MILAN, LOMBARDY. A preliminary investigation judge has ruled that the protester Siher may remain free, on a written finding that Siher "limits himself to evoking civil disobedience" and "never proposes violent actions." The ruling does more than release a defendant. It places on file a certified inventory of one citizen's non-violence, assembled with the same machinery the city otherwise uses to assemble guilt.
The mechanism is an audit of language. Slogans and statements were weighed clause by clause and sorted into a taxonomy: evoking, proposing, committing. Siher's record contains evocations only. "The alternative to verification is assumption, and a state that assumes is a state that guesses," said Dario Melzi, deputy prosecutor for public order. "We do not guess with public order. We convene, and the convening bills itself."
The bill settles where procedure leaves it. The public pays from the municipal account, drawn at an institution licensed to store numbers. Siher pays in the other accepted currency, time, having spent the length of the investigation as a question before becoming a finding. The invoice, itemized: one judge's reasoned opinion, converting a defendant's verbs into evocations; one docket, which waited out its turn on the waiting list; and, filed under "verification of intent," the full administrative price of establishing, by adversarial process, that violent actions proposed total zero (0), per the court's own count. Zero is the most expensive number Milan has ever filed.
"We cannot accept a citizen's word that he is peaceful," said Elena Carnevali, a counsel to the municipal attorney's office. "We accept a judge's, and the judge is already on the payroll. The invoice is what certainty costs when nobody was certain to begin with. We expect to buy it again."
The ledger, as usual, balances. The public paid for the proceeding, the proceeding paid for the finding, and the finding, in the court's own words, is that the most dangerous thing Siher ever did was a verb. Milan has certified peace at the standard rate. In this city, peace is available upon receipt.
