Thread by @SophNar0747

This tweet marks the beginning of my Second Annual Minnesota Riot Spectacular™️ night four coverage. After all the beatings my body has taken, I just can’t keep myself away from my journalism. So I’m returning to the field. See ya in a couple hours.

https://twitter.com/SophNar0747/status/1382441878935654401

If you want to support my continued work, I have a few ways to do so:

https://twitter.com/sophnar0747/status/1382442322869198850

So far this week I’ve been tear gassed, pepper sprayed, hit by multiple projectiles, and I took the full brunt of a concussion grenade blast, what’s our predictions for tonight? I’m going to go with a helicopter falls out of the air and crushes me.

Smaller crowd still but many in black, clearly geared up for conflict. There’s now a dual layer fence, and more National guard vehicles.

It’s still light out. I imagine it’ll be an hour until anything happens although I feel it may be more subdued tonight. We shall see

Smaller police presence too. More guard than anything, and they don’t shoot projectiles at the crowd that I’ve seen. I assume riot police will leave the station if tensions mount.

It was calm here, with community members trying to keep the peace, telling people to not push on the fence, but then the umbrella crew of largely white came and now it’s going to turn to chaos again.

Now people are throwing stuff

Someone realized who I was. I’m leaving. Not risking my safety

I’m already safe. No cars following me.

Will upload my footage in a bit. Nothing too crazy though I did get a few interesting exchanges.

I’ve been there 4 nights in a row, and there’s only so many people recording. Eventually it was bound to happen. I’ve been bulking up using quite a few thick layers of shirts and sweatshirts and other baggy clothing, but it was probably inevitable. I’m safe though so all is good.

https://twitter.com/digitalnocturne/status/1382883298767212546

Pictures from tonight:

Verdict is still out on if anyone sucked his dick.

I started filming this guy cuz he was making threats that the crowd and him would return with guns. This is all I captured of his tirade:

This guy was threatening to damage vehicles that carry military stickers. Probably an empty threat, but who knows.

Lots going on here.

Threats towards the guards, the quote “you vaccinate us then you spray us, fuck you”, and then when one dude was messing with the fence, a community member ordered him to stop. They wanted peace tonight.

After a year of covering these events I’m so tired of hearing this chant.

Large crowd chants Daunte Wright’s name.

The crowd then chanted Breonna Taylor’s name.

This white dude kept trying to shake the fence in an attempt to escalate tensions with the police. People kept shutting him down but he wouldn’t stop. Remember him, I have more to share...

I began focusing on this guy cuz he wouldn’t stop messing with the fence, as you’ll see at the end, black community members did not want him to escalate tensions with police. He kept getting shut down. But let’s see what happens next...

He kept fiddling with it, and eventually untwisted some of the metal. Pay attention to the umbrella along his lower back:

He eventually got mad about being filmed and left. I snuck around and tried catching what he was texting someone about. If someone can make this out, lemme know. Although I have my suspicions cuz of what happened next...

I only caught the aftermath of the incident, but not even 5 mins after the guy (remember he had an umbrella) stormed off to text someone cuz he was getting filmed while twisting metal off the fence, the umbrella crew showed up & went to that exact spot & began shaking the fence.

https://twitter.com/SophNar0747/status/1382874495153737730

As the above shows. There is an organized group of largely white skinned black bloc members who are coming to these protests to escalate tensions and create violence. Black community members don’t want this yet these people not from this area clearly do. It’s super fucked

Not to be cocky, but it was a great catch on my part. The whole thing was shady and I knew I needed to follow this guy.

https://twitter.com/scubadream90/status/1382911649804341249

Today’s crowd was very tired of white people who aren’t from the area coming in and co-opting the protest.

Worth adding that the umbrella people have showed up every night, always around sunset. And they are the ones causing the most chaos. The local community who has been largely peaceful protesting is very clearly sick of their antics. Lots of anger directed their way tonight.

It’s very important to distinguish the two sides of these protests. There is a mostly peaceful side who just marches and chants, then there’s the umbrella people (and an assortment of others) who come in and escalate tensions with the police, almost always leading to violence.

Tonight there was a very organized group of locals who anytime someone tried escalating tensions, they moved in and shut it down. I heard one of them yelling at a fence shaker that it does nothing but create violence. The local community does not want chaos.

I pointed this out last year too. People from outside a community are flocking in, destroying businesses & locations that serve black &/or urban poor people, & then claiming they’re doing it for black justice. It’s insane, & the only people suffering are those living in the area

https://twitter.com/sophnar0747/status/1268405052282191874

It’s not the easiest to see here, but the majority (read: not all) of the umbrella people are white.

Chants about class war and organizing against the state.

Don’t mind me, just trying to obtain artsy shots during civil unrest:

Anyways. That wraps up my day four coverage. As you can see, it wasn’t action packed like previous nights, but that allowed me to further explore the different sides. There’s something there with the dude who was tampering with the fence before his friends rolled in.

I wish I stayed longer, but I no longer feel safe there given someone realized who I was, so while I’ve previously said my coverage is done only to then return, this time it’s legit. I put my personal safety first

I’ll still be covering the Chauvin fallout in Minneapolis, though

Just to boost this one more time, if you valued my independent coverage these past four days, of which I shot some crazy action and even widespread looting, please consider supporting my hard work. I go all out on this coverage:

https://twitter.com/sophnar0747/status/1382442322869198850