Reflections on My Oakland Trayvon Rally Assault
July 25, 2013 By Christian Hartsock
IÂ’ve had a lot of reflecting to do since my experience at the Oakland Trayvon rally last week, documented impressively by The Daily CallerÂ’s Charles C. Johnson. Having been asked many questions about it, both on and off the air, IÂ’ll briefly share a few of my thoughts, both regarding the incident, and its implications.
But first, the raw video taken in the moments before the assault:
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There were only four “provocations” I am responsible for: 1) Having a camera; 2) consistently refusing to leave when repeatedly threatened; 3) merely being seen by two protesters who were looking for a straw man to foist their emotional insecurities upon (a kind of social microcosm of a larger national trend); and 4) being in the throes of an emotionally unstable crowd motivated by pure knee-jerk Bay Area groupthink.
It took me a while to fight them off because: a) I was outnumbered; b) I was preoccupied with maintaining my grip on the camera as they tried to pry it out of my hand while straddling, socking and kicking me on the pavement ground; and c) given the journalist cap I was wearing at the time, I exercised a certain restraint so as to minimize my influence on the course the story took.
Some have asked if I have any regrets. My answer is: Too few to mention. I was there to cover a story, and the plot simply thickened. The assault was an occupational hazard. I’ve reported in Wisconsin and Ohio during militant union protests, at another Trayvon rally in South Central Los Angeles, in Baghdad during the war. The risk of physical danger and potential pain and injury comes with the job — that is if the job is being done right.
To me, this was a job worth doing — I knew this the second I saw an elementary to middle school-aged child being escorted by his mother and led in the chant: “No justice, no peace — fuck you pigs, die in your sleep.”
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So goes the story of two thugs looking for a fight, finding a target, and catalyzing a chain-reactive pile-on among bellicose groupthinking bystanders while a major media entity stands by and the presence of law is deliberately withdrawn.
Now you decide if that sentence describes my incident last week, or America the past few years. If the latter, then all that is warranted is a replacement of the word “street thugs” with “reverends.”
Reflections on My Oakland Trayvon Rally Assault | FrontPage Magazine