This week for AroundtheLens.com and Visu.News I spoke to photojournalist John Rudoff. John is a photojournalist who has been working in the industry for several decades covering activism, music and theater, and many foreign stories such as refugees in Greece. You can find his work at RudoffPhoto.com. 

John and I spoke about the recent Reopen America protests that have been happening across the country. He covered one in his home city of Portland, Oregon and I covered a similar event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We spoke about what it was like to cover these protests, the preparation before and what specific things we did to keep ourselves safe amongst a global pandemic.

The Reopen America protests are for those who haven’t heard about them rallies of people who believe that we should reopen the economy and get back to work. The Venn diagram of attendees of these rallies includes militia, libertarians, extreme religious groups, anti-vaxxers but nearly all of them are “MAGA.”

I do say nearly all of them because there is certainly a large number who are farther right than what Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again allows for. (I have not seen any evidence that the left of any kind has shown up to these rallies in any of the people that I’ve talked to at the rally or that have attended other versions of these events.)

You can find John Rudoff’s coverage at SIPAUSA and you can find my story on the Harrisburg event at Nationchange.org.