The camera is new: Live video and #BlackLivesMatter
Kyrie O'Connor July 8, 2016 Updated: July 8, 2016 12:46 p.m.
Protestors record video as police officers arrest a bystander following the Dallas shooting.
Photo: LAURA BUCKMAN, AFP/Getty Images
On November 22, 1963, Abraham Zapruder took his fancy home-movie camera to Dealey Plaza in Dallas to record the motorcade of Pres. John F. Kennedy. Instead, he filmed an assassination.
Last night, a cellphone version of the Zapruder moment was reprised over and over as another sniper — eerily close to Dealey Plaza — gunned down 12 officers of the law and two civilians at a peaceful protest. Amateur footage quickly showed up on Facebook and Twitter. Major media outlets and local TV stations live-streamed it on their websites. Cable news went wall to wall with it.
The #shooting has stopped for now but still a very tense scene in downtown #Dallas. # pic.twitter.com/sy7lA85Iwt
— Rick Mitchell (@RickMitchellWX) July 8, 2016
I am so scared. pic.twitter.com/jw88QnKGXG
— Allison (@allisongriz) July 8, 2016
Video from a protestor as the shooting began. Jesus. Disturbing content. #Dallas #DallasPoliceShooting pic.twitter.com/yhPTI9KC2g
— Andy Cole (@AndyCole84) July 8, 2016
Dallas police clear parking garage after shots fired at downtown #BlackLivesMatter rally @dallasnews pic.twitter.com/Q1JW1N4G4e
— DMN Photo (@dallasnewsphoto) July 8, 2016
As of Friday noon, the three-minute video that Michael Kevin Bautista live-streamed on Facebook had received more than 5 million views. In it, an astonishing number of shots ring out. We see police officers crouching behind their cars, red and blue lights blazing. "They're shooting right now," Bautista says, finally gathering himself. "There's an officer down."
The video ends with him speaking to someone off-camera: "I got everything, man. I got everything."
The Dallas protest marked the killing, earlier in the week, of two innocent black men by policemen in Minnesota and Louisiana. Both those deaths were also recorded.
Diamond Reynolds, the girlfriend of one of the victims, Philando Castile, became a heroine of journalism as she live-streamed his last moments bleeding to death next to her. In so doing, she made sure the circumstances of his death would not be just the word of one black woman against a cop. She made him, in one stroke, the equal of a white man.
As of Friday noon, her video had more than 5 million views.
As Thursday's internet meme put it, quoting Ta-Nehisi Coates, "The violence is not new; the cameras are new."
The ubiquitous personal camera is new. Live-streaming death on Facebook is new.
Seeing someone die on the media, live, is not new. On my ninth birthday, I was watching news of the Kennedy assassination on TV. I saw Jack Ruby walk up and gut-shoot Lee Harvey Oswald.
At least we can keep 9-year-olds off Facebook.
The violence is not new. Texas is the home of the first in the modern string of sniper killings. On August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman, a man with a brain tumor, killed his wife and mother, climbed the Texas Tower at the University of Texas in Austin, and killed 14 more people.
In the words of '60s black leader H. Rap Brown, "Violence is as American as cherry pie."
My husband is Canadian. A few days ago, before the current mess, I asked him why America is Charles Whitman, the nice guy with the brain tumor, and Canada is just the nice guy.
The myth of the Old West, he said. The stain of slavery, I countered. We're both right.
The is a country where we conduct dialogue with bullets.
But it's useful to remember the old chant from the '60s: The whole world is watching. The whole world is watching.
Kyrie O'Connor
Follow Kyrie on:
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Kyrie O'Connor is senior editor and columnist at the Houston Chronicle. From 2003 to 2012, she was deputy managing editor/features. She came to the Houston Chronicle from The Hartford Courant, where she was assistant managing editor/features.
A native of Pittsford, N.Y., she received a B.A. in English cum laude from Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
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