Talking to students about covering uprisings, my advice was: The direction of a protest is bigger than an individual or group—except the police who can literally decide to make it violent—and it’s wise to see it, as a reporter, like the weather: it is happening to a place, to you

I say that because reporters, especially ones who lack the context and knowledge of direct action, immediately want to control it—and make all kinds of value judgments they otherwise pretend they are above or would “never” do

A nationwide uprising which very early on set the precedent of not only property damage but violence—in response to state violence for sure—can’t be walked back if you kvetch enough about who should be doing what at it or if we just cover people marching with signs. It can’t.

To not see this as a culmination of six especially intense years of protest against police violence and three years of protests against Trump b\\w lack of gov’t response to COVID that left people with nothing and a legitimate sense that the state will let them die is wild to me.

The state has given a lot of different kinds of people a lot of different reasons to be really angry and lots of experience protesting (which also gets you real familiar with the limits of nonviolence!) so of course it is going to be messy and fraught and complicated.

But corporate media and liberal scold commentators still wanna see it as just more protest and only know how to cover it and bloviate about it as protest so their analysis is useless.

It seems that it’s only now that they can finally see “hey maybe policing is hopelessly fucked” which means they are where (again just using the past six years; of course this has been obvious to black ppl for decades) the people protesting were in 2014.

This is really only advice for journalists—young, engaged ones I’ve talked to who are often interested in it because of the climate of the past 6 or so years. Maybe others can take something from it but for reporters: understand the moment for what it is not what you wish it was.

This will help you cover it better and understand it better and will make it easier to not panic when your class interests suddenly don’t align with folks you’re covering and you feel an impulse to “well actually” them or decide what they’re doing is not “legitimate” or whatever

Also watch this until its message about reporting is branded on your brain