Changing the world, one video at a time: "I can't breathe."

 

When Walker and Arrighi published PV Training in Uganda in 2012, they couldn't have imagined how participatory video might literally change the world.

They speak hopefully about how the then-burgeoning technology could "make anyone a filmmaker." With some degree of prescience, they write in their conclusion that "(Participatory Video) allows communities to drive the narratives of their own stories in order to target messages to the key stakeholders they wish to reach." They talk about putting equipment and knowledge in the hands of people in isolated, remote communities so that those villagers can capture what had largely been, up to that point, an oral history.

It's hard to read this chapter today without thinking of George Floyd. The Minneapolis man was murdered by police during an altercation that followed his arrest for allegedly passing a fake $20 bill in a convenience store in the spring of 2020. 

The entire incident was captured on cellphone video. It immediately went viral and served as a flashpoint for the seismic shift in public discussion of race and racism that followed. (I'm choosing not to link to the original video as it remains too disturbing for many people, including me.)

It's fair to say that Floyd's death sparked a wave of anger as Black communities and their supporters rallied for justice. It's also fair to say that their actions altered the course of discussions around race in the United States and beyond.

It wasn't just local street protests. The state's Governor ended up activating the National Guard as the situation escalated. Two different autopsies found that Floyd died by asphyxia as a direct result of the actions of now-disgraced police Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin. Eventually, Minneapolis city councillors voted to disband the entire police service. They also settled a civil lawsuit with Floyd's family for $27 million US. 

After a long and heated trial, Chauvin was convicted on April 20, 2021,  and eventually sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison. As an aside, the irony is not lost that the murderer shares a surname with a French soldier, Nicolas Chauvin, whose "simple-minded devotion to Napoleon" came to typify the cult of the glorification of all things military. This is where we get today's word, chauvinism.

As a sign of how much the advent of many-to-many communication has changed the landscape, and the face of journalism, Darnella Frazier - the teen who shot the original video of Floyd's murder - recently won a Pulitzer Prize. In just nine short years since Walker and Arrighi published their article, participatory video has moved from novelty to necessity. The world might never have known George Floyd's story - or seen the shift we have in public discourse - without it.