In our upside-down world, where truth seems to be out of fashion and we are horrified to see how far horse manure can get you, the public radio station in Chattanooga fires a reporter after a legislator complains, and Gannett continues to cut staff at The Commercial Appeal and its other newspapers. We have seen an increase in arrests of journalists in this decade, while the ranks of reporters continue to slide. If there were ever a scarce commodity in America, it is the commodity of truth and the companion acute need for truth tellers to watch-dog elected officials. Thus, we are living upside down and backwards to be ditching truth-tellers -- whether it is because a corporate behemoth is seeking to trim its bottom line, or whether a state-funded university is so afraid of its money getting cut that it lets a legislator make editorial policy. In the case of Jacqui Helbert, the reporter at WUTC in Chattanooga, the gist of it is that some Republican legislators were at a meeting with high school students, and she talked to them, then did a story. They complained they did not know she was a reporter. She said she was wearing her WUTC station ID, carrying some bulky gear, and held a 22-inch directional mic in their faces. Being a radio reporter, there was no camera and no cameraman to ride alongside the reporter. My take: While I do not believe she played "gotcha" with the legislators or did anything sneaky, it seems as though their own stupid statements made them look bad. In other words, much Trump-like, they complained that the media reported what they did and said. Further, we should not distinguish between media and citizens. Citizens are journalists with as much standing as any member of the dwindling ranks of reporters. Anything an elected official says to any citizen is as much a comment to the public as anything he or she says to a card-carrying, corporate-paid reporter. A citizen can talk or write about her experiences with a politician, or what the politician does or says, same as any journalist. A citizen can talk to a journalist and report, representative Smith or Jones said or did this or that. See, there is no distinction between "journalist" and citizen journalist. In this era, especially, when everyone has a cell phone that can record video, every citizen is a journalist. Get used to it. If you are an elected official and you don't like people knowing you say and do stupid things, I have a simple fix for you: Quit saying and doing the stupid things that make you look foolish. Thus, the answer to Who Will Watch the Watchers? is everyone of us. It's a necessity.
While Americans are distracted by celebrity news and funny pet videos, and as macro forces move slowly and invisibly, the Earth and its political societies face events that can change life as we know it.
J.P. Harpignies writes about it in Bioneer, and makes the point that we often ponder: "It is an open question whether our species is wired to be able to respond to long-term existential crises..."
A Report: When Police Arrest Citizens for Taking their Picture
Memphis police arrest Paul Garner who was live-streaming at Valero Refinery on MLK Day 2017
Image by Hive Swarm News & Media
The 1978 Department of Justice Consent Decree with the Memphis
Police Department has been thrust into the news lately, and it is the basis of a
lawsuit for political intelligence gathering. However, the consent decree cites the
First Amendment in broad terms. One violation of First Amendment rights occurs
when law enforcement stops persons from recording them, sometimes by even arresting
them. From time to time, these actions and video clips appear publicly such as on the
Internet or TV news. Following are summaries of seven such incidents in Memphis, Tennessee, which are
included only because they notably made the news. In five of these incidents,
those recording or attempting to record with cell phones were arrested.
All of those cases were dismissed once they came before a judge.
1—Oct. 2, 2011. A woman sees five officers on top of a man on Beale Street, and
one is punching him. She begins recording and says, “He didn’t do nothing” and
“I’m going to get a picture of this.”
As the woman persists in recording with a cell phone, three officers approach her
and say, “Get off the street; the street is closed” and “shut the fuck up” as the
camera gets tossed about and captures a jumble of images.
No arrests were made, but the images made YouTube and local TV news.
"A-Listers" and Supporters Challenge the City's Political Black List and Spoof the Mayor
That is not a riddle or a trick question.When the “watchers” – agents of the
government including law enforcement – spy on citizens then make a “black list”
of “protesters” and others, the result can be a lawsuit based on civil rights
violations.
