The Baltimore Uprising: What I saw

a retrospective

2 years ago, Baltimore experienced a movement beginning that would change it forever. While I published these photos on Instagram and Twitter, I never compiled them into a full story.

Baltimore is the kind of place that is always simmering, ready to roll into a boil. One of my friends calls it perpetually pregnant with potential.

On April 12th, Freddie Gray was hauled off in the back of a police van without a seatbelt, all because he had made eye contact with officer Lt. Brian W. Rice.

As soon as the public began to become aware of the severity of his injuries on April 18th, protests against police brutality began with protestors turning their backs on officers.

Baltimore is heavily invested in justice, and people had been protesting violence in the city only the day before.

On April 19th, Freddie Gray died of his injuries.

From that point forward, peaceful protests happened in the city every day, though they weren’t widely reported (Elephrame is the only group I know who documents that kind of thing).

At that point, I had yet to meet people like Lawrence Brown, Megan Kenny, The Baltimore Bloc, DeRay Mckesson or Johnetta Elzie, but was watching their feeds and livestreams intently. I gradually began to get more and more frustrated that what I was seeing on the news wasn’t matching what people on the ground were saying.

I had seen DeRay speak of storytelling as resistance during the movement in Ferguson, and so I finally decided to go out and try to capture what people were saying.