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Billings students transform prejudice into pride • Daily Montanan

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Billings students transform prejudice into pride • Daily Montanan


Ysabelle Ruiz told classmates that her name was Bella Smith.

That was just easier.

It was easier not to explain the spelling of her name (yes, it begins with a Y, followed by an S).

It helped avoid conversations about the last name Ruiz, too. Those things often led to a conversation about her Mexican heritage and some of the associated hostility that goes along with that.

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And her experiences weren’t so different than those of her fellow students who gathered before the unveiling ceremony at Billings’ South Park on Saturday.

They all told similar stories of students and residents making snide comments.

Of the five students, all said that someone has threatened to call Immigration Services on them. Several had been told the border wall at the southern U.S. border is meant for them.

However, on Saturday, students gathered to offer a different perspective to the community, including on the south side of Billings, which has been home to Hispanic families for more than a century. They literally put their mark on South Park, a popular gathering place. The students of Raza Unida, or united race in Spanish, created a mural that depicts Our Lady of Gudalupe with symbols that represent the experience of Chicanos and Latinos in Billings.

Raza Unida is a club in Billings Public Schools meant to showcase the diversity and culture of Hispanic students.

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Billings, which is Montana’s largest city, is home to a large Hispanic community and celebrates the state’s oldest Hispanic cultural celebration and fiesta, dating back more than a century. Still, despite its history, these students talk about either being invisible, or even worse, targeted as “illegals” or lumped into a category of “Mexicans.”

The group hopes that creating the mural, which was brought to life through the painting of south Billings resident Elyssa Leininger, that people will see the depth of the Hispanic culture, which spans the western hemisphere. Even though Leininger said she’d never created a mural of Hispanic culture and is not a Latina, she grew up and still lives on the south side of Billings and said it was about creating more community in her neighborhood.

That’s the same for Alyssia Nava, the organizer of Raza Unida, who is part of the support staff at Billings Public Schools. She originally formed the group when she was a student to raise awareness and understanding, and restarted the group recently. Skyview High teacher Brooke Stone stepped in to become the advisor, saying even though she was not Hispanic, there was no way she’d let the group disappear because other teachers didn’t take an interest.

“It’s empowering for them to show their heritage and for other students, it helps them understand,” Stone said.

Billings Public School Superintendent Erwin Garcia-Velasquez, himself an immigrant from Colombia, was there to celebrate the moment and support the students on the day after school concluded for the year.

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“It feels right that our students should have this,” he said.

Nava said the mural is a good first step for all students, and that even those who are unfamiliar with Hispanic cultures can begin a conversation.

“It’s truly been amazing to hear that they have the same passion. We stand by our Chicano and Latinos who are the future of this nation,” she said. “The more recognition we can get, the easier it will be for them to be OK as a Mexican-American or a Puerto Rican. We have done a great job with Indian Education for All, now it will be easier to get somewhere with this.”

Our Lady of Gudalupe holds particular importance because it symbolizes peace and transcends one particular country or identity. Flags from countries both in Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean, border the mural, and other symbols from Montana are incorporated into it just as the students have become part of the Billings community, the students said.

The students said that they wanted to choose a place in South Park because that’s traditionally been home to Hispanic families. They said they wanted to place the mural there as a symbol of pride, turning what is sometimes used as a putdown — being from the south side — to a point of pride.

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“We wanted to expand people’s knowledge of Hispanic culture,” said Cecila Aarness.

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For example, there is farming and sugar beets, a reference to the farmworkers who originally settled in northern Wyoming and throughout eastern Montana to work the back-breaking labor of tending and harvesting sugar beets.

Cecelia Aarness also pointed to the low-rider as something that demonstrates pride in an aspect uniquely Hispanic.

Ruiz explained the importance of the monarch butterflies to Mexicans in Montana — they journey from Mexico back to Montana, and have come to symbolize the spiritual connection between the two places and the generations who lived in both.

“This is a positive response to being called a ‘border hopper,’” Ruiz said. “Rather than just getting into an argument this is way to help form a positive reaction.”

Treyannah Lewis said including things like low-riders or Our Lady of Gudalupe is a way of claiming with pride the symbols of the culture, rather than downplaying them.

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“This tells Hispanic people that they matter. It’s a big deal,” Lewis said.

