Poor Representation of Liberty: Catherine Bleish Case

The pur­suit of polit­i­cal lib­erty is dif­fi­cult; the pur­suit of lib­erty is made dou­bly dif­fi­cult when the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the bat­tle are irre­spon­si­ble. The cur­rently pro­cess­ing case of Catherine Bleish is an excel­lent exam­ple of irre­spon­si­ble behav­ior that is a) pre­sented as being rep­re­sen­ta­tive of lib­erty and lib­erty activists and b) defended by fool­ish, unthink­ingly loyal activists. Such behav­ior harms the cause of liberty.

Miss Bleish is from my home­town, Kansas City, and is now based in my home State, Texas. She recently par­tic­i­pated in an activism activ­ity sup­port­ing the decrim­i­nal­iza­tion of mar­i­juana — a cause I, too, sup­port. A man par­tic­i­pat­ing in the protest was arrested by under­cover police offi­cers. The activists, includ­ing Bleish, expressed ver­bally their oppo­si­tion to the arrest. Ultimately, Bleish was also arrested… for dis­or­derly con­duct. She is request­ing that con­cerned indi­vid­u­als call the police depart­ment involved and “demand” that the charges be dropped. She argues that her behav­ior was not dis­or­derly. She argues that all activist-participants were behav­ing nonviolently.

I dis­agree.

Thankfully, Bleish was record­ing with her hand­held cam­era. Also thank­fully, the record­ing sur­vived the process. The video is embed­ded below. My impres­sions of the sit­u­a­tion are taken entirely from her blog and her video. I have delib­er­ately not read any exter­nal argu­ments on the sub­ject. I’ll announce my bias right now: I began watch­ing her video pre­pared to be angered at inap­pro­pri­ate police behav­ior and was excited to see a young lib­erty activist in my home area. I found Bleish and her story via Facebook mutual friends. I entered the story pre­dis­posed to sup­port her. I watched her evi­dence and whole­heart­edly dis­agree with her story and her behavior.

What hap­pened in that video? Here is a basic outline:

• Man arrested for behav­ior that occurred prior to start of record­ing (there­fore unknown cir­cum­stances to me).
• Crowd and Bleish kept rea­son­able space while ver­bally protesting.
• Police escorted arrested man to their vehicle.
• Bleish and some crowd mem­bers fol­lowed very closely.
• Arrested man was placed in the vehi­cle. Crowd is very vocal, and some activists used rude words to express themselves.
• Bleish par­tially entered the police vehi­cle with at least her hand, arm, and cam­era, and prob­a­bly her head and one shoulder.
• Bleish remained very phys­i­cally close to the vehi­cle and the offi­cer to whom it belonged, tem­porar­ily block­ing the officer’s access to his vehicle.
• Bleish repeat­edly made extremely per­sonal com­ments to the offi­cer, includ­ing: “Do you have chil­dren? They’re gonna smoke pot some­day. You’ve prob­a­bly smoked pot before.” Her vol­ume increased and she began yelling at the offi­cer within his per­sonal space: “Do you have chil­dren? Do you have chil­dren? Do you have chil­dren? […] Your chil­dren will smoke pot some­day! Do you want them in a cage?” Sections of these phrases were repeated, and Bleish’s tone increased in vol­ume and strength.
• After hav­ing par­tially entered his vehi­cle, the offi­cer exited the vehi­cle and walked past Bleish in order to com­mu­ni­cate with the small group of activists block­ing the vehi­cle from dri­ving forward.
• The activists refused to move. The offi­cer restrained one of them.
• Bleish phys­i­cally stood over the restrained activist and the police offi­cer while the offi­cer hand­cuffed the activist.
• The group of activists sur­rounded the offi­cer and the restrained activist.
• The offi­cer and the restrained activist moved behind the car and away from the large group.
• Bleish fol­lowed them. She got so extra­or­di­nar­ily into the officer’s per­sonal space that at one point the cam­era almost made con­tact with the officer’s cap. She was within inches of him for an extended period of time while yelling at him and mak­ing per­sonal remarks about his poten­tial behav­ior with his children.
• Another offi­cer demands that Bleish and the oth­ers leave the offi­cers’ per­sonal space. Bleish refuses and she and the group con­tinue to ver­bally harass the officers.
• Bleish was restrained.

