At its weekly meeting last Monday evening, February 6, the city commission here in Bozeman, Montana was (supposedly) blindsided by an uprising among local mooncalves who want the city to become an illegal-alien sanctuary.  Several score showed up and used the public-comments segment of the proceedings to engage in their virtue-signaling.  As Morgan McKay reported for local television station KBZK:

Bozeman City Commissioners reportedly had no prior knowledge that a large crowd would give an impromptu presentation, asking the commission to make Bozeman a sanctuary city.

[Crowd asks commissioners to make Bozeman a sanctuary city, February 7, 2017]

A reporter for another local station interviewed one of the principals behind this fabulous idea:

NBC Montana spoke with Dasha Brill, a resident who helped gather people for the city commission meeting. She tells us she hopes this is the first step in a longer process.

One by one speakers took to the microphone to share stories of immigration and tell commissioners what's on their minds.

Brill says their message is that they don't want their city participating in immigration enforcement. She and others want the city to be a safe space for immigrants.

There are many people around the country who are opposed to the idea of sanctuary cities. Brill hopes people understand they are not asking Bozeman to harbor undocumented immigrants or protect criminals.

She said, "It is, in part, symbolic. We're just sending a message of inclusiveness and tolerance. You know, I think people should learn more about what it actually means (to be a sanctuary city)."

[Emphasis added.  Bozeman residents ask for sanctuary city designation, by Judith Retana, NBC Montana KTVM, February 6, 2017

The sentence I bolded provides a typical example of one's repeated experiences over years in the struggle for patriotic immigration reform—our average fellow citizen knows less than diddly-squat about the subject: Harboring "undocumented immigrants" is precisely what a sanctuary city does!!

(Of course, the reporter might have bungled what her interviewee was saying, but the same immigration-patriot's life-lesson would still apply.)

I wrote "(supposedly)" in the opening paragraph because of this sentence about Bozeman's Mayor Carson Taylor in the local newspaper's account of the meeting:

His wife, Dede Taylor, was among the supporters in the city commission audience Monday, but he stressed Tuesday that they’re “different people.”

[Activists push Bozeman to adopt ‘sanctuary city’ declaration, by Eric Dietrich, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, February 8, 2017]

Well, regardless of what the mayor knew and when he knew it, there was enough pushback over the subsequent few days (see below), that Mr. Taylor decided to let the matter drop, so the mooncalves' proposed resolution won't be taken up by the commission.  [Mayor: Bozeman will not pursue formal sanctuary city policy, by Eric Dietrich, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, February 9, 2017]

But perhaps what's most notable about this flurry of controversy is that pushback I mentioned.  First, the plentiful online comments at the two newspaper articles, at station KTVM's article, and at the article run by the ABC Fox Montana website are nearly all hostile—without necessarily being very articulate!—to the sanctuary-city proposal.

But in addition, the ABC Fox site ran an online poll, Should Bozeman become a sanctuary city, and the results are both heartening and striking.  It's accumulated 2,460 votes (and I think the counting has terminated), with 82 percent opposing the resolution.

Of course this wasn't a "scientific" poll, since people could be participating from anywhere in the world.  (However, I experimented and found that it apparently did restrict voting to one per communicating computer.)

Still ... 82 percent.  82 percent.  What does that remind me of??

I know—it was November 2012, in the ultimate poll (an election), when we Montanans voted nearly 80 percent to deny some state-funded benefits to illegal aliens!  And that win for The National Question was accomplished without much of a campaign for it beyond the plain language in the legislative referendum itself.  So it accurately reflected Montanans' undisturbed-by-election-hectoring instincts.

(Because of a drafting error in the resolution's language, the Montana Supreme Court overturned the resolution in May 2016, but the overwhelming vote favoring its passage was much more significant than what it would have accomplished if in force.)

So, with its great disdain for sanctuary cities, the Treasure State is, once again, Exemplar for the Nation.