Charlotte UprisingDocumentary
Donation protected
This documentary will follow the chronological account of the streets of Charlotte following the death of Keith Lamont Scott culminating with my arrest outside of BOA Stadium on Sunday September 25 and my address to the mayor and City Council the following day. The documentary will make heavy use of existing live streamed footage, interviews of front line participants, and other footage that was captured by independent photographers and media outlets. The doc will attempt to show the process of empowerment of a group of citizens to their rights under the United States Constitution and the governments less than desirable response to its empowered citizens.
I was an eyewitness to the events on the streets of Charlotte following the police killing. I arrived on the scene as the Crime Scene Investigators were completing their processing. I witnessed and partook in the tough conversations that were being had. Family, friends, neighbors, and community members began to to converge on the scene and were participating in several different methods of peaceful assembly. I began live streaming shortly after I arrived. The peaceful assembly turned into a protest after the police officers completed their crime scene investigation. Under orders to leave, police quickly tried to disperse leaving no representatives behind to answer the questions of the people. Citizens stood and sat in front of the police car in order to prevent the government from leaving and forced the police to stay to hear the gripes, concerns, and questions of the people. Police responded by trying to drive their car through and over the crowds that included women and children and eventually formed on the crowd with a heavy militarized police force. The altercation of that night would continue on for hours as police deployed tear gas, pepper spray, stun grenades, flash bangs, rubber bullets, bean bags and other tactics against protestors armed only with their voices and rocks.
The real story that comes out of Old Concord Rd is the transition of fear to empowerment of a diverse group of people under their rights under the Constitution against a system of institutions that subverts their liberty and rights through the erosion of civic virtue. Civic Virtue is an important concept when considering Republican (a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch) forms of government. Citizens that live in a republic must be dedicated to the common welfare of their community even at the cost of their individual interests. The story of the Charlotte Uprising is one of a group of citizens who suddenly found themselves filled with civic virtue and the ensuing movement for change.
I will show the chronology of events that would occur over the next several days from the front lines of protest, conversation, and overall expressions of the democratic process. The documentary will attempt to visualize the meaning of civic virtue and how it is necessary for justice, peace, and the ensurance of the general welfare of Americans as spelled out in our Constitution. I will show how many groups with different overall objectives were able to unify around our rights to demand change from our government. I will show our governments threatened response to its citizens.
I will use primarily footage that I shot from my first person perspective, buttressed by the footage of others (social media and smart phones provided many different angles of the same events), along with high quality footage from other videographers and news outlets, along with interviews and narration by participants in the Uprising. I also intend to show the difference between traditional media’s work in sensationalizing the events vs social media’s work in providing fact based reporting.
I was an eyewitness to the events on the streets of Charlotte following the police killing. I arrived on the scene as the Crime Scene Investigators were completing their processing. I witnessed and partook in the tough conversations that were being had. Family, friends, neighbors, and community members began to to converge on the scene and were participating in several different methods of peaceful assembly. I began live streaming shortly after I arrived. The peaceful assembly turned into a protest after the police officers completed their crime scene investigation. Under orders to leave, police quickly tried to disperse leaving no representatives behind to answer the questions of the people. Citizens stood and sat in front of the police car in order to prevent the government from leaving and forced the police to stay to hear the gripes, concerns, and questions of the people. Police responded by trying to drive their car through and over the crowds that included women and children and eventually formed on the crowd with a heavy militarized police force. The altercation of that night would continue on for hours as police deployed tear gas, pepper spray, stun grenades, flash bangs, rubber bullets, bean bags and other tactics against protestors armed only with their voices and rocks.
The real story that comes out of Old Concord Rd is the transition of fear to empowerment of a diverse group of people under their rights under the Constitution against a system of institutions that subverts their liberty and rights through the erosion of civic virtue. Civic Virtue is an important concept when considering Republican (a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch) forms of government. Citizens that live in a republic must be dedicated to the common welfare of their community even at the cost of their individual interests. The story of the Charlotte Uprising is one of a group of citizens who suddenly found themselves filled with civic virtue and the ensuing movement for change.
I will show the chronology of events that would occur over the next several days from the front lines of protest, conversation, and overall expressions of the democratic process. The documentary will attempt to visualize the meaning of civic virtue and how it is necessary for justice, peace, and the ensurance of the general welfare of Americans as spelled out in our Constitution. I will show how many groups with different overall objectives were able to unify around our rights to demand change from our government. I will show our governments threatened response to its citizens.
I will use primarily footage that I shot from my first person perspective, buttressed by the footage of others (social media and smart phones provided many different angles of the same events), along with high quality footage from other videographers and news outlets, along with interviews and narration by participants in the Uprising. I also intend to show the difference between traditional media’s work in sensationalizing the events vs social media’s work in providing fact based reporting.
Organizer
Braxton Winston
Organizer
Charlotte, NC
