The Upton Militia

Elias Dickinson (Anthropologist)
Say, “Waco, Texas,” or, “Branch Davidians,” or even, “Jonestown,” to anyone born in the last forty or fifty years and they will probably only give you a blank look. However, say, “Lakeridge, Montana,” or, “The Upton Militia,” to those same people and I am sure their eyes will light up and you will never get them to stop talking about it.

Koji Nakamura (Former Anarchist)
The siege of the Upton compound in Lakeridge, Montana was definitely a wakeup call to the rest of us. The American government had no idea what kind of hornets' nest they had stirred up by attacking those people. If you want one event that you could call the rally cry for the revolution, I'd say it was the Upton Massacre.

Aimee Markum (Journalist)
The circumstances leading up to my stay at the Upton compound were actually very similar to the events leading up to the siege in Waco in 1993 and Leo Ryan's visit to Jonestown in 1978. The United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had been interested in James Upton and his compound and had maintained a high level of surveillance on it from the very moment they became aware of his purchase of the land near Lakeridge in 2033. Upton had been an advocate for gun rights his entire life and had gained a level of notoriety when he ran for a seat in the United States Senate in New York in 2032. He was a very controversial candidate at the time because of a variety of policies including repealing most of the gun control laws and the role of the federal government in state issues. His campaign drew a mountain of negative attention and he ended up losing in a landslide but his fervor garnered recognition outside of the state of New York and he even gathered a fairly sizable following in states like Montana and Idaho. So, really, his actions following his embarrassing defeat were a surprise to no one.