Filming Dystopia by Cellphone

Seeing is believing. The visual image is persuasive, convincing, raw, and immediate. It captures perpetrators in the act. It’s records evidence with undeniable power. The world now sees through the camera in your hand, uploaded to the web in seconds, in real time to millions. Your cell camera has the ability to document pure joy or egregious brutality, no filters, no tricks, straight from the bottle, no chaser.

We are seeing the course of human events altered by a cell in everyone’s hand. Prior to the web, news traveled too slowly to spark immediate protests, public awareness, support, and calls to action. Does the press still matter? Is the pen still mightier than the sword? Perhaps a camera uploading directly to the web is vastly more potent.

Unwarranted cruelty hides in the shadow of doubt, the fog of war. In the digital age, are guns truly the most effective weapons against tyranny and injustice? Considering current events around the world, it just might be the camera.

With video from multiple angles from Minneapolis witnesses recording ICE killings of American citizens, the Trump administration swiftly countered with spin labeling the victims as, “domestic terrorists.” In their alternate reality, in the media spin universe, DHS claimed their hair-triggered ICE agents were the real victims. Uploaded videos from street protesters contradicted that fallacy with horrific images seen by millions.

Considering the erosion of civil rights, will cellphones be outlawed by authoritarian regimes? Soon In America, will it be easier to buy an Uzi than an iPhone? Today, anyone with a cellphone is a documentary filmmaker, a journalist, able to affect public opinion with unfiltered, unedited footage delivered to a global audience. Each protester has the ability to win hearts and minds. That’s real power.