I don’t need to tell anyone about the murder of George Floyd or about the protests and riots that have broken out around the country in response to his death. I will tell you that I have spent the last few days with an overwhelming sense of guilt for not being out there in the streets both as a photographer and someone gives a huge fuck about equality and systemic oppression. I have been going to protests for 25 years. My high school photo portfolio was just photos of punk bands and leftist protests. I needed to be out there and I needed to be sharing my images. 

Unfortunately the coronavirus is happening and I have spent the last 10 weeks inside my apartment not seeing any of my friends or family because I have horrible lungs and I don’t want to risk the lives of the elderly people in my building just because I want to go do things. I spent my 40th birthday on my couch. But after three days of seeing my friends out there and seeing journalists being attacked by police I just had to do my part. I just couldn’t justify sitting on my couch any longer. 

I got to Barclays Center in downtown Brooklyn right as the march was starting. We wrapped around the neighborhood for a while and everything was peaceful. I overheard a protester talking to a cop and he was telling her how bad he felt about Floyd. He and a number of other cops stuck to the outside of the crowd with cops on bikes directing traffic and keeping the crowd moving. As I mentioned I have been to a lot of protests in my life and it was well organized, very passive crowd control. As we returned to Barclays, however, there was a much larger police presence with cops in riot helmets trying to look intimidating. I saw one arrest but I didn’t see what happened leading up to it. I did take a billy club to the ribs trying to photograph it. It wasn’t hard and just meant to keep me from getting closer, but it’s the kinda shit that is totally unnecessary. 

After that the protest was still peaceful up until it reached the Manhattan Bridge. I wasn’t at the front so I am not exactly sure what happened but their was almost an altercation. I don’t know if police were trying to stop people from reaching the bridge but if that was their goal they failed miserably. I will say that both the police and the protesters managed to deescalate the situation well and I actually saw a cop hand a protester their sign back after it was dropped in the brief shoving. 

Moments later another protester was arrested, and again I missed what happened, but they seemed to really be going to work on him under a pile of cop bodies. Other cops stood in front of the photographers intentionally blocking our cameras. You’d think if they weren’t using excessive force they wouldn’t mind if we were documenting, given that it is the duty of the free press, but what do I know?

Protesters took over the entire Manhattan bound side of the Manhattan Bridge and half the Brooklyn bound side. I was on the Brooklyn bound side so I got to watch all the cars pass and nearly every one of them was honking in support, some stopping on the bridge to take photos and cheer people on. The sun was setting and it was so god damn joyful on that bridge. Despite the anger and the pain there are still these wonderful moments when you are taking part in activism. When the two sides of the bridge merged I saw two friends run into each other and just jump into each other’s arms in the middle of everything and it was just another amazing moment.

Things got a lot darker once we reached the city, both metaphorically and literally. It was night now and the city cops were way more aggressive. Everything was completely peaceful until we reached the big post office building in Chinatown. The crowd was chanting “let them go” when I got there so I assume someone else had been arrested. I noticed cops had started coming from all sides surrounding everyone. Keep in mind that before this moment the only “crimes” I had seen were jaywalking and I saw one person spray painting the bridge. It was completely peaceful. 

The protesters walked to meet a police line that had formed and I got right in between the two factions. The protesters had their hands up, chanting, about 10 feet from the police. An ambulance appeared and both lines separated to let the ambulance through. Moments later I noticed some police talking and it seemed like they were plotting something so I got out my phone to record some more video. Before I could even hit play they rushed the crowd trampling people, knocking over a bike and arresting at least one person. Apologists on Twitter seem to think someone through something but I certainly didn’t see anything. It seemed coordinated. The video I published of the attack as 2 million views as of this post. 

From there shit started to get ugly. The crowd got split up a bit and I saw people running north so I went that way. When I saw why people were running it was because a couple of people tried to break into Balenciaga. The other protesters stopped them. Someone had a damn fire extinguisher and hit them with it and then other protesters gathered in front of the store. As we went north a liquor store and a bank both had their windows smashed as well but the people who were causing the damage were being stopped by everyone else. I heard from friends still out that people returned to SoHo to loot, but none of this happened until the cops turned a completely peaceful demonstration into chaos. 

When we got to 11th street and Broadway police were waiting for us. They blocked the crowd and told people to disperse. It was the first time cops had told anyone to leave. Much of the crowd took a knee at that point or had their hands up. I was on the side of 11th street and I saw one of the cops who seemed to be in charge walk down the street so I followed him to see if there was another group of cops coming. I got about halfway down the block when I decided to go back to the crowd and all of a sudden people just started running. I didn’t know what was happening so I just took off with them, firing off blurry photos behind me. At some point I turned around and cops were just sort of pushing people down the block but didn’t look like any huge thing. I saw later on that a cop had pulled out a gun around that time on 12th street and people took off running so I think that might have been what caused the commotion. 

At that point I was spread out from the crowd that had been spread in different directions. I could have tried to meet up with people again but my feet were killing me after walking all day after not walking anywhere in months and I was right by the subway so I just went home. It was probably for the best because my feet were bleeding when I got home and I have about a dozen blisters and am just limping around my apartment today. Maybe I shouldn’t have worn combat boots after not wearing them since winter. Whoops. 

Okay so that’s my write up of the night. I tried to talk about the events as unbiasedly as I possibly could, but obviously I am biased. We have set up a system of oppression in the United States that started with slavery and ended with black people being put in prison in much higher rates as anyone else. We went from slavery to reconstruction to Jim Crow to a Civil Rights movement that got the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964. My parents were born in 1947. They grew up in segregation which means any black person my age had parents who were legally subjected to worse education, worse housing and worse treatment because of the color of their skin. That means they had less money, lived in worse neighborhoods which means they had access to worse education just like their parents. How do you expect an entire group of people to recover from something that horrific in one or two generations?  So much needs to change in this country but it should start with our police and criminal justice system. Black lives matter.

Click here to see all my photos from last night’s protest for the murder of George Floyd.

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