Teresa Cotsirilos Is Asking All The Right Questions

"I'm a student at UC Berkeley's School of Journalism and I'm here to cover the protest if it ends up being a thing. My understanding is the protest is about the shooting of Mario Woods, the man in San Francisco recently –– he's a black, 26-year-old man who was allegedly quite dangerous. The police said he was running around with a knife, that he had stabbed somebody and they were tracking him down. They ended up shooting him when he resisted. Some footage came out from some bystanders that catches the act of the shooting and it's graphic and disturbing. I'm currently deciding how much I'm going to report on it, because it's only about 20 people over there. But the thing that I find really interesting about the case –– if this becomes something that people protest –– and the big thing with Black Lives Matter is this idea that all black lives matter and there's no such thing as a perfect victim. I think that Mario Woods, if he has the background that the police say he has, which it seems like he does, puts that to the test. This is a guy who had a really troubled history. He has a record, at the moment it does look like he did attack somebody earlier. And so I think it raises the question, 'What are you protesting and how do you protest that?' It's validating the life of this person while acknowledging that he might have been dangerous. This isn't easy –– maybe somebody should have acted, maybe not violently, but should have taken some steps to control him. So it's a really different question from a lot of other protests."