Story time.
I filmed the Trump inauguration, in particular a team of us split up and covered the various groups participating in “Disrupt J20.”
Each of us followed a different “group” - someone hung with the LGBT focused protestors, another with indigenous peoples, etc. I hung out with…let’s say the tough and rowdy folks (I’m a white dude who had made a very convincing laminated press pass. My work was legitimate but we didn’t have formal credentials in time for this coverage so we sort of landed on a grey area tactic on that front). “Black bloc” is what they settled on for their own little banner of sorts. Lots of covered faces.
It was an exciting but generally not dangerous day. DC police are actually pretty good at de-escalating/handling situations that are escalating with a pretty firm but not power tripping response. I do not like giving any police credit, but I can tell you firsthand that they were not going to make the situation worse. At least not anything I saw. This is not an endorsement other than to say they clearly had experience and common sense from what we saw in the specific matter of handling massive organized protests. I only say this because I’ll always give credit where credit is due and more you’ll see later.
I filmed folks break windows of BofA, a trash can was thrown and lit on fire, it got rowdy but even so it sort of capped itself off. The group self regulated and it never got truly violent.
All of this is to say that there was one moment where I truly felt concerned for my life. NRA TV showed up. These guys were cosplaying like they were walking straight out of Kabul, it was insane. Then a bunch of MAGA-hat wearing folks came up to me while I was filming an interview encircled me. The interviewee was a black woman who clearly was becoming increasingly uncomfortable and pushed away out of the circle. Before I could step away, one of them grabbed my shoulder and screamed “fuck you fake news!” and pushed me. I immediately threw my hands up and said “do not fucking touch me I am a member of the press” and one of them shouted “you’ll get what you deserve race traitor.” At this point (callback to the top of this comment) a DC police officer started walking over and clearly looked concerned. He looked at me and I nodded and he moved a little faster. This is not bullshit, it happened.
I am relieved to say they all walked off quickly and left me alone after that. But it was the first time in my life I ever felt like my line of work was dangerous. After my first kid was born I stopped covering protests, I’m sad to say.
**