When It All Goes Wrong: The Dakota OutRight Situation

I wanted to create a space to collect and document my posts about the recent drama surrounding the termination of my verbal contract with Dakota OutRight. I have been their show director and MC for over twenty years, and was recently terminated one month before Pride; the reason stated for the termination was that my political commentary was too polarizing, i.e., it upset white conservatives in the community. I'm very wordy, so I thought it might be helpful to collect all of my posted thoughts in a single thread. These are all still publicly available on my facebook page, but it's a ton of scrolling to find them all. The situation is still ongoing, but I've made my final public statement...for now. Here we go!

The First Post:

These are the pictures that accompanied the post, including the termination message that I received from Dakota OutRight's Facebook Page. As of writing this, the post was shared 78 times, there were 159 comments, and almost 400 reactions.

The Second Post:

The Apology & My Response:

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to set up a conversation with the standing board at the time; once again I was ghosted. I did have a couple of private conversations with individual board members, but I don't want to share those here; I'm documenting the public conversation, and the public response from DOR was crickets. This lead to...

The Third Post:

Dakota OutRight did not respond to the requests made in this third post. As of this writing, it is unclear if Jeigh is still a part of the board (there was a comment from someone who had volunteered to join the board to help rebuild who mentioned that the board was down to two people, but it wasn't stated who those two people were) and I've received no confirmation of any donations.

There were a few comments that I made on DOR's public posts, as well as a couple of shorter posts asking them to respond to my requests for accountability (they didn't). I'm not documenting those here, but anything posted to my page is still there. As of this writing, all of the comments I made are also still available on the DOR page, but I don't control whether or not they will remain.

I also received a few more private messages from people that I like and trust who were former board members and volunteers expressing their feelings about the situation and letting me know that they were either rejoining the board or volunteering to help make sure Pride 2026 still happen. Again, since these were private conversations, I won't be sharing them here, but all of this ongoing conversation did lead to me make a final public statement, at least for the moment.

The Final Post...For Now:

So that is the story from my perspective. I am working on the piece I mentioned that will be submitted to the High Plains Reader. Once that is live on their website, I will edit this page to include a link back to that. I'm still trying to figure out what to say.

Once Pride 2026 is over, I think there will be more conversations to be had, but for now I'm setting this aside and focusing on other creative endeavors. And if you are just dying to see me at a Pride event, you can catch me in the Minot Pride show in August, and Grand Forks Pride will be happening in September. See you there!