Thread by @FordFischer

Tonight I filmed in the "Black House Autonomous Zone" or "#BHAZ," the protest area near the White House.

There was no violence, but one interesting incident: A conservative guy trying to preach religion was there, and got yelled and followed away.

When protesters drove the evictee near the end of the BHAZ, police stepped in to escort him away themselves.

"If a cop killed your kid, how you gonna feel?" a protester asked an African-American police officer, who offered no reply.

He repeated the question before saying, "that's how we feel right now."

#BlackLivesMatter

Ty Hobson-Powell of @concernedofdc said that, "We're here begging for a new America. We're begging for one that serves all of us."

Hobson-Powell's speech was 20 minutes long, so I want to be clear that the previous tweet isn't all of it. (It'd take 10 tweets to fit it all)

Watch everything I filmed in the livestream below. His speech begins an hour in.

https://twitter.com/FordFischer/status/1275953872599543808

"We're not here for violence," explained one participant. "We're here responding to unaccounted violence that has happened for decades since this country has been formed."

He says media uses "bad apples" to make people afraid of movements.

(See livestream for full interview.)

"I don't like that people care more about property than about people's lives," one activist told me. She says it comes from a place of privilege that people are more concerned about riots than the the killings that lead to them.

One more activist described the value she sees in holding physical space.

She describes how she witnessed a 9-year-old black boy give a heavy speech and say that "I can die now because I know that I made a difference."

Here is my HD summary of what I saw tonight in the #BHAZ. All footage, as usual, available for license.

Reminder that you can watch the livestream earlier in this thread for the complete context of every moment in this video.