Big media pick up #PeterWatts border arrest (update 2)
With over 200 news articles now appearing in Google search results, it appears that there was broad pickup of last night's AP story, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and NYC's flagship newsradio station, WINS. Canadian news orgs include the Toronto Star, which has a beefier piece, with the Globe and Mail and Edmonton Sun just running the squib.
Over in the blogosphere, there is still an order of magnitude more coverage, with 6,000 results coming back in a Google search. BoingBoing broke the story, with Cory Doctorow helping to mobilize support for the jailed writer, and major sf blogs Making Light, io9, SFSignal, and John Scalzi's Whatever providing strong leading coverage.
Among sf writers, fellow Torontonians David Nickle is leading efforts to raise awareness and support, and Robert Ashby, husband of the brilliant Madeline Ashby takes the opportunity to dissect the power relationships (Best line: "Since when did “at least I didn’t get strip-searched and beaten” become our standard of service?"). There are great screeds from Elizabeth Bear, Will Shetterly, and Tobias Buckell.
Of course, you can read Watts' own account here. And here's a link to donate to his legal defense fund (still named in honor of one of the feral cats he rescues from the streets of Toronto.)
Update: UPI moved the story Sunday afternoon. Toronto's sf Examiner posted a nice wrap that I love for its hed: "America once again safe from Canadian dystopian novelists." Long discussion thread at the local paper closest to the action, the TimesHerald. Globe and Mail has a writethru. And there's an update from Watts on his blog from this morning.
Update 2: A followup story quoting fellow Toronto writer and friend David Nickle has been getting quite a bit of secondary pickup.
Correction: Fixed attribution of quote from Madeline Ashby's blog
Full disclosure: Peter is a friend and colleague.
Comments
PixelFish
Sun, 12/13/2009 - 4:11pm
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Save the Squid
I've been tweeting and posting to FB since I found out on Friday morning. Once my freelance cheque goes through, Monday morning hopefully, I'll be donating as well.
I think the hard part for me is when I try to explain this to other people, and they say something to the effect of "But maybe he did X." Or they point that he got out of the car. (Incidentally, I have had my car searched at the border, and they ASKED me to get out of the vehicle, partly so they could make sure that I wasn't interfering with the search. It's even odds as to whether I would stay put or get out based on my last car-searching.)
Mostly my border crossings are uneventful, but often filled with Madeline notes correctly as unnecessary dickishness. I've had Madeline's experience with having the wrong paperwork entering the country. And you were probably there for the conversation with Peter where Mike and I were telling him some of our border crossing experiences.
BTW, I have had some lovely border guards too, who were smooth and professional and welcoming (on both sides of the border). I totally have sympathy for them doing their jobs. But there's got to be better oversight and training if stuff like this happens as regularly as it seems to. I see this all the time on Boing Boing--it's just the first time something of this magnitude has happened to somebody I can call friend.
...she sings from somewhere you can't see...
John McDaid
Sun, 12/13/2009 - 5:20pm
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Learned helplessness
Hi, PixelFish...
I'm about as clean as they come -- I never buy anything in Canada except a few souvenirs for Jack -- and I still get totally freaked out crossing that border. As you know, I've been going to Toronto since 2002, and my perception is that it has gotten worse in the last few years. This summer, on the way back, American customs searched my trunk. I just sat very still with my hands on the wheel. Nothing to hide, I kept telling myself. But the mind races.
I've been through checkpoints in a dozen countries — including China and South Korea — and phenomenologically, this border is the worst. Maybe it's the difference between coming in on an aircraft, where they know you've been through a magnetometer. Maybe it's because you're inside a big steel cocoon filled with nooks and crannies. But there always feels like a little extra edge.
I try to hold my head very still, not break eye contact while answering, and say only the minimum number of syllables required. It would never occur to me to get out of the car or ask a question.
I'm innocent, and afraid of my own government. What does that say?
Best,
-j