I started this newsletter because I wanted a direct way to share my thoughts with people who want to hear from me that did not rely on a social media algorithm for you to see it and allowed for a certain amount of privacy. 

To be clear, I recognize that anything that goes anywhere on the Internet is by definition no longer private. That said, in order to take what I wrote in my latest newsletter and see malicious intent takes malicious intent of its own. And therein lies the problem. 

I can see why despite writing an article in which I did not give details of the crime, did not mention the person's age, physical description, name, or gender, and specifically said I did not want this person to be identified as I was simply telling my story of my reaction to this information, there is a way to see the article as being against that individual or the school. However, I think it's just as easy, if not easier to see that this was not in any way my intent. If it were I would have posted the article on Facebook or my jackcameron.com page. I would have put it somewhere that has a lot of eyes on it. 

Instead, I posted it in my subscriber-only email newsletter because many of you are personal friends and I genuinely was interested in your feedback. One individual I mistakenly thought was a friend. We had our disagreements, but I thought we were still friends. I was clearly wrong. Instead of telling me what they thought or engaging me in any sort of conversation, they felt the best approach was to take the newsletter and forward it to various students, possibly including the student I never mentioned with any identifiable characteristics, but who would likely recognize themselves in the article.

It should be made clear here that if that individual's goal was to minimize the damage done by this article, this individual's actions do the opposite of that. Furthermore, if this individual truly believes in redemption and restorative justice they should be willing to forgive me for writing a careless article at least as easily as they apparently forgive murder. The fact that they will not displays their true motivations as having nothing to do with social justice and everything to do with personal vendetta. I'm not going to play that game which is why I'm not telling you all his name and contact information. 

This leads me to my problem with this newsletter. I've deleted the individual's subscription, but that doesn't preclude that person from just signing up under another email address. And I'm not sure how to talk about personal things with all of you if there's one of you who is out to get me. It creates a bad faith situation in which everything I write can be taken out of context and used as slander.

So what is to be done? I'm not sure. The safe thing would be to stop writing about personal shit or stop the newsletter altogether. But I think some of my best writing comes from that place and I'm not one to shut up just because someone who has declared war against me wants me to. 

I thought about asking you all to answer some personal questions so that I can vet my subscribers, but that seems like a lot of work largely unnecessary work for both of us. 

I've been dealing with a lot of trust issues in my personal life. I trusted that the subscribers to this newsletter would not attempt to take anything I wrote here and use it as a weapon against me. That trust was betrayed. That hurts. Worse, it was betrayed in a way that hurts other people. And I have to take responsibility for that because it couldn't have happened if I never wrote it in the first place. 

The thing is the only way to rebuild trust is to start trusting again. So against my better judgment and against the advice of some friends, I'm going to continue to do the newsletter the same way I've been doing it. I'm going to trust you. 

I'm also going to pay more attention to the unintended consequences of what I write. But if something is bothering me, I'm going to tell you about it. And if that upsets people who apparently already did not like me, I'm not going to let that bother me too much. 

- Jack