Eight people staged a protest in Cleveland’s Public Square on Wednesday morning. But it was difficult to tell who they were or what they were saying, because the eight of them were surrounded by more than 30 journalists.
The Public Square has been used by various demonstrators and protesters all week as part of the Republican National Convention’s official “event zone.” But the protesters are often wildly outnumbered by reporters, photographers and broadcast crews.
“We weren’t expecting to deal with this many press people, but we’re trying to handle it the same as we would any other crowd,” a Cleveland police officer said. “All of our crowd-control efforts have been more necessary to deal with the press, not with any protesters.”
Sometimes the press began to become the protesters. A reporter with a camera and a microphone shouted back at a man wearing a “Hillary for Prison” shirt.
“What do you mean you’re against immigrants?” the reporter said to the protester. “Don’t you understand how hateful that is? What do you think you’re doing?”
Demonstrator Mike Patrick, who circled the square on his bicycle while wearing a hot dog suit and carrying a “Trump Eats Farts” flag, said he considered the week of the convention to be a joke for protests.
“Where are all the Trump supporters?” Patrick said. “Where are the people we’re supposed to be clashing with? The only people we’ve been able to interact with at all have been from the media, not the people who would actually engage with a protest.”
He said he thought it was funny how many reporters took his flag seriously. He said he had been interviewed by more than a dozen reporters Wednesday morning who asked him to explain what meaning his sign and costume had.
“There is no meaning,” Patrick said. “It’s like everybody else here. Half of it is an attention grab.”
A “Wall Off Trump” protest began on the back steps of the Public Square at 11 a.m., but the activists were almost immediately swarmed by reporters. The words of the protesters were not audible over the sounds of broadcast crews speaking into microphones.
“Tensions are running high at the Public Square this morning.”
“A demonstration has attracted a huge crowd and a lot of attention from other protesters.”
But some of the protesters said they felt forced out of demonstrations by the reporters covering them. Ramond Curtis, 31, from Vets Versus Hate, said he was disappointed by the imbalance between press and demonstrators.
“I think what journalists do is extremely important, but I don’t like it when the fear and tension they say they’re reporting seems to happen because of them,” Curtis said. “When all these camera crews try to move in, it gets scary and loud and chaotic, but not because of the protests. It’s because of them. We want our space to protest, and we want media attention, but we don’t want to feel crushed.”
Members of a student research team from Western Washington University said they traveled to the convention to research police and protester interactions, but hadn’t been able to use anything they had seen so far.
“There haven’t been many interactions between police and protesters that I’ve seen, and they’ve mostly been positive,” Katie Saccomanno, 22, said. “That’s really great, but I’ve only seen police intervene when the press gets rowdy. I think there was a little too much hype for this week.”
The crowd surrounding the “Wall Off Trump” protest filled most of the square by 11:30 a.m. Reporters pressed up against each other and fought to find a good camera angle.
Soon, about 15 bicycle officers from the Cleveland Police Department and 10 Indiana State Police officers moved in to split up the crowd, but they weren’t breaking up violent protesters. They were separating the demonstrators from the reporters who nearly crushed them.
