A week or two ago, somebody set fire to a “radical bookstore” in Houston. Arson is a vicious crime, and this particular incident is made vastly worse because there were people in there.
They were fine, but evidently the line of questioning taken by the arson investigators has upset the victims. From the Houston Chronicle:
Dazed after being roused from a sound sleep, scrambling frantically to save as much as possible from the flames and breathing in lots of smoke, Browning said, he was shocked when arson investigators for the Houston Fire Department became verbally aggressive, calling him and Edgell “anti-American” and “anti-federal government.”
The scene happened Feb. 26 at Sedition Books, a politically radical “information shop” opened last year by a cooperative and stationed in an old wood-frame building at 4420 Washington, a site surrounded by new townhomes and other trendy developments.
Folks, if you’re running a bookstore/meeting place that distributes literature about / promotes anarchy, it stands to reason that your politics are pretty danged relevant to an arson investigation.
“He asked me what my political stance was. I said, ‘I’m an anarchist.’ He said, ‘Oh? You don’t like the federal government much, do you?”
That would be a “duh”.
There are some glaring ironies here. Assuming the fire to have been set by someone upset about the store’s politics, for instance, then the very act of setting the fire was an anarchic. Likewise, the anarchist bookstore operators — who advocate society without government — must be pretty discouraged to have had to call upon a governmental entity for help.
Aside from describing oneself as an anarchist, though, it really would have been difficult for the arson investigators to have missed the radical nature of the store, given its name: Sedition Bookstore.
Sedition, from Merriam Webster onine:
incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority
And from the controversial but often-helpful Wikipedia:
Sedition is a term of law to refer to covert conduct such as speech and organization that is deemed by the legal authority as tending toward insurrection against the established order.
In fact, the bookstore has a myspace site, and on the profile page, the stated “occupation” is… wait for it…. sedition.
Gee. I wonder why the Fire Department might have thought their politics were relevant to an arson investigation?
Let’s see… radical anarchists, complaining about “The Man” harassing them.
Nope, doesn’t surprise me one bit.
~EdT.
It’s one thing for investigators to ask about their politics (since they probably were relevant to the crime) but it’s entirely inappropriate for them to critique them. You need to put some context around the word “sedition,” as it’s a charge that’s often been used to quash dissent. The British Sedition Act was one of the things that led to the American Revolution; it’s easy to see why someone would pick it as the name of a radical bookstore. “What did you expect?” is awfully close to “You deserved it,” and if the store owners’ description of the investigators’ comments are accurate, they have every right to be upset about it.
True… but, given their leanings, it doesn’t surprise me that they would be upset.
What is more telling, IMHO, is the fact that they chose not to file a formal complaint.
~EdT.