Perhaps he was trying to make it look like conservatives were being hateful or threatening toward transgender children. Or perhaps he was just trying to prove a point. Or was it dark humor, referencing a popular social media meme?
Whatever it was, Mitchell Thomas Watley, a popular children’s artist who lives in downtown Juneau, has been arrested for posting notes around town that indicated a credible threat against transgender children. The notes directly mentioned “feeling cute” and shooting children, and had some transgender imagery. It is not clear the threat was against transgender children, but the imagery suggests such.
A note was first discovered on March 31 at about 6:45 am at a business in the 600 block of Willoughby Ave.
With so much in the news about transgender ideology and children, and with the recent killing of children by a mentally deranged person in Nashville, police notified the Juneau School District about the issue. Then, at 12:15 p.m., police received a second report regarding a similar incident, this time on a bulletin board at the State Office Building, not far from the first note. The second note was turned in to building security, who notified police.
On April 2, two more notes were found, and police and the FBI were able to identify the man posting them, 47-year-old Watley, who was arrested later that day on 6th Street at a residence. He was being charged with one count of terroristic threatening in the 2nd degree, a class C felony offense. Watley was taken to the Lemon Creek Correctional Center and was listed as an inmate as of Tuesday morning.
Watley and his wife make popular children’s books, which she writes and he illustrates, notably, “I Would Tuck You In,” and “I Would Teach You To Fly.” He is published by Penguin Books. Both are part of the downtown liberal bloc that is in Precinct 2, one of the most progressive precincts in the entire state.
A popular meme called the “Feeling cute challenge” has made its way around social media and appears to have inspired the Juneau terroristic threat incident, an example of which follows:
