@politico: #Obama: Such a senseless and terrible act of violence has no place in a free society http://politi.co/fQmggR

What does that mean? Assuming even the best of intentions, does that sentiment mean much in the context of remarks from a contemporary President of the United States?

In trying to give those words meaning, these questions come to mind:

What does that imply about society? I don’t take it for granted that we live in a free one, if that was an implied premise.

Do I even agree with the statement? What does a free society need to endure, lest it stop being free?

I think we must consider the idea that a free society is going to have to accept some level of tragedy. We also need to consider how much tragedy is a function of an unfree society. I’m not sure the most vocal people who seize podiums and microphones want a free society or even understand what they want.

It seems necessary to consider the real causes of this particular incident. That will not come to light quickly and will involve both culpability through individual actions, for which people must be personally held responsible for, as well as broader contexts that our society has affected and we will desire to affect further in our response. The facts of this case are hardly clear enough now, yet many seem already dug into their positions.

When we aren’t engaged in demagogy, we are too prone to platitudes and political correctness in language. I think the latter is sometimes considered a positive trend that we think softens the former. I tend to think platitudes enable demagogy. It is this worry that was awakened by the quote from Obama’s statement.

I make a leap here: I would bet that demagogy played into the motivations of this attack (again, as subtext or on top of personal choices and circumstances for which there very well should be a very personal sort of culpability). That has a serious societal component. Are we going to be able to consciously engage it in our form of society and adequately represent real solutions in law, as we are said to be a nation of them?^† I doubt it; it is hard enough for me to here — but my ignorance is not reason enough for pessimism.

I am concerned that a national response will consist of varied reactionary positions to symptoms, both observed and supposed, individual and societal, rather than causes. The general trend of reactions I’ve seen so far (on Facebook, Twitter and in comments to news articles) do not seem to provide agency for the kind of mass politics I think required for the kind of change that will delegitimize violence and proactively encourage genuine social justice^‡: circumstances that I believe would engender a level of personal and community responsibility to greatly reduce this kind of violence without trading away personal freedom in law.

It is far too early to fully understand the full depth of this event, except that it is a tragedy, and that there seems to be incontrovertible evidence that there was at least one principle actor.

Real freedom incorporates justice which should dilute the causes of violence. Reactionary politics prevents freedom, encourages false dichotomies and engenders stronger reactions. Which way do you want the cycle to go?

One might assume this is all an oblique reference to “gun control.” While issue will almost certainly have renewed political focus, I am purposefully speaking more broadly because I think this tragedy will fuel reactionary crackdowns on seemingly less controversial rights and liberties too. With respect to gun control, I find both sides to fall into fallacies I’ve illustrated here and I can’t support the politics that seems to necessitate picking amongst the positions they put forth.

One might be sick of the nearly instantaneous politicization of this apparent assassination attempt. But as such it was politicized from the start. Those who do not acknowledge everything is politics and seize their civic responsibility are part of the problem that motivates us to pretend politics isn’t involved in some things or to turn our heads entirely. When we do this we leave a vacuum for those who make power and the allocation of resources toxic, ripe for abuse, creating the disparities that play into tragedies.

• ^† However flawed our concept of justice under the law might be…
• ^‡ Rather than reactively; as due process in the conviction of a someone found to be criminal perpetrating injustice is — which seems essential, with or without a state and its laws.

The way Carvin tells it, he was first asked what he was doing and left alone, seemingly with permission, to go about his business. Then security returned giving conflicting messages about what he could and couldn’t do, and why (read his account). He was threatened with arrest multiple times. After pressing for a coherent explanation and to talk to bosses, he still had to pack-up and leave.

Before I express my solidarity, I do want to say Carvin should not have been surprised that he’d get some trouble: The Gigapan requires a tripod and rules against tripods have been common for a while, well before the so-called post-9/11 era.

Aside from security issues, more mundane rules and bureaucratic measures that require special permission for some photography in the name of safety and congestion have been in place for some time in many public and private spaces, particularly in Washington, DC. If one is going to use a tripod and is involved in any sort of media making, they should expect to be challenged by those responsible for the space if nothing is pre-arranged. I do think such policies are sometimes questionable and are often arbitrarily enforced but as an employee of NPR, he might have more easily obtained special permission to use his tripod. That said, the conflicting permission and conflicting reasoning Carvin recounts sort of balances that out.

Fundamentally, I think indignance over this treatment is justified. Often in the name of security, and sometimes in the name of private property, civil liberties are aggressively curtailed by security officials who often seem to know less about the rules they’re apparently enforcing than the bill of rights some of them (at least when they’re police) are sworn to protect. That isn’t saying much.

I have witnessed and experienced similar situations myself.

In Washington, the hostility towards photography in open spaces by tourists and amateurs, even members of the press and others seems particularly intense. On Washington’s metro system I’ve been approached by police and asked to show them the photos I had just taken. Another time, I was told I could not take a photo in the Metro because there was an elevated security level — but the rules publicly available did not back this up.

Often I was subject to scrutiny while others who were taking pictures were not. The only discernible difference I could imagine is that I often carried a Digital SLR camera body — so I either appeared professional (still not a crime) or somehow more competent (not a guarantee by any means) and the nature of my photography was apparently supposed not only to be different (a weak assumption) but extra-legal (false).

This year in Union Station, while I photographed an anti-war flash mob, I saw videographers get repeatedly approached by Amtrak police and suited officials and told they could not film. Enough seemed to challenge, in front of enough witnesses, that the authorities seemed to relent.

In 2002, while covering World Bank and anti-war protests as a then-contributor to an incarnation of DC Indymedia (which had been recognized by DC’s police department — which took our applications and had just begun to issue credentials to many of us) and collaborating with the DC Radio-Coop (a project of organizers with Washington’s Pacifica station WPFW and DC Indymedia), I was swept up in a mass-arrest. Other other press, legal observers, medics, passers-by, and demonstrators — were all illegally arrested. I’ve been shown video of cops pointing to me, and arresting me out of sequence from the crowd they corralled after I had held my camera up above my head in trying to get shots of the arrests at the other end of compressed block of people I was in.

I spent hours in buses and hog-tied on mat, spending time with AP, Newsweek, and Magnum photographers. All but the Magnum photographer and myself got released early, apparently after negotiations between their employers/sponsors and the authorities. When those who could be were contacted, all those who were sprung early with the help of their boss were reluctant to join a free-press oriented lawsuit a credentialed videographer and I tried to organize. Eventually we joined a different suit that included protest participants, which the Magnum photographer also eventually joined coincidentally, and we settled without pressing the issues specific to our journalist status. The Committee to Protect Journalists included mention of the arrests in a press release.

It isn’t just Washington, DC, though: After Boing Boing picked up on Andy Carvin’s story, they shared a couple more similarly themed accounts from the Los Angeles area, one involving the FBI.

Similar instances of arbitrary rules or baseless enforcement of allegedly applicable rules or laws regarding photography have been reported on in the past too. Including twice in the past couple of years where the New York City Metro Transit Authority and the city government was subject to a public backlash after the respective authorities expressed the intent to implement more restrictive rules on the basis of security and public safety.

The example of Union Station raises concerns both about the civil liberties associated with photographing that which is plain view to the public, and the encroachment of civil liberties in general by places that seem public but which are not. This isn’t always a factor of increased privatization of what was public. Sometimes the entities that own or control certain spaces that were always technically private and [mis?-]understood to be public seem to exploit the murkiness of places that are — by most perceptions — seen as public because of their association with public spaces and public or government-subsidized services.

I know there are lawyers will say my qualifiers are going too far, but when we’re talking about subsidies, public-private corporations, and hubs of public services, I think the equivocation on the “privateness” is deserved. In the case of Union Station, I’m talking about Amtrak and the Washington Metro system.

This is likely to get edited for clarity and updated for the addition of sources after I get some sleep and Twitter comes back up.