That was the outcome in Memphis this week when four persons sued in federal court after being named on a political list of 55 persons who must
be “escorted” by police whenever they are in city hall.The list was assembled by the police, and
four pages of that list were signed off in writing by Mayor Jim Strickland. A second lawsuit was filed in federal court on March 1 on behalf of "Fight for $15" minimum wage advocates who said police spied on their actions near fast food restaurants.
While the media called it a “black list,” we are calling
it an “A-List,” because the common bond with those 55 persons on the list is
that they are activists trying to make things better in the city and the
world. An additional 27 persons on the list were not political and were on the list for other reasons, police said, such as being disgruntled former employees or persons who had been involved in harassment or threats.
A List Weigh-In In response, the A-Listers and their supporters held a
rally outside City Hall on Feb. 21 -- an “A-List Weigh-in,” they called it, to
challenge police spying and to spoof the mayor.They passed out scarlet “A’s;” made beauty contest-type sashes out of
caution tape; drew wanted posters of themselves, and stepped on a set of scales
to see if the police posting of their weight lined up with their actual weight.
Ironically and amazingly, right when police and the mayor
were under fire for spying on citizens and thus setting up possible DOJ
sanctions and lawsuits,police had
several plainclothes officers in the plaza in front of City Hall and checking
out what the A-Listers were doing.
The documentary feature Who Will Watch the Watchers? opens
with Civil Rights hero and Freedom Rider Rip Patton pointing out the
proliferation of citizen videos, surveillance cameras, in-car video and
body-worn cameras and stating:
“It seems as though everybody….is watching anybody.”
One result of this has been the videos we have seen of
police shooting unarmed men when the use of deadly force was uncalled for.Officer Michael Slager said he shot and
killed Walter Scott in North Charleston, S.C., in April 2015 in self-defense,
fearing for his life.Only because a
phone video recorded by Feiden Santana showed Slager firing eight shots at
Scott’s back as Scott ran away, then Slager dropping his taser near Scott’s
body, was Slager charged with murder.
Camera-Shy Police don’t like to be recorded, even though courts have
consistently ruled it is a First Amendment right to film police.In Memphis and basically everywhere in the
country, there are instances of police arresting people to stop them from
filming.Typically those cases are
promptly dismissed.But, the police have
succeeded in stopping the recording, and the citizen has the trauma of being
arrested and jailed at least overnight, the expense of attorney fees and missed
time from work.Not to mention the
likelihood of showing up on TV, the Internet and in print with his or her mug
shot and being identified as a “suspect.”
While police stopping persons from taking their picture is
one thing, it is quite another when police film citizens – or gather political
intelligence – as the citizens are not breaking any laws and are practicing
their First Amendment rights to speak out, assemble or disagree with government
policies.
Spying on citizens reached a breaking point in Memphis,
where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in March 1968, in the mid-1970s,
and the result was a consent decree propounded upon the Memphis police
department by the Department of Justice.The DOJ order essentially said, do not abridge citizens’ First Amendment
rights, and it focused on gathering political intelligence on citizens. ‘Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?’
“Who Will Watch the Watchers?” and variations of that question are usually traced to Roman satirist Juvenal, who wrote in Latin: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” Quite a kidder, that Juvenal, who was poking fun at the “rulers” who had guards watch their women to protect them from harm or seductions from other men. However, it’s a fair question, Who is protecting the women from the guards themselves?
Some have joked that they wished they had made the Memphis police A-List as something of a badge of honor.
“It’s not funny. There’s nothing good or fun about being on this list,” said one of the lawsuit plaintiffs. "At first I was amused," said minister and grandmother Elaine Blanchard (video below), who was one of the four plaintiffs. "Then it became increasingly less funny and more concerning and frightening."
Freedom Rider Patton concludes the documentary Who Will
Watch the Watchers? with these words:
“It is each and every one of us who must watch the
watchers.”
Uniformed officers observe from about 120 feet while plainclothes officers watched citizens close-up
www.WatchTheWatchersChannel.com
Link to Political Surveillance Lawsuit against City of Memphis:
