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Incredibly disappointed at the lack of journalistic integrity at UNO's "The Gateway" and writer Hannah Michelle Bussa
I am Steven Bonnell II.
I am a Twitch streamer with a controversial history, but someone who's ultimately very well known for converting people from radical conservative spaces on the internet into more socially progressive positions.
Bonnell estimates he has received hundreds of emails from disaffected former alt-righters. One man found himself “drifting away from extremist content.” He thanked Bonnell for giving him “the tools to disprove my own opinions, while avoiding the propaganda that reinforced it.” Another grateful fan wrote that “the tipping points for me were when you covered Jordan Peterson (a seemingly wholesome do-gooder) [and] made Sargon look like a buffoon.”
Bonnell’s particular Twitch niche is debating conservative internet personalities and staking out mostly progressive positions. That makes Bonnell an exception on the platform and, more broadly, in gaming, where, if anything, people tend to skew toward libertarianism. These gamers have provided recruits for the right wing; Bonnell’s work lays out a different path.
One video was a debate about immigration between Ms. Southern and Steven Bonnell, a liberal YouTuber known as Destiny. Mr. Cain watched the video to cheer on Ms. Southern, but Mr. Bonnell was a better debater, and Mr. Cain reluctantly declared him the winner...
Unlike most progressives Mr. Cain had seen take on the right, Mr. Bonnell and Ms. Wynn were funny and engaging. They spoke the native language of YouTube, and they didn’t get outraged by far-right ideas. Instead, they rolled their eyes at them, and made them seem shallow and unsophisticated.
I've recently attempted to spin up an organization to mobilize youth into direct, local political action. Our first efforts were in Georgia, where we knocked on over 20,000 doors in support of Jon Ossoff and Reverend Warnock. For my next effort, I wanted to focus on my hometown where my 9 year old son lives to see if we could mobilize enough volunteers to get a progressive candidate elected to office.
Predictably, people have started attacking the efforts of both my volunteers and the local candidate I supported by digging up old, out-of-context videos to imply that I either don't support BLM or support violence against protestors. Neither of these things could be further from the truth.
What I'm most frustrated about is how dishonest some local media and business owners have been about portraying what's been going on.
On March 1st, I received an email from Hannah Bussa of UNO's The Gateway, laying out three questions for me to answer for an article she intended to publish the next day.
There are a few conflicts of interest that I discovered that are upsetting to me.
Hannah personally supports Jasmine Harris, an opponent in the primary.
Hannah follows Morgann Freeman, the campaign manager for Jasmine Harris.
Freeman seems to harbor an incredible hatred for Mark, and was giving people the "inside scoop" on him (potentially clips of me?)
UNO's The Gateway has only done two mayoral candidate write-ups, one of which is for Jasmine Harris, and the other for Kimara Snipes.
I could tell from the framing of her initial email to me that she was fishing for answers to paint me as an "outsider," or someone who shouldn't have any vested interest in Omaha, despite me living there for 30 years and having a son still being raised in the city. Knowing that Hannah was likely writing a hit-piece on either Mark or myself, I took the time to write a detailed response to each of her questions, painstakingly explaining both my personal reasons for being involved and a clear explanation for how ridiculous it would be to imply that I don't support BLM or protesters.
Despite my response, Hannah went ahead and published a partisan hit-piece that leaves me with so many questions insofar as The Gateway's journalist integrity is concerned.
Why would Hannah's take-away from my response to her, where I include numerous times where I've defended BLM and protests (and even riots, in some instances), be "he only added that he thought the rioting would give former President Trump a path to victory in the November election. His message about protesters did not change." Why did she not include any additional context about prior statements I've made concerning BLM and protests?
Why would Hannah do so much research about me that she was able to find a Wired write-up that focuses on me deradicalizing people, yet the only quote she would mine from it was "“I think that people, in general, are stupid, and I’ve actually lost my appreciation for democracy at this point,” he said." Why didn't she ask me for comments on this profile?
Why would Hannah include falsifiable statements from Amelia Rosser claiming that my canvassers were harassing her business without asking me nor my canvassers for comment about any of their interactions? Why did she include false statements Amelia Rosser is making, claiming that my canvassers are only responding with "it isn't Mark's fault he's white" when supporters of other candidates are talking to them?
Why did Hannah include a blatant lie that I had "raised money for the campaign via PayPal" when I have never donated money to Mark's campaign?
