deceive.
Third, I never said all Jewish people. Henry Makow is a Jew and featured this remark on his website this past week. “Ryan’s address starts at 1 hour and 17 minutes) Ken Adachi—“There is no one in America who has publicly demonstrated more courage and elocutionary ardor than Ryan Messano. It is not an exaggeration to call him a modern day Thomas Paine because what he says – and how he says it – soar leaps and bounds above the mundane. His treatment by the chair of the North Dakota Dickinson City Commission HAD been judicious and gracious up to this date. However, he revealed himself to be an utter nincompoop of low intellectual capacity with his Pea Brain “lecture” before allowing Ryan to speak. For this blunder, this guy may possibly pay a dear price in the near future as an election is coming up for him on March 11, 2025; and things MIGHT not go as well as he had assumed they would. We’ll see.”
That said, when you research the Talmud and the history of the Federal Reserve and communism, you will find a powerful and hidden Jewish presence. Trotsky’s real name is Lev Bronstein. He’s Jewish and trained in New York before beginning the Bolshevik Revolution. There are 200 books on my website, many with information on this. Since these books are hidden and unavailable in schools and libraries, it’s unsurprising that you haven’t studied them.
You then went on to quote the Mayor’s poorly thought-out response to my speech, which demonstrated your poor listening and critical thinking skills. In 2017, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in “Matal vs. Tam” that there are no exceptions for hate speech in the First Amendment. The First Amendment does not depend on rulers’ good graces or the media’s approval. Citizens have rights that God gives them, and your newspaper is a disgrace to the press with your resounding attacks on free speech you don’t like. While you’d scream bloody murder if anyone suggested your newspaper be put out of business for publishing propaganda daily, you have no problem recommending citizens you disagree with be silenced. So we see you are a hypocrite. You are a corrupt hypocrite too, as you no sooner finish denouncing my right to speak ideas you boldly announce to the world you don’t understand, when you are on to debate the merits of North Dakota laws on age verification to prevent children from viewing pornography, on a recent podcast. Now, pornography should still be illegal as it was in 1969, but the fact that you don’t understand pornography isn’t protected free speech under the First Amendment and will defend that filth while at the same time attacking me for stating truths you don’t like shows you have corrupt opinions that aren’t fit for consideration by any wise and virtuous person.
You then go on with your lazy Google research, not understanding that Google is a gigantic disinformation program, the largest in human history, to deceive the naive, of which you are one.
I have an “ugly history,” you boldly proclaim, though your lazy research understands little to nothing of what you shamelessly copy from your thirty-second Google search. The details about my Sacramento arrests are all on my website; if you search under “Sacramento Ryan Messano,” they will pull up. It was a fraudulent arrest by a spiteful public official who tried to use the police to silence her critics. And you full-throatedly agree with this tyranny. A judge dismissed the restraining order as obviously lacking sufficient grounds. And yet, you publicly relate this as if it has merit, which is grossly negligent on your part.
You then go on to relate that I was removed from a Vallejo city council meeting for comments that were described as “homophobic and racist.” As we’ve already gone over the First Amendment, we can say that it protects speech you hate to hear. And, the words “racist and homophobic” didn’t exist in 1900, and were invented by cultural Marxists to attack any who disagreed with their corrupt agenda.
The First Amendment really doesn’t care if those of you corrupt types in the media consider myself and others as “cranks.” Your poorly thought-out negative opinion of citizens is not grounds for silencing us. On one point, we agree that the First Amendment doesn’t allow racial slurs or profanity, so we see you are confusing the issue, representing that I stand for ideas that I don’t, which is the logical fallacy known as the straw man argument.
You then make this libelous statement, “abuse attendees with racial slurs or regale them with conspiracy theories about.” I’ve never used racial slurs, and it appears you are also ignorant of the history of the term “conspiracy theory,” which was created by the CIA to dismiss critics of the Warren Commission investigation of the JFK assassination. Lazy thinkers like you dismiss ideas you haven’t researched by calling them “conspiracy theories.” In reality, a surprising number of these “conspiracy theories” are objective truths that you’ve been brainwashed to reject.
You then wonder if American citizens have the right to an audience. Perhaps you have forgotten, Mr. Port, but let me remind you: we have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We have become successful because we in America place individual rights above business and government rights. History is littered with the terrible consequences of mobs and governments attacking individual freedoms. Yet, you, protected in the press by the First Amendment, would deny the First Amendment rights of your fellow Americans?! So, like all tyrants, you believe in free speech for ideas you like but not for ideas you dislike. And, of course, the Constitution was designed for a virtuous and wise people, of which you are neither. The Founders were clear: only a virtuous people can have liberty. So, it is ignorant and corrupt men like you who have brought America closer to losing our liberty than we have ever been before. You don’t understand the horrors of the 100 million murdered by communism, nor do you realize who funded it and what their agenda was. And so, out of your ignorance, you push this totalitarian agenda yourself.
Amidst the sea of sophistry you posted, we have this gem, “red-faced, spittle-flecked jeremiads about topics that have nothing to do with the business at hand?”
Your first five words are another straw man attack, attacking me with adjectives that no sane person would describe my speech as representing. And, may I remind you, comments are for “MATTERS NOT ON THE AGENDA.” It is the citizens who are supposed to run the press and government, and yet we currently have a lawless press and government attempting to use their powers to attack individual freedoms. We should be setting the agenda, and yet corporations and the media, all owned by the same group, set the agenda, then scream we citizens are out of order and going off-topic if we try to address the corruption. And you criticize me for commenting in Dickinson when I at least use my time and money to travel there in person when it’s doubtful you live in Dickinson, and you certainly don’t drive there and comment in person. Another keyboard warrior. May I also remind you, Mr. Port, if I don’t have free speech, NEITHER DO YOU OR 330 million other Americans! So your misguided attacks on me will boomerang right back on you. Who decides what is hateful? You? I’m sure the people of Dickinson are fine without your corrupt values attempting to guide their consciences.
City councils and school boards nationwide are the last bastion of free speech. Like the Buffalo, these rights are in danger of becoming extinct at the current rate. I wonder if it occurs to you: banks, financial corruption, debt slavery, high crime, and illegal immigration are problems in thousands of America’s cities. Does it ever occur to you that perhaps the issues are connected? Have you followed the money behind who controls both political parties, Mr. Port? Because the largest funders of both political parties happen to be Jewish, but it’s likely stating this fact will trigger you into saying, “antisemite.”
The entire purpose of public comments was so that citizens could run their governments and call out corruption where they see it. City councils and school boards around America are employing tactics of silencing speakers by saying comments are “off-topic” or “not on the agenda.” When problems appear in many cities and are connected, discussing matters larger than Dickinson will be necessary. And that is what matters not on the agenda was designed for, not for an agenda dominated by priorities of the banks, media, and corporations, which all have unlimited money given them by the usual suspects.
To any rational person, it’s evident that newspapers, social media, the radio, and television all have the same small group of owners. If you want the details, there are hundreds of pages on the books on my website. So, when those of us speaking out about this are denied any fair coverage in the media and are banned on social media, we don’t appreciate being castigated by men like you who haven’t researched and told us we are conspiracy theorists or cranks.
Your proposal to limit comments to matters on the agenda robs citizens of their rights, as governments are commonly elected by corporations, the media, and fraternal organizations, with citizens getting little to no input. So you are suggesting those with access to unlimited money, which is the owners of the Federal Reserve, who control the media, should be able to control all cities, and the dissenting voices of citizens should be drowned out and silenced.
Then we get to the most dangerous part of your article, “ They should also be allowed to silence and expel people who make abusive or inappropriate remarks.” This completely violates the spirit and letter of the First Amendment. The Founders were afraid of rabble-rousers like you who stir up mobs and have already put Socrates and Jesus to death. No government should be able to silence or expel members of the public unless profanity, obscenity, or pornography are involved, which aren’t protected by the First Amendment. But for some reason, you can’t figure out that the First Amendment bans pornography, obscenity, and profanity, but at the same time insist that remarks you subjectively view as “inappropriate or abusive” be banned. Preposterous. American Founders were clear: there can be no liberty without virtue, and virtue is a word you neither exemplify nor use. It isn’t very sure you know and understand it, either.
http://liberty1.org/virtue.htm
According to Samuel Adams, you are not a friend of America; you are an enemy.
“[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen onto any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man.”
Samuel Adams
You then go on with another departure from reality, deriding my remarks as “Nazi-themed conspiracy theories.” Germany and Hitler didn’t even use the word Nazi. And it’s obvious you haven’t yet learned that we were on the wrong side in both world wars.
https://api.bitchute.com/playlist/u942tMqs2raA/
Hundreds of hidden books prove what I just said.
How you respond to the truth will determine your destiny. If you reject it, you’ll continue living a lie; if you accept it, your life will never be the same again, but at least you’ll follow the truth and your conscience.
I also noted your recent podcast with a Jewish man and an official from the ACLU. Myron Fagan is a Jew, and he is far more insightful than the Jewish man on your podcast. So are Henry Makow and Ron Unz’s websites. The ACLU, NAACP, ADL, BLM, and a host of other NGOs and fraternal organizations are all controlled by Jewish money. So you are wasting your time trying to get an objective opinion from any of them. The ACLU defends evil pornography but won’t protect my right to tell the truth opposing pornography, which only makes sense to an ignorant and corrupt mind.
Lastly, since you’ve had no problem saying so much about me without me being around, why don’t you be a man and fairly examine both sides? Though you’ll get severe criticism from the MoneyChangers and their underlings, I’ll come on your podcast, explain why I believe the way I do, and answer any questions you or your viewers may have. What have you got to lose? Truth can endure fierce criticism; I know mine can, can yours?
Sincerely yours,
Ryan Messano
