Missoula Mayor John Engen can give a rousing stump speech. And he had for the crowd ready to hear a good one Monday night in Missoula. Well over 200 people had gathered at a downtown club in the early evening by the time Engen was introduced. The crowd had become dense enough in what is usually the Badlander's dance floor that the mayor couldn't make it to the stage. He started shouting from his place in the crowd.

Even before a microphone was passed toward him, he'd managed to shout out a few lines in a practiced voice loud enough to be be heard even in the bar portion of the L-shaped club.

The rally was scheduled to start at 5 pm, but the front door of the bar was still locked. Organizers pointed those who tried to enter toward an alternative entrance. Fortunately, I'd arrived at the same time as two women, one of whom thought she remembered how to get to the club's back door. After a couple of false starts we found our way through a winding hallway from a different bar into the Badlander.

I chose a seat in the bar portion where I could stash my cane and watch as the crowd grew. At 5:15, the front door was finally unlocked. We counted about 40 or 50 people. "Pretty good crowd, I guess," commented Brian, a guy who'd staked out a seat in the same area where I was sitting.

Kathy Goode, one of the women who'd helped me find my way through the back-door maze into the bar had also gravitated to the seating area, which seemed to have become the over-50 area for the moment. "I'm not sure what I can do," Kathy said, "but when I heard about that attack, I wanted to come to at least show my support."

Brian offers that he isn't sure that a new law is the way to go. The three of us get into a discussion about that and when I looked up the bar is packed with people. The initial 50 had quickly doubled and doubled again.

Estimates in the press put the size of the crowd at something around 250 at its peak.

The UM campus newspaper described it this way:

Walking into the Badlander packed with people standing shoulder to shoulder, you’d think it was a Friday night. But it was Monday, and the crowd wasn’t a drunken bunch.

And it was at that peak when Engen started to talk from within the crowd. 

He did perfect triplets throughout his short and energetic talk, repeating a phrase once to light applause, a second time to heavier applause, and a third time, a third time shouting to wild applause.

And then he'd start the same triplet set again.

"Hate and violence are not Missoula values," he said to applause, adding a few words to describe the town's noted diversity. "Hate and violence are not Missoula values," he repeated to louder applause.  "This is remarkable," he said, surveying the large crowd which applauded for itself. And then he brought on the final set of that perfect preacher's (or politician's) triplet to wild applause: "Hate and violence are not Missoula values!" he insisted with the crowd'scan help. Please." He told the crowd to call the police or to call him personally if anyone were wild approval.

With another repeated phrase, the mayor also offered practical advice to the receptive crowd, "Let us know. That's the only way we to become a target of violence or hatred, "No matter how small it is, tell us. Let us know. That's the only way we can help."

They didn't speak, but The Missoulian reports that two city police officers were also in the crowd urging people, individually and in small groups, to call them if anything happened.

And the mayor wrapped up another triplet in a loud voice: "Let us know. It's the only way we can help."

A few minutes later Taanya Cambpell (as it's spelled on the organizers' agenda) of the Missoula County crime victim advocate program repeated the mayor's exhortation, but without the rhetorical flourish. She pointed to an assistant county attorney within the crowd who she said wanted to hear from victims of bias attacks.

"I know what it's like to feel hate on the streets of Missoula," Campbell said, "and we can do something about it. Look at us!" she said to cheers.

Most of the large crowd even stayed though an agonizingly long-winded speech on the theory of participatory theater delivered along with a minimum of actual participatory theater -- mostly involving group hugs -- by someone from (this is a college town, after all) the "Theater of the Oppressed."

State Senator Dave Wansenreid took the podium sounding like a clone of Dennis Kucinich in vocal timber, subject, and inflection. "We need to commit acts of peace," he told the crowd.

"We're gonna start the momentum tonight to pass the hate crimes law," he assured the large crowd.

State Senator Christine Kaufman got a rousing cheer from the crowd when she was introduced. "I am a lesbian," she said to even louder cheers, "and I am angry." She told of the standard complaints trotted out when she introduces a hate-crimes expansion bill each session of the legislature. "There's so much misinformation out there."

She urged everyone in the crowd to contact legislators to tell them of the need for a expanded law. And she urged voters to choose candidates who would join her as advocates for the law and for other equal rights legislation in Helena.

Jess Keith watched all this quietly from the sidelines with her partner Melissa Darnell who had flown in from Palm Springs to be with Jess. It was a rally for all past and future victims of anti-gay violence, but the rally had been inspired by Jess.

She was introduced to the crowd when the rally was nearly over. She told the still-large group that she had felt an outpouring of love from the community since she went public with the story of her attack by a group of Grizzly fans. She said that strangers in grocery stores had recognized her and insisted on a hug. "I see all of you out there now and I feel so much support," she told the crowd which seemed to want to reach out to give her another of those anonymous hugs.

Jess said she wasn't sure when she'd arrived if she'd speak, but ended up giving the crowd a rousing impromptu talk. But she paused before to those gathered, "Some of you may not want to hear this," she warned. "When somebody is attacked," she told them, "they need your support. They don't need to hear you tell them what they might have done wrong. Don't say, 'Maybe, you shoulda, coula.'"

"When you say stuff like that to me you victimize me again. That's not what I need to hear. I didn't do anything wrong. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to walk from one place to another in this town without being attacked."

This is her home town, Jess told the crowd, and she's not willing to give it up to her attackers or anyone else.

Hundreds came to a rally because Jess Keith wasn't embarrassed to tell the story of the women who had attacked during a game-day weekend. Hundreds came to a packed rally and cheered loudest when politicians and activists told them to do something. Hundreds came and cheered loudest when they were told that they could do something to change the festering hatred.

"This is a civil rights struggle," State Representative Michele Reinhart told the crowd as the rally was drawing to its close. "This is a battle for our rights." Reinhart told the crowd that the hate crimes bill and other civil rights measures for LGBT people in Montana that are introduced in each session of the legislature "fail because there are people who do not want us to feel equal." She exhorted the crowd to use the energy in that club on that Monday night to propel the state toward a new era of inclusiveness.

And the crowd cheered. On that one night at least, it felt like it might actually be the start of a change in Montana, where things don't usually change all that quickly.