The following only pertains to left-wing protests, right-wing protests are a whole different bag of nuts.
Anytime protests of any kind occur, the highlights make the news. It’s important to consider all traditional news media as a “highlight reel.” ESPN shows homeruns, touchdowns, and dunks; the news shows violence, fame, and whatever executives think will keep you on their channel until the commercial break or on their social media page long enough to get your view.
Protests are consistently misunderstood by the majority of the public, not simply because of media portrayals but because the majority of the public has never attended a protest.
ESPN can show the dunks, homeruns, and highlights without confusing their audience because it’s understood that the majority of their viewing audience has attended or played sports before. ESPN shows highlights, because their viewer understands the nuances of the game.
The problem with portraying protests in the media is that the majority of the audience has never been to a protest, so they do not understand the nuances of the game. B-Roll of police violence and protestors storming the streets dominate the news, then the most intense social media clips rise to the top. Hours of impassioned speeches by local leaders are ignored, the voices of minority groups, and people with far-left political views are left unheard.
As a journalist, I’ve attended hundreds of protests, most notably in June of 2020 I covered 36 protests in 28 days. Locally in Philadelphia, I can identify individuals who are consistently on the ground doing real grassroots organizing without PAC support. Groups like Reclaim Philadelphia and the Party for Socialism and Liberation are always present in Philly protests, the same legal observers, the same bikers who protect the protesters, and even the Philadelphia Police have a specific guy who is always supervising protests named McNeil. There are a few dozen individuals who are present at every Philly protest since the Black Lives Matter Movement began.
You know what’s rare for me to see as a journalist? Anyone I know from my real life. Most of my friends have never and would never attend a protest. All they know about protests is what they see me post and cover, plus everything that social media and the news tells them.
Instead of the three hours of protest, my friends and family are shown 30 seconds of the most heightened and fanatical footage possible. People who never attend protests will never understand protests, simple as that.
Unfortunately for protestors the majority of people are normal people like my friends and family; they are busy, they have families and jobs, they live in places that are far from the protests, and most importantly they are also battling the economic hardship, bureaucratic oppression, and political pressures that protestors are facing. The primary difference between my friends and I, is that they have more to lose, less to gain, and their time is more restricted. I understand why people aren’t moved to protest, someone my age (30) has witnessed a lot of protests and not a lot of change. In my lifetime, evil has defeated good 95% of the time regardless of which party is in power and regardless of what anyone wants. Caring about political issues is a lot like being a Sixers fan, it’s mostly disappointment and frustration, you win from time to time but you’re never the champion. Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential run turning into the Trump presidency felt a lot like Jimmy Butler and Embiid watching Kawhi Leonard’s shot fall in 2019, it’s the closest we’d ever came to winning and maybe the closest we’ll ever get. Most people will only join the fold when they are personally affected in some serious way, because why else join what looks like a struggle?
Differences in Tone
Protestors are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. This Monday I covered a protest on 6th & Market led by the Local SEIU 32BJ, Reclaim Philadelphia and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. The protest was mostly dictated by the union leaders, which led to the non-union members sometimes feeling alienated while SEIU chanted for SEIU, the protest was an hour and a half instead of the full two hours, and the protestors never took the street. Footage was tame, social media commenters told me there were only “45 people there” rather than the hundreds that were on sight, and the news cycle only lasted 24 hours.
Then Tuesday night, the more radical protestors who were unimpressed with the Monday showing went back to Market Street, took over the street and clashed with Philadelphia Police. Those clips have been on my social media for 48 hours and have far more views than anything that happened on Monday. The violence gets the views but also gets you scolded, the tame and peaceful protest gets a 24 hour “hi and bye.”
A protest led by non-profits, unions, and political leaders will always be tame and organized. Those are the protests where radicals show up and then the news media are forced to say a sentence that has been repeated to death since 2020 “it was a peaceful protest except for a handful of agitators.”
