Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.

 

29 August 2014

Democrats should fire Andrea Marcoccio

Updated. Why? For deliberately, and apparently joyfully, interviewing with the First Amendment rights of America Rising video tracker Brian O’Leary. Here’s the Missoulian’s account:

At the event, she faced a wall of video cameras and smattering of students and other audience members, and she spoke over a quiet but persistent video battle that played out right in front of her.

Brian O’Leary, with America Rising, continually adjusted and lifted a camera to try to film Curtis, and Andrea Marcoccio, head of the Montana Democratic Party, squared off with him step for step, pushing up a posterboard to try to block the conservative political action videographer from taking footage.

A spur of the moment decision to harass? I doubt it. Much more likely she was deliberately sending a signal to other Democrats that thuggish conduct toward video trackers has the approval of the mightiest of the mighty in the Montana Democratic Party. “Get in his face, and stay in his face;” that was her message.

That wasn’t the first time a Democrat got between Curtis and O’Leary. On 17 August, Missoula city council member Jason Wiener, after first removing his name tag, interposed himself between Curtis and O’Leary, and not in a friendly way.

And on 26 July, when John Walsh was still the Democrats’ candidate for the U.S. Senate, at a gathering for Walsh in Helena, the video tracker got flipped the bird by one Chuck Butler, who once worked for Republican Governor Judy Martz.

Montana’s Democrats are outraged that America Rising is video tracking Democrats, especially Amanda Curtis who apparently is not considered strong enough to handle it with a wave, a smile, and a “Hi, Brian!” Nor do they trust Curtis to deliver the anodyne generalities that Montana’s Democratic leaders believe must be employed to blur how Democrats differ from Republicans. So they’re playing a mean-spirited, high school level game of Block the Lens. And they’re enjoying their lowdown behavior.

Curtis is not the only politician being video tracked. There are progressive video trackers training their cameras on Ryan Zinke and Steve Daines at every opportunity. After I posted my comments on the Butler and Wiener incidents, I heard from more than one source that Zinke’s campaign has been less than friendly toward the young man tracking Zinke, and that the manners of someone very close to Zinke would cause Emily Post to faint. Quite possibly true, but I’ll need to see the video to confirm it.

Perhaps Democrats are saying nothing about the travails of the person tracking Zinke because if they complain about what the Republicans are doing to progressive trackers, they’ll look like hypocrits when they get in the face of the person tracking Amanda Curtis.

Video trackers have rights — legal & human

It’s going to come to a shock to political partisans, but video trackers have rights — legal rights and human rights. People at public events in public places have no expectation of privacy and no right not to be photographed. Photographers and video trackers have the right to take photographs and shoot video, and getting in their faces and interfering with their work is assault in addition to being lowdown behavior that once would have been associated with the thugs who were enforcers for Dave Beck and Jimmy Hoffa.

Trackers are also human beings with human rights, one of which is the right to be treated with dignity. Andrea Marcoccio violated Brian O’Leary’s human rights in addition to interfering with his legal rights to shoot video. Her behavior was cheap, thuggish, unprofessional, and a tremendous embarrassment for Montana’s Democratic Party. If she doesn’t resign, she should be fired. If she’s allowed to stay on the job — even worse if Democrats gleefully applaud her conduct — Democrats will regret the opprobrium that will attend rewarding her misconduct.

I don’t care whether video trackers work for Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, or Green Martian Socialists. They’re human beings doing their jobs. Their human and legal rights must be honored by all targets of their cameras.