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As someone that& #39;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& #39;ll try to keep my opinions off the captions. No one needs my bias. (2/ )
(Also, if you& #39;re in one of these photos and want me to blur you, please message me and I will). Anyways here& #39;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& #39;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& #39;ll upload that at the end since it& #39;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& #39;s how it remained. Fortunately, I was in an area where people weren& #39;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& #39;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& #39;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& #39;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& #39;ll try to upload the ~10 minute long video of the protest getting confrontational. And if I can& #39;t, I& #39;ll cut down the length.
Here& #39;s an uncut chunk from the 10 minute thing.
