Yet another camera with a photographer and a blog

I should be working right now – but I can’t get my head out of last night and everything surrounding the shooting of Oscar Grant III. (Quick updates for those not in the area – the officer who shot and killed him has yet to appear for questioning/investigation, instead sending his lawyer to hand in his resignation. The mayor of oakland is turning the investigation over to either Oakland PD or the state police as a homicide investigation).

My thoughts are all over the place. On the one hand – there’s the shooting itself. How do these things happen? How often do they happen that we never hear about them, because there doesn’t happen to be someone (or multiple someones) around with cameras? How often are they justifiable, how often are they mistakes, how often are they outright acts of hatred?

Then there’s the media response. I watched two sets of news reports and a live, unedited helicopter video feed last night about what went down in oakland after the rally I shot. On one, the focus was on the leading of the majority of protesters down to city hall by the Oakland mayor, how the crowd was reacting to what he said, etc… They also covered the vandalism, but making it very clear that it was a subset (5-10%, if even?) of the larger volume of people in downtown oakland. Watching that and the helicopter feed, you could see that the bulk of the crowd was in one isolated area, and small pockets of people here and there.

To hear another channel report it though, all of the protestors turned ‘violent’, all of downtown oakland was burning and being vandalized. The broad brush that they were painting with was almost sickening to watch. Of course, which set of reports gets the national coverage? So now, the rest of the country believes that all of Oakland is made up of people who have no restraint, who respond to an act of violence with more violence (because, you know, shooting an unarmed, prone man in the back is really quite comparable to setting a dumpster and a couple of cars on fire). So they can go back to watching their House, their CSI, their Desperate Housewives, safe and comfortable in the belief that the ‘rampant rioting’ merely proves that the guy who got shot likely deserved it anyway.

The wider reporting always seems to leave out the smaller details, though. They leave out that this man was a new father. They leave out that he was a butcher at a community supermarket. I wonder how many of these stories i’ve read over the years where those details never even occur to me – and I can’t shake the feeling that the fact that this man was my butcher, that this was the man who selected and sold me my steaks for christmas dinner, that his was a face i had seen and a voice I had heard, that these are the reasons why I’m reacting to this story. Maybe it is.

I’m torn – I almost went to cover a protest/rally at Bart HQ this morning, didn’t for a variety of reasons. Yulia asked me last night why i wanted to go. Part of me wants to go because i’m angry about what happens – and want to be a body added to the mass. Part of me wants to go because I will be shooting it, and i feel it is important to follow, document, and share (even though dozens of others will be doing the same thing). Part of me wants to go out of some hope that maybe, this time, things will change – and to be a witness to that?

I honestly don’t know what I would do if things turned while I was in the middle of it. Continue shooting (probably)? Run and hide (not inconceivable)? Pick up a bottle (doubtful)? I know enough about the psychology of mob mentality to know how easy it is for people to get caught up in the moment. Maybe that’s one reason why I want to be shooting something like this. Yulia called it being outside of things – and maybe on some level it is, but I wonder if the anchor of shooting, and the perceived responsibility I’ve attached to it would keep my head level in a ‘situation’.

My thoughts are definitely not finished on this. Somehow, I don’t think my involvement is, either. There is not a simple solution. This is not a simple situation. This is not a simple environment. The cause and effect are not going to fit into 30 second soundbites on the evening news. Everytime something like this happens, a chorus of voices rise up, briefly, saying things need to change on a fundamental level. If those voices are lucky, they get a few seconds of the 30 second soundbites – for a day, or two, if even. Then, nothing changes. Things stay the same. Until the next time, and the next time, and the next time. And yet, people still wonder why there’s so much anger.

~ by focalintent on January 8, 2009.

Posted in news
Tags: bart, oakland, oscar grant iii, protest, questions, rally, rant, riot, shooting