Last night, a large group of demonstrators protesting the police shooting of Jacob Blake confronted white diners outside of restaurants. Washington Post reporter Fredrick Kunkle captured one of the encounters in Adams Morgan on video.
1) In a scene that played out several times Monday, a Black Lives Matter protest that began in Columbia Heights confronted White diners outside D.C. restaurants, chanting “White silence is violence!” and demanding White diners show their solidarity. #DCProtests pic.twitter.com/fJbPM76vb0
— Fredrick Kunkle WaPo (@KunkleFredrick) August 25, 2020
According to Kunkle’s tweet, the group confronted diner Lauren B. Victor when she declined to raise her fist in solidarity with them. Kunkle tweeted that “citizen reporter” Chuck Modiano was on the scene yelling at Victor, and snidely commented, “Good for you — you stood your ground.”
On Twitter, Modiano identifies himself as a “Justice Journalist” and a “Sports Writer for Deadspin,” where he’s written about racism in the NFL and the Black Lives Matter movement. He’s been active this summer on Twitter posting video interviews with DC protesters. And he’s going to be hosting an info session and discussion called “Movement Journalism 101” Wednesday at GWU Outdoor Auditorium.
“Tomrrw I’m talking a little w/others on sorry state of media in supporting police murder (aka “officer-involved shooting”),” Modiano tweeted. “There’s not 2 sides to police terror & in the journalistic spirit of Ida B. Wells and lynching, we don’t pretend there is.”
Washingtonian reached out to Modiano for comment. He had not responded by the time of publication.
Other left-leaning journos took a different view on the matter from Modiano. Vox’s Jane Coaston tweeted, “This is to “political action that will effectively limit the powers of agents of the state and make it easier to get bad police off the streets” as a baked potato is to the works of Mozart.”
Please, for the love of all that is good, do not do this. https://t.co/vDuwDdiDZv
— Jane Coaston (@cjane87) August 25, 2020
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes was unimpressed as well.
imho this is not a good tactic https://t.co/ZE1tys75SD
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) August 25, 2020
And the Intercept’s Zaid Jilani tweeted, “The first time in my life I’ve seen riots against white people by white people, America never stops innovating”
Honestly white silence would be vastly preferable to what these white kids are doing here https://t.co/jppJ2urGKc
— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) August 25, 2020
Jane is a Chicago transplant who now calls Cleveland Park her home. Before joining Washingtonian, she wrote for Smithsonian Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she studied journalism and opera.
