Two Sides to Every Story

Last Updated on: 29th October 2013, 10:53 am

I got an email today from Matt Soltys, an occasional target of writing up here. He wrote an interesting email to defend himself, and I thought I might share it to be fair. After all, if I can spout off, it’s only fair to let him have his say too. And if someone ever wrote a flaming, steaming rage-fest, or something even close to that, about me, I’d hope they’d do the same for me if I wrote to defend myself. Much love to having voices heard! So off we go.

hi carin,

how are you doing? it’s matt soltys here, i felt like writing to you after reading your blogs about me. i just found the one you wrote about the results of court in december, and i must admit i’ve really enjoyed reading them (i’m serious!). it’s interesting to read someone completely trashing me.
i don’t really have that much to say about your personal opinions on things, because that’s how you feel. but there were a few things that were incorrect in your most recent writing (i couldn’t find this one anywhere on the net but in a cached file for some reason… do you know why?)
somehow you included the quote “never ever ever do that again, Your Honour!”, which you used twice. i’m not sure why you put that in quotes because i never said those words. you also suggest that i should have went to whoever owned the buildings and apologized and offered to pay. i did that actually… i called ed pickersgill, who owns the matrix center, and he actually likes the graffiti on the building, and came to court that day in december with a reference letter in support of me, asking for the charges to get thrown out.
i also went to the building on neeve st., the only other place i spraypainted that was owned by an individual or organization (the others were on city/public property), and apologized as well. they said that
an apology was good enough and they didn’t request me to pay the clean up costs (which were only about $40).
also, about having ‘the ear of the UN.’ you can’t actually believe that, do you? the un is an incredibly impersonal bureaucracy. one canadian political delegate told a friend of mine while we were there,
‘if you ever want to really change anything, do not, i repeat, do not, get involved in politics. you’ll never change a single thing.’
about your suggestion that i do community service… norman douglas said in court, ‘i can’t sentence him to community service, i’d just be telling him to do what he already does!’ whether or not you feel that the work i do is good, i still devote my life to the service of my community, and he recognized that.
that’s pretty much it. i don’t want to get into a debate about our political beliefs, i just wanted to correct a few inaccuracies. thanks for writing, either way. i’m glad you at least care about something. i just hope all the time you put into your blog is worth the energy.
oh, another thing… i don’t know how you thought i wrote for resist.ca… i’ve never wrote for them before. most of the journalism is with cfru… i have a website with lots of interviews if you’re interested in checking it out, it’s at resistanceisfertile.ca.
thanks carin, hope you have a good day,

matt

First off, way cool that he found us, even though it was a less than pleasant introduction. I only have a couple things to say. As for the corrections, I can only say, woops. The quotes, although I was wrongly going for an effect, have been removed. I’ve put his actual website in that post, and I’ll put it here for good measure.

I’m glad he approached the people who owned the buildings and apologized. If I’d decided I was going to grafiti a wall, I would have asked permission first and then done it, but that’s just me, and we just have to agree to disagree.

And I can’t hope to be so naive as to think that politicians want to change the world. They make me about as sick as lawyers, probably because most of them *are* lawyers. But I do know this. If I walked into a UN conference and tried to address them, I’d be wearing handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit before you could say Jack Robinson. He, on the other hand, had the go-ahead from someone who thought enough of him to authorize him to speak. That’s pretty powerful and pretty awesome, and a huge connection for the future.

I’m very happy that he wrote me. I’m all about fixing mistakes and being fair, and not being a jerk. Hopefully he’ll read again.

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