Bleish and oth­ers declared at sev­eral points in the process that their activ­i­ties were com­pletely non-violent, but that is not true. Their inva­sion of indi­vid­u­als’ per­sonal space while scream­ing per­sonal ver­bal attacks and accu­sa­tions is a form of vio­lent activ­ity. They were using their bod­ies to limit the activ­i­ties of the police offi­cers. That is text­book dis­or­derly con­duct and inter­fer­ence with police activ­ity. It just is.

I have expe­ri­enced another per­son using his body to restrain my move­ment; I have expe­ri­enced it when phys­i­cal con­duct was made and when no phys­i­cal con­duct existed. Both types of sit­u­a­tions were a form of vio­lence. Neither type of sit­u­a­tion was peace­ful. That is what Bleish did: she ini­ti­ated force by using her body to limit another person’s spa­cial free­dom. In this case, that person(s) was a police offi­cer. A police offi­cer must be allowed to pre­serve his or her per­sonal space because a police offi­cer, by nature of the posi­tion, is under con­stant addi­tional threat. Any individual’s per­sonal space deserves respect because that space is a part of one’s phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal self. Bleish vio­lated that principle.

What should Bleish have done instead?

• Granted the offi­cers and their vehi­cle the same degree of space she would expect the offi­cers to grant her.
• She was right to get the arrested man’s name ; she was not jus­ti­fied in enter­ing another person’s vehi­cle to get that name.
• She should have politely asked to com­mu­ni­cate with one of the offi­cers in order to get infor­ma­tion regard­ing their des­ti­na­tion and ask per­mis­sion to ask the arrested man’s name (had she not been able to hear his name from a polite distance).
• Refrained from all per­sonal remarks. The offi­cer was doing his job — whether one dis­agrees with that job or not, his behav­ior was pro­fes­sional and polite dur­ing all points of Bleish’s record­ing. She owed the same degree of polite pro­fes­sion­al­ism to him.
• She was right to record the entire process.
• Had she not engaged in inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior lead­ing to her arrest, she should have fol­lowed the police vehi­cle in a non-threatening man­ner in order to be at the sta­tion to offer assis­tance to the arrested man when the time came.
• She should have observed the behav­ior of the arrested man. He was rel­a­tively calm, he was gen­uinely non-violent, and he appeared slightly embar­rassed by her behav­ior (although he appeared grate­ful for the chance to state his name).

Bottom-line: peo­ple pull these stu­pid stunts. They are thought­less. They are emo­tional. They are raw. They are irre­spon­si­ble. They are done in the name of lib­erty! This is not mature civil protest or civil dis­obe­di­ence and this is not rea­soned rev­o­lu­tion. This is hyp­o­crit­i­cal idiocy that hurts the cause of lib­erty. Shame on you, Miss Bleish.

I rec­og­nize the emo­tions that get riled up in these sit­u­a­tions. I’ve been shoved into an unmarked military-police vehi­cle by non-uniformed offi­cers in a coun­try that does not have rea­son­able pro­tec­tions and/or respect for per­sonal and civil lib­er­ties. One feels anger, frus­tra­tion, and help­less­ness. One is con­scious of being abused. At one point I let my vocal tone and my body lan­guage express these feel­ings, and at other times I was mature and self-restrained. I know.

I know that the United States cit­i­zens on U.S. soil still have the best sta­tus of lib­erty of all the peo­ple in the world. I know that we are des­per­ately close to los­ing that sta­tus, and I know that we must cher­ish, nur­ture, and defend that sta­tus. The preser­va­tion and reestab­lish­ment of our lib­er­ties requires that we behave in such a way that demon­strates that we respect our­selves and oth­ers. Bleish and her com­pan­ions failed in that respect. Their moti­va­tions and extra­or­di­nar­ily height­ened emo­tions pro­vide con­texts for their behav­ior. Our response as a com­mu­nity of activists should be three-fold. We should rec­og­nize that their behav­ior was absolutely inap­pro­pri­ate. We should train and strengthen our­selves to respond bet­ter should we find our­selves in sim­i­larly dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances. We should find a bal­ance between help­ing Bleish, et al., refind their foot­ing and not allow­ing such cases to cast an ugly shadow across the shin­ing light of Liberty.