Why did Hannah neglect to mention that Amelia was giving away the addresses where volunteers were staying when I notified her as such?
Why did Hannah include "Of the whole situation, Rosser said, “I come at this as somebody who is not part of any political campaigns during this election cycle, but instead as someone who smelled something fishy and found fish.”" in her article when Amelia Rosser is openly posting on her Facebook that she is supporting the two other candidates?
Why did Hannah edit my statements to include the bracketed phrase "[Black Lives Matter]" before protestors? Why was it so important that this little bit of context needed to be added, but literally nothing of my response that she requested?
I am incredibly disappointed that Hannah also neglected to include any of the information I provided her to the first two questions. It seems as though none of these answers were viable to demonize me, so she decided to neglect them entirely.
As someone who attended UNO for 3 years and had nothing but positive experiences, I am ashamed that my alma mater would let such a low quality piece make its way into their newspaper. It upsets me that the paper is being used to attack the wonderful volunteers working in Omaha, and to attack Mark Gudgel, an inspirational teacher who just wanted to lead Omaha into a more progressive future.
This comment kinda seems like you’re pretending not to be a dgger eventhough your post history shows otherwise
One, in some ways, local politics is worse. The way reputations are built and broken locally can get much more personal, so expect that going in.
Before you revert to apathy, there were some strategic errors here (not a Destiny fan but I live with one lol) I feel like I haven’t seen pointed out among the disappointment. I’m interested in local politics and also the internet/IRL (often poisonous but hopefully not always) interface of politics, and I have experience in the IRL part.
As someone who’s done a lot of work and volunteering in local political campaigns and issues, it was glaringly strange to me that Destiny selected a preferred D before the primary and went this hard branding for this particular guy. Couple of reasons, but the obvious one was why it was so mind-boggling to me.
First and most conspicuously, it absolutely ties their reputations and opens the candidate to criticism a primary-selected sole Democrat would just not have to face. Supporting all D’s blandly with some emphasis on a favorite is one thing (not that I’d do that, but it seems way more resilient as a pro-Democrat / anti-Republican strategy than picking a small candidate and trying to carry their campaign, with all the risks associated).
What seems more logical is doing a get-out-the-vote effort before the primary and supporting the winner after. Perfect idealism? No, but this is politics (volatile local politics at that). I found it odd to not take that route because it seems like the brand here is political pragmatism, not political purity, and it doesn’t seem like the public health career candidate, Snipes, who’s more popular right now is super ideologically different from Gudgel for the purposes of a primary, so why go so hard for one at the exclusion of the other?
And really, the most effective path from an outsider with some experience’s view is to just unseat the republican. Get votes out, support whatever Democrat,
This move also temporarily slowed or sank the org’s work in Omaha (for the moment, at least) before any reputation was established. Newcomers to any political scene are especially vulnerable to their own baggage before they have an established brand and track record. This is not how I would ask or expect anyone to gain political experience.
You can’t play kingmaker at the beginning of a race effectively when you’re more easily identified by your existing controversy (fair or no how it’s brought up) than you are by your accomplishments. It’s more gambling than politics at that point, and the deck is stacked against you in any gamble of that nature because politics is a high-stakes game, even locally.
I don’t see how these moves weren’t errors, and predictable ones at that (these angles of attack are a known thing in this community, right?).
It sucks, and they happen, but this is politics. It’s really doable but it isn’t flashy, and doing low-profile, steady work is often the name of the game. Especially before anybody’s reputation is staked to it.
Don’t roll over if you care about making change. Assess your strategy and expectations and go in for more experience with those things in mind.
edit for clarity: Somebody pointed out elsewhere this might have fit with the point, which from their view was to see if this specific task could be done. This strategy might not be an error if you’re trying to see what you can powerlift, but I do think it’s an error if the goal is, more broadly, to stoke effective engagement and fight political apathy.
I was lucky to have parents involved in local school boards and city council elections so I saw similar things at an early age. Just wait until you have kids and get involved a little in PTA. It's scary how political everything can get. The saying it's not what you know but who becomes incredibly true at a local level.
It's worse. People get super personal and lose all sense of scale. If you think this is bad try community board politics. It's a shitshow.
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Mark Gudgel was based.
This is a depressing reaction to how dirty local politics can get. It is difficult not to become pessimistic after something like this.
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