Aarness said that most people associate Our Lady of Gudalupe with the ubiquitous candles used in many Roman Catholic homes.

“This brings her outside, into the world. It’s a main representation in Hispanic culture,” Aarness said. “This brings her outside, into the light.”



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Montana Lottery Mega Millions, Big Sky Bonus results for May 8, 2026

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The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.

Here’s a look at May 8, 2026, results for each game:

Winning Mega Millions numbers from May 8 drawing

37-47-49-51-58, Mega Ball: 16

Check Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.

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Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from May 8 drawing

09-14-18-20, Bonus: 16

Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from May 8 drawing

14-16-21-43-51, Bonus: 03

Check Millionaire for Life payouts and previous drawings here.

Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results

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When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?

  • Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
  • Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
  • Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
  • Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
  • Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
  • Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
  • Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
  • Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.

Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.

This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.



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“It’s Life Alert or rent”: Montana trailer park tenants are on rent strike

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“It’s Life Alert or rent”: Montana trailer park tenants are on rent strike


Mobile home residents in Bozeman, Montana, say they’re being forced to choose between paying rent and paying medical costs.Courtesy of Jered McCafferty

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35-year-old Benjamin Moore has lived in Mountain Meadows Mobile Home Park, outside Bozeman, Montana, since he was 17. This month, for the first time, he’s withholding his rent.

On May 1, Moore received a rent bill for $947, up 11 percent from the month before, and the second hike in nine months—the product of the park’s sale to an undisclosed buyer. 

Moore hung a sign on his trailer that says “RENT STRIKE.” He and his neighbors in Mountain Meadows and nearby King Arthur Park, organized with the citywide group Bozeman Tenants United, are collectively withholding over $50,000 a month from their landlord. 

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Historically, trailer parks have been a relatively affordable housing option—a third of trailer park residents in America live below the poverty line. But on average, their cost of living has risen 45 percent over the past decade. By unionizing, the Bozeman trailer park tenants believe they might be able to fight the most recent rent hike—especially given the state of their housing. 

For years, tenants say, the maintenance hasn’t been attended to: tree limbs hang perilously over trailers, and water shutoffs are a regular occurrence. “I cannot recall a time in the past 20 years where we had three straight months of water and power working all day, every day,” Moore said. 

Shauna Thompson, another resident, calls the water “atrocious…like a Milky Way, like you’re drinking skim milk. It’s very nasty and turned off all the time, without any notice.” And tenants allege that they’ve experienced retribution for maintenance requests, punitive eviction attempts, and unsafe conditions. 

A group of protestors in support of a rent strike rip up rent notices.
Members of Bozeman Tenants United, including Benjamin Moore and Shauna Thompson, rip up their rent increase notices. Jered McCafferty

“It’s really hard on people here,” Moore said. Some residents are “already paying their entire Social Security check for rent. It’s a very poor neighborhood. We’ve got old folks. We’ve got young families. We’ve got working-class people who can’t afford anything else.”

For the past four decades, a group called Oakland Properties has owned both trailer parks. When they learned about the sale, tenants were scared that their parks would be bulldozed, or that their rent would be increased even further, forcing them to move. 

The tenants attempted to buy the parks themselves, but were decisively outbid. The winning bidder demanded an NDA. The transaction should be finalized next month, park owner Gary Oakland said, but residents still don’t know who’s going to own the land they live on.

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This month’s rent hike, Oakland acknowledged, was “part and parcel” of the sale. But for tenants, it’s a catastrophe. On top of the $947 lot rent—more than double the national average—many residents also pay off home loans on their trailers, as well as insurance and utilities costs.

Oakland calls claims of broken utilities “nonsense”: “If it was such a bad place to live, why would the homes be selling for such high dollars?” he said. The rent strike, Oakland points out, is “just a group of people not paying their rent.”

Some people are rationing their medication to make ends meet, Moore said. “There’s one person who canceled Life Alert. It’s either Life Alert or rent, and if you don’t pay rent, they evict you and throw you in the streets.” 

An older woman in a wheelchair with oxygen tubes holds a rent notice and a rent strike sign.
Many of the tenants of King Arthur and Mountain Meadows parks rely on a fixed income to pay their rent.Jered McCafferty

Tenant organizers across the nation have found a foothold in recent years organizing against individual landlords, and Bozeman’s tenant union, situated in one of the fastest-growing communities in the state, is no exception. Tenant unions from Los Angeles to Kansas City to New York have organized to win rent freezes, maintenance, and security in their homes.

Mobile home parks—increasingly private-equity-owned and uniquely at-risk in the face of climate disasters—are organizing, too: a group of trailer park residents in Columbia, Missouri, unionized in February. In Montana, as Rebecca Burns recently wrote for In These Times, mobile homes were already once a site of tenant organizing: buoyed by the state’s miners unions, the first Bozeman-area mobile home tenants’ union won an agreement with their landlord in 1978.  

Oakland says park residents “have been terrorized by the union,” and plans to evict the strikers. The strikers say they’ve retained a lawyer and will fight to stay in their homes.

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“I wish none of this was happening,” Moore said. “Your utilities should work. Your place should be safe. You should be able to get in and out of it. These are the absolute basics, and they just haven’t kept them up. And if you call them on it, they threaten you.”



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Montana’s fastest man who started as a walk on

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Montana’s fastest man who started as a walk on


Karsen Beitz arrived at Montana with no scholarship offers, one remaining walk-on spot and no guarantee that his track career would last.

Now, the former Sentinel High School standout is one of the fastest athletes in Montana history.

Beitz, a Missoula native and junior sprinter for the Grizzlies, has turned an unlikely college opportunity into a record-setting career. He owns Montana’s 100-meter and 200-meter program records and enters next week’s Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships as one of the top sprinters in the league.

Coming out of high school, Beitz was a football and track athlete without a Division I offer.

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“I was upset about it,” Beitz said. “But at the same time, I was fine with just going to college and living a normal college life.”

That changed after conversations between Sentinel coach Dylan Reynolds and Montana coach Doug Fraley.

“You may not think he’s a D-I prospect based on his times,” Reynolds told Fraley, “but I’m just telling you, if he gets in the right program, he’s going to be a D-I runner.”

Fraley had one walk-on spot left on his roster. He brought Beitz into his office, talked with him and decided to take a chance.

“I liked him. We had a good conversation, so I decided to give him the last walk-on spot,” Fraley said. “I’m sure glad I did.”

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Beitz became a Division I athlete in his hometown, but his first goal was modest. He wanted to prove he belonged and earn a scholarship.

He did that quickly.

As a freshman, Beitz placed at the Big Sky Outdoor Championships and helped Montana’s 4×100-meter relay reach the podium with a school-record performance.

“There was no doubt he earned that scholarship,” Fraley said.

Beitz continued to climb in 2025. He placed second in the 200 meters at the Big Sky indoor meet, but a hamstring injury kept him out of the outdoor championships.

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“It sucked to deal with,” Beitz said. “But I’m young and still had two years left, so I shifted my mindset to how I could come out these next two years.”

He has not looked back.

Beitz won the 200 meters at the 2026 Big Sky indoor championships, the first individual conference title of his track career. His time of 21.09 seconds edged Idaho State’s Alex Conner by one-hundredth of a second.

“I think the best part about it was seeing how happy Doug was,” Beitz said. “He was jumping up and down, gave me a big hug. After last year, I knew what I was capable of, so to go out there and do it was amazing.”

Then came the outdoor season.

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In April, Beitz broke Montana’s 58-year-old 200-meter record, running 20.55 seconds at the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate in Long Beach, California. The previous record had stood since 1968.

Two weeks later, he added the school’s wind-legal 100-meter record, running 10.25 seconds at the Bengal Invitational in Pocatello, Idaho. Which broke a 44-year-old program record and gave Beitz both sprint marks.

“He’s a really competitive guy, and he wants to be the best in the Big Sky,” Fraley said.

The records have not left Beitz satisfied. They have made him hungrier.

“You have all these goals and numbers in your mind,” Beitz said. “Then once you hit those numbers, you’re not satisfied. There’s just more numbers to chase.”

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The next chase begins at the Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships, scheduled for May 13-16 in Portland, Oregon.

After college, Beitz hopes to follow his mother’s footsteps and become a pharmacist. Maybe even the world’s fastest pharmacist.

“If I’m running around the hospital talking to doctors,” Beitz said, “I’ll do it pretty fast.”

From a walk-on few people noticed to a conference champion and school-record holder, Beitz has become Montana’s fastest man — and he is not done running.



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