The Revolution Should Not Be Televised
Can my photograph be a death sentence, too?
“I see that you’re a journalist,” said the person who approached me, the whiteness of their press pass glinting in the sun. It must have been the Canon Rebel T7i swinging from my neck. Was I a rebel? Given the number of police who’d swarmed the crowd gathered at the Stonewall Inn, demanding justice for black trans people killed by law enforcement, I could be considered one. That label was implied by the color of my skin. “Would you be interested in being interviewed…or your friend?” said the reporter.
As a journalist who loves political topics, I know there is an art of delicacy when covering protests. Quotes are hard to get. Most people often want to remain anonymous when supporting anything that could be deemed controversial. Activists fear that their message could be lost in translation. Yet, I did not trust this journalist to handle my story with care. I did not think that they would give a second thought to how the state was using every opportunity to criminalize black protestors.
“No, and be careful with that,” I said, referencing their camera and notepad. “You might kill someone.” Silence marked the end of that conversation. As they slunk back into the collective scream — “No justice, no peace!” — I wondered if I’d been dramatic. No, I reasoned, I wasn’t being dramatic.
I wasn’t being dramatic because six activists, tied to the 2014 protests in Ferguson over the murdering of unarmed teenager Michael Brown by a police officer, had died.
Deandre Joshua, a close friend of Dorian Johnson who had witnessed the killing of Brown, died at 20 years old in 2014. He was found shot in the head inside of a burning car, near the place of Brown’s death. Darren Seals, 29, a community advocate and co-founder of HandsUp United — an organization for black and brown liberation created in response to Brown’s death — was also found dead in 2016 with gunshot wounds inside of a blazing vehicle. The deaths of 23-year-old community organizer MarShawn McCarrel, 27-year-old protestor Edward Crawford Jr., and 24-year-old Danye Jones, son of Ferguson activist Melissa McKines, were all ruled as “suicide.” They died in 2016, 2017, and 2018 respectively. Jones was found hanging from a tree; his mother called his killing a lynching. An officer was fired after calling McCarrel’s death “a happy ending.” When speaking of Crawford’s death, his father told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,“I don’t believe it was a suicide,” noting his son’s good mood two days prior to his death. Bassem Masri, 31, was ruled to have died of a fentanyl overdose in 2018. Alarmingly, a month before his death, he tweeted in response to reports of Danye Jones’ death, “If they ever say I suicided myself it’s not true…If I get murdered I get murdered.”
Their deaths were spread over four years, leaving huge gaps in the patchwork of organizers, activists, and protestors involved in social justice related to the Ferguson protests. Beyond advocating against police brutality, the only thing these activists of color had in common was that they’d been captured by the camera’s gaze. Their visibility was a death sentence. Allegedly.
I could still be giving the pen, or the lens, too much power. That reporter only wanted to record my words. My name, however, would come after the quotations. Would that be a death sentence, too?
Gil Scott-Heron proclaimed fifty years ago at 125th Street and Lenox Avenue that, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” My first photograph of the resurgent #BlackLivesMatter movement was of people marching from 125th and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. I had made my way to them by the time they reached Madison Avenue, right by Central Park. In 2020, many people are trying to televise the revolution. Out of the people I’ve seen attempting to “televise” the protests, in the streets and in the media, very few were black.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has stated that it holds the authority to surveil people at the George Floyd protests. We were and are being watched. As cameras swept the perimeter of Christopher Park to capture the black trans and non-binary speakers and their allies in action, my palm often flew to my face to evade incriminating digital footprints. Right after, my right index finger would press the trigger of the camera to document the unfolding scene of unrest. I was taught by my parents that knowing one’s true history was a source of empowerment. As a photojournalist, documenting my history felt like a natural duty, yet each image felt like my subject’s obituary.
The guilt I carry found its salve in the reality that people were live streaming, filming, reporting, and photographing the protests already. The history that was unfolding was part of my narrative, and I could not miss the opportunity to tell our story. My storytelling would never sacrifice the safety of black people because I am black. I suspected, long before I was told, that I was being watched and targeted. Living while black under the auspices of white supremacy means that you are always being watched and targeted, meaning I would not be like the reporter who hawkishly pointed his camera at my friend. I decided I would take images of the scenes in front of me as though they were peripheral, avoiding any detail that made any particular person stand out. I compromised by “capturing” the feeling of what was happening around me, rather than features and faces. I promised myself that these images would never see the light of day if they couldn’t be disseminated safely.
After my first two protests, one of the many journalists I follow tweeted about an image scrubber tool used for things like erasing metadata and blurring faces. It made my need to document feel a little less unethical. But the media continues to fuel my worries, like when ABC7 Chicago recently aired a video of a black protestor walking down a line of armed white alt-right individuals, but only blurred the latter’s faces.
As instances of police brutality against members of the press are highlighted across the country, newsrooms may reconsider their role in aiding government surveillance tactics. However, many photojournalists take few, if any, measures to protect the communities that they document. One only needs to look at the latest photo coverage from the nation’s most popular newsrooms, like the Associated Press, to see black protestors’ identities carelessly exposed. A photo of Crawford Jr. at the Ferguson protest was included in the coverage by a St. Louis newsroom that won them a Pulitzer Prize. While the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s photography staff were awarded the highest honor of photojournalism, the Crawford family went through the unspeakable horror of losing a loved one to violence. If the press hopes to be the “Fourth Estate” that protects the civil liberties of the people, which people will they aim to protect? In the wake of such institutionalized, racialized, and televised violence, the press must examine what it means to report “with full transparency,” and its complicity in black death.
