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As someone that's never been to an organised protest, I decided I was tired of being uninformed on the topics making me so angry in the world. So yesterday I took my camera to the #DenverProtest. And if my boss is looking at this thread (1/ )
I brought two pairs of gloves, wore a mask, and social distanced as much as humanly possible. And that mindset probably gave me a different perspective than a lot of other people. Anyways, I'll try to keep my opinions off the captions. No one needs my bias. (2/ )
(Also, if you're in one of these photos and want me to blur you, please message me and I will). Anyways here's what the capitol looked like as I rolled in at about... 3pm maybe? (3/ )
Then chants of "No Justice No Peace", "George Floyd", etc came down the street. That's when I hopped to the edge of the protest (again, I tried to be conscious of my social distancing). And even though traffic was hindered, the cars were all honking in solidarity (4/ )
The protest ended back up at the capitol. And remained fairly peaceful, cordial, for a while. In fact, a few protestors even went into the "police area" across the street to talk to the police. Neither party escalated during the conversation (5/ )
Unfortunately, or fortunately, I captured the moment the protest turned confrontational (from my vantage point at least). It took less than 10 minutes for the protestors to surround the officers across the street. I'll upload that at the end since it's a video. (6/ )
After maybe 10-15 mins, I heard a bang and tear gas was deployed. The crowd scattered and the police moved their line to the streets. (7/ )
And that's how it remained. Fortunately, I was in an area where people weren't throwing shit at the cops (thanks to some of the protestors yelling for people not to). Only one person got shot at in the area. I hope he's ok. (8/ )
But I noticed a lot more dialogue going on here too between cops and protestors. A lot of dialogue. Whereas on the other side of the protest, there was a lot of tear gas, percussive grenades, rocks, and water bottles being thrown. So I stayed over here (9/ )
Also, props to the protestors for allowing ambulances to always have an unhindered path through. (10/ )
I decided to walk to the capitol. And then got harassed by protestors for taking photos of the cops. Not that I need to explain, but I figured a photo of police protecting government property instead of civilians was quite powerful. But some protestors didn't let me get it (11/ )
I thought that was a bit odd. It was only a small minority, but up until that point I had no problems taking my photos. Fortunately I'm not a photojournalist, just someone looking to be informed. So I just went back to the other area until curfew (12/ )
Anyways, I have a bunch of photos to go through. I saw a lot of dialogue happening. I saw a lot of aggression happening. But to bring my bias in now, I thought it was a lot more encouraging when the peaceful dialogues were going on. A lot more encouraging (13/ )
I posted the one video of the cop and protestors talking. I'll try to upload the ~10 minute long video of the protest getting confrontational. And if I can't, I'll cut down the length.
Here's an uncut chunk from the 10 minute thing.
