This is America, dammit. When political tensions are white hot, and the stakes are just about the highest they can possibly be, it’s time to pause for a little consumerism break.
or at least that was my response to this amazing photo credited to Pierre Lavie posted online by a photographer named John Abernathy.
Abernathy says on Instagram that it’s him in the photo during Thursday’s protests at the Bishop Henry whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis,where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is basing its current high profile operations in minneapolis. Having been tackled, he claims, by ICE agents backed up by “50 border police,” Abernathy apparently chucked his Leica camera in the direction of another photographer to “make sure it wouldn’t be confiscated.”
On Bluesky, Abernathy provides a slightly more detailed review for camera shoppers, writing that his Leica “landed on the bass plate with hardly a scratch.” That’s before he also claims that he was held down, that a tear gas canister went off near his face, and that pepper spray went “directly into the eye.”
