ICYMI earlier, a pretty long thread about private acts in public spaces. Turns out we all agree that they exist, and that there are circumstances in which journalists should back off from covering them.
I intentionally stayed (mostly) away from antifa-specific examples in the above thread, because my purpose was to make the case in principle that private acts can exist in public spaces, not to specify which should make the cut.
But the grieving parent example can be pretty easily extrapolated to vigils and commemorations more generally, and the examples of private conversations have potential application to organizing work.
And of course the example of a person fleeing an abusive spouse can be analogized to people fearing other kinds of persecution and harassment.
These kinds of examples are clearly going to be more contentious than those in the original thread, but they deserve to be taken seriously even by skeptics, I think, not least because activists often sincerely believe them to be worthy.
If I say "there's no such thing as a private act in a public space," I'm likely to behave aggressively toward someone who tries to claim such privacy. "I don't see that particular act as one that should be treated as private" leads to a very different conversation.
I personally don't think all requests for privacy in public spaces should be automatically acceded to, but they shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, either.
