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Allen Scarsella took the stand Monday to describe shooting into a group of protesters as the only way he could protect himself, but a prosecutor worked to paint him as a racist looking for a reason to use his gun on black people.

Scarsella acknowledged that he shot five protesters on Nov. 23, 2015, after he and three others went to Minneapolis Police's Fourth Precinct to livestream an ongoing protest after the death of Jamar Clark, who was shot and killed during a scuffle with police.

Scarsella was charged with first-degree assault and riot, both felonies.

"I was really scared, the situation got totally out of control," he said.

But Assistant County Attorney Judith Hawley tried to poke holes in his story, noting that details changed when he explained what happened afterward. Scarsella also admitted going to the protest wearing a shoulder holster that made it easy for him to pull his gun, and that he had his jacket unzipped on the cold night.

She hammered him on why he didn't call 911 or report to the police after the shooting. Scarsella said it was because one of the friends in his group, Joseph Backman, told him later that he had called 911. But Hawley noted that Backman wasn't with Scarsella at the time of the shooting.

"So you chose not to go to police?" Hawley asked.

"I didn't have the presence of mind," he responded.

"Then you had the presence of mind to call Mr. Backman and say 'Come pick me up'?"

Racist texts raised in court

Hawley also hit Scarsella with numerous racist text messages he sent to friends in the year before the shooting. Though they had already been introduced in the trial, Hawley tried to use them to paint intent for the protest shooting.

One message talked about reloading a gun "to kill eight black guys." Another recommended putting a Confederate flag on a gun to "get a chimp to chimp out so you could shoot him."

In another, he wrote to a friend about riling up black people so he could gun them down.

"Once again you are texting about using a [gun] to kill black people?" Hawley asked.

"That's what we were talking about, yeah."

When Hawley asked if his texts were "just words," Scarsella said yes and that they didn't mean anything to him.

"So you can bandy around saying the N-word and it doesn't mean anything to you?" Hawley asked.

"I believe in freedom of speech," he responded.

He also said he was "ignorant" about the issues people of color face.

"I think that led me to the texts I sent," he said.

He described other texts as jokes "not meant to be taken seriously."

"They were private text messages between me and a friend, a friend who knew me very well," he testified. "They weren't meant to offend anybody, offend any kind of general audience; they weren't meant to be taken seriously, even by us.

"None of those things directed my actions," he added. "I never acted on any of those things."

Scarsella, 24, also testified that he attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point for two years before he left because of a misconduct investigation. He also applied to become a Minnesota State Patrol trooper in 2014.

Along with Scarsella, Nathan Gustavsson, 22, of Hermantown; Daniel Macey, 27, of Pine City, and Backman, 28, of Eagan stand charged with second-degree riot and aiding an offender. