I’ve been a big fan of Jonathan Mann’s videos at GameJew since my friend and co-worker Scott Moschella first showed them to me a few months ago. Jonathan usually does these inventive, totally original videos and songs mostly about video games, but yesterday decided to cover a peaceful immigration reform rally in Los Angeles, and when things turned unbelievably bad, with the police firing rubber bullets into the crowd and chasing them block to block through the city, Jonathan and the person filming with him stuck around and kept the video rolling. What they put together is a damning indictment of a dark direction we’re increasingly going in the United States — it’s breaking my heart, and we need to put a stop to this now.

I haven’t had a response to a videoblog post like this since, well, another of Jonathan’s videos, though that was a very different reaction. Think citizen journalism can’t help keep the fourth estate alive? Watch this. Embedded below, and I hope to see this everywhere — across big media and small — tomorrow.

For more, check out LAist, which is updating pretty regularly on the issue at this point.

Update: some pretty incredible video from LA’s Fox11 is up on YouTube, where Fox reporters with press credentials actually get knocked down by police batons, but what’s really depressing are the comments, both on YouTube and Jonathan’s site. Outright racist, horrible stuff in there. Are we doomed? I think we may be. Jonathan responds.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 12:27 am and is filed under vlogs, people, journalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.