STREAMING REVOLUTION: PROTESTERS MAKE POINT WITH VIRAL CLIPS

Hundreds of protesters marched up Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue last week, their signs and chants demanding police reform captured from within their ranks by dozens of camera phones.

“This revolution won’t be televised!” shouted one protester. “It’s going to be streamed!”

Citizen footage has played a role in previous protest movements: Rodney King’s violent arrest in Los Angeles in 1991 was filmed by a man on his nearby balcony with a camcorder, and images posted to social media were crucial to the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street.

But the Black Lives Matter movement has been different. Bystander video sparked it, with cellphone-bearing citizens capturing the killings of Eric Garner, Alton Sterling, George Floyd, and others. While those high-profile clips showed the extremes of police brutality, the ubiquity of smartphones during nationwide protests in recent weeks has provided a window into protesters’ interactions with officers unimaginable to past generations of Americans.

Some of the weeks’ most jarring videos have been shot by traditional news media, like two Buffalo police officers shoving peace activist Martin Gugino. Many non-TV journalists have used the camera apps on their smartphones, too.

But for every encounter captured by reporters, dozens more have been uploaded to social media by protesters and onlookers themselves. Among the most notable: a Philadelphia police officer striking a Temple University student in the head and neck with a metal baton, and a New York City officer shoving a woman to the ground and cursing at her. Both officers are facing charges only after recordings filmed by citizens went viral.