DENVER — Denver photographers gathered Tuesday night to protest racism sparked by a now-viral video recorded in Denver's Hilltop neighborhood.
The video showed a woman in Denver profanely berating a Black man after he took a photo of a house in her neighborhood over the weekend. Behind the camera was an ally who stepped in to tell the woman to stop harassing the man.
On Tuesday, more allies with cameras of their own met at Cranmer Park, also in the Hilltop neighborhood, to show that being in the street with a camera isn't a crime.
The woman believed to be the one seen in the video declined an interview with 9NEWS, but hired private, armed security to keep protesters off the property. Protest organizers were clear no one was to go onto private property and our crew there saw no indication that was happening.
"Seeing a young black man being yelled at and yelled slurs at is something that makes everybody uncomfortable," said Richard Melick, the organizer of Tuesday night's photo walk.
The increase in this kind of footage has changed the U.S.'s conversation about racism, Dr. Ryan Ross, the president of the Urban Leader Foundation of Colorado, said.
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"I mean, we're finally having a way to document what's actually happening," Ross said. "Now these kinds of just horrendous acts can't be explained away with paperwork. Somebody in a position or a 'title of trust' is not able to say that didn't happen or that person isn't telling the truth."
Ross said cell phones have also become a tool to "galvanize support" from people wanting to combat racism in their own communities, just like the people who attended the photo walk through the Hilltop neighborhood.
"It's the power of the word," Melick said. "It's the power of making people uncomfortable. It's the power of rising up. And if it's that one snarky word that makes people realize they're privileged, that makes people realize this isn't right then I guess it's worth it."
While useful, Ross said, the fact that more people feel the need to record racist acts and post them on social media is also "disheartening."
"It reminds me of – as a human being, my voice, my story isn’t being valued," Ross said. "I have to have another layer of proof. You know, we’ve got to have a constitution to say we’re citizens and now we have to have a cell phone or proof to say we’re innocent or that something has actually happened to us and somebody else needs to face justice."
9NEWS has not been able to identify the man seen being shouted at in the video to hear his first-person account of what happened.
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