However the framing of “agitators” is disingenuous, the reality of most protests is that the police and military are “agitators” and the protesters who get angry are “retaliators.”
On Monday’s protest, the Police were hands off because SEIU was there. Union leaders, who the City views as gainfully employed professionals were respected by law-enforcement. Whereas the Tuesday protestors were dawning black hoodies and shiesties, which led to a police officer kneeling on a man’s neck.
It’s odd to me that Philly Police retaliated this week. Just a few years ago, protestors were explicitly protesting the police. If I were a police officer I’d be thrilled that protestors are talking about something else! Since the Defund the Police Protests, the Philadelphia public has been forced to mobilize for Chinatown, Ukraine, Palestine, Roe V. Wade, ICE, and this weekend against Trump explicitly.
However, protestors in Philadelphia will likely have a much bigger threat this weekend at No King’s Protest. The No King’s Protest appears to be a highly organized protest movement that will take place on the same day as Trump’s Military Parade. For reference, this is the first protest that I have ever attended where I have applied for media credentials and there is a specific “press” location. The military parade as well as sending National Guards and Marines to Los Angeles is clearly Trump flexing his military force, so the military will likely be sent to Philadelphia in some capacity.
In October of 2020 the National Guard was sent to Philadelphia after protests over the Philadelphia Police killing Walter Wallace. Were people rioting? Yes. Did the National Guard and the City’s attempt at a curfew make the riots worse? Yes.
When people take hours out of their day to protest authoritarianism, and then the military shows up and attempts to tell those people what to do, it proves their point about authoritarianism and they are forced internally to ask themselves “how far will I go?” Some people will yell and scream at the military, some will take a beating and get arrested, some will leave as soon as they see the bulletproof vests and machine guns.
A large left-wing protest will feature people with a variety of different beliefs. This weekend, the City expects “tens of thousands of people” which means thousands of moderate Democrats, thousands of Progressives, thousands of Democratic Socialists, and perhaps hundreds of anarchists; all with different ideas of what protesting is.
The National Guard, Marines, and the military in general are a different animal than your local police. Police killed Walter Wallace, police are often bad at crowd control, and police were violent towards protestors this week. That being said, you have a much better chance of holding someone accountable if they’re local. There are dozens of videos of men in military gear shooting journalists, the elderly, and passersby with “less than lethal” rounds coming out this week.
Out of the hundreds of protests I’ve attended, I’ve never been tear-gassed. To my knowledge the use of teargas is much less frequent in Philadelphia than in places like Portland or Los Angeles.
In 2020 the Philadelphia Police shot people with less than lethal munitions and teargassed protestors trapped along the Vine Street Expressway. The incident caused massive backlash and the City paid out a $9 million settlement. If the National Guard gasses protestors this weekend there will be no settlement.
There are road closures planned by the City for this weekend’s No King’s Protest, there will likely be elected officials, families, unions, and a number of non-profit groups marching through Philadelphia. If Saturday has the turnout people are anticipating this weekend, things will likely go as planned for the allotted protest time. But when the politicians go home and the sun goes down, if all that political energy is left festering as Trump’s Military Parade begins, we could see some clashes with the National Guard on Saturday night.
Monday was a formal protest headed by a union that faced minimal backlash. Tuesday was an informal protest headed by leftists that feel a little stronger and have less to lose, so they were met with Police crowd control methods and violence. This Saturday will be a blending of the formal and informal, no crowd in the thousands will agree wholly on what’s right and what’s wrong. This will be many people’s first or second protest, it will be many people’s first protest since 2020, and it will be many people’s hundredth protest.
In closing, what I want people who don’t attend protests to understand is, the protestors rarely start violence. There are hours of speakers at protests that are often sharing stories that you would never hear otherwise. Do not be scared of what you see on TV and one day the thing that people are protesting about will come to your front door and you’ll understand.
Philly Plain Dealer 
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