Five years since May 25, 2020, when George Floyd was struck for a minneapolis police officer at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue. Five years from the 17-year-old Darnella Frazier stood the curve outside the food, raised his phone, and WITNESS In nine minutes and 29 seconds to move a global movement against inequality in racial.
The video was not just showing the Frazier’s video. It presses the cessation of the world and see.
Now, that the heritage lives in the hands of different community, facing different threats but uses the same tools. All over the United States, Latino organizers lift their phones not to go viral but to proceed. They are living immigration and custom implementation, which films family separations, documenting protests outside detention detentions. Their footage is unsatisfactory. It is evidence. Warning it. It is immunity.
Here in Los Angeles, where I Teach journalismMany images have seen themselves in public memory. A viral video shown A shacked father Insert a white, unmarked van – his daughter crying behind the camera, begged him not to sign any official documents. He returned, signs for him to calm down, then soften his kiss. Across the city, LAPD officers riding a horse charged with peaceful protesters.
In Spokane, wash., Residents form a spontaneous chain of man Around their non-documented neighbors ran to the mid-raid, their bodies and cameras form a barricade of opposition. In San Diego, White allies screamed “shame!” As they pursue a vehicle uniform troops in the National Guard from their neighborhood.
The effect of smartphone’s witness becomes easy and unconvincing – visceral at street level, seismic in stations. On the ground, videos have made “not kings” activities, organizing protests in all 50 states on the weekend. Lawmakers also respond – with sparks flying in the camps of the capital. As President Trump is ramping the implementation of immigration, democratic democratic democrats, aggravated state laws limiting cooperation with federal agents.
Local TV News News includes Witnesses’ Witnesses on the Witnesses, which helped it reach a greater audience.
What’s not new now – it’s new to see. Latino organizers come from a playbook polished by 2020, the one rooted in the higher generation of black media strategies made by slavery and Jim Crow.
In 2020, I’m writing How black Americans use different media formats to fight for racial and economic uniformity – from smart smartphones. I beg to Douglass Douglass and Ida B. Wells make the same job like Darnella Frazier: using journalism as a tool for a tool for witnessing and activation. In 2025, Latinos filming the state at the time of overreach – Archiving injustice in real time – matching, passing black witnesses.
In addition, Latinos use smartphones for digital cartotum such as black people who are parallel to freedom during slavery and Jim Crow. the People on map of papersFor example, reflects an older generation: the tactics of resistance to Black marions – Massive Africans who flee swamps and borderlands, forming secret networks to prevent arrest and warn others.
These first communities share intelligence, tracking patrols and targets the haven paths in safety. People in paper canals at the same logic – now havenes are ice-free zones, sometimes aid of each other and spaces in the sanctuary. The map is the crowd. The boundaries digital. The danger is still true.
Also, the Stop the attacks on the network alerting Revive a subrintreprint vauns-va bluesprint. During the 1960s, activists Use width telephone service lines in place and radio to share protest routes, police activity and safety updates. Black DJs often get sentences as traffic reports or weather – “Having fun on the south side” means Police Roadblocks, “Storm Warnings” that signifies future violence. Today, that infrastructure has revived through whatsapp chains, encrypted groups of groups and story posts. Platforms have changed. The mission is not.
The contents of the two systems are DNA in “The Negro Green Book book“The guidance helped with black travelers Jim Provica in safety areas, people facing the ice parts, withdrawing papers and repairing knowledge, protection through conformity.
Using Latino smartphones at this moment is not for the scene. This is for self-defense. In cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and El Paso, what began as a whisper – “The ice in the neighborhood” – now Telegram race, whatsapp and instagram. A knockook will be a living. An attack becomes receipt. A video becomes a shield.
For non-documented families, risk is true. In the film is self-disclosure. Going to live is to be the target. But more do it. Because silence can be fatal. Because injustivity protects anyone. Because if the story is not covered, it can be denied.
Five years after Floyd’s final breathing, the burden of evidence that is greater than weaker. America asks the footage before anger. Tape before reform. Visual confirmation before merciful. And however, justice is not guaranteed.
But 2020 teaches us that smartphones, right hands, can prevent the status quo. In 2025, that lesson renamed, this time by lens of Latino Mobile reporters. Their feet cannot be changed. Urgently. Right. It joined the dots: among ice attacks and over the policer, between a border boundary and a city jail, between a knee-in-neck.
These are not remote events. They are chapters with the same story of government configuration.
And because cameras are still around – and people still record – stories are told again.
Five years ago, we were forced to see the unchangeable. Now, we are shown to be undeniable.
To all in V. RichardsonAn Associate Professor of Journalism and USC Communication, is the author of “Confirms while black: American Americans, smartphones, and new protest #journalism. “This article is made of fellowship the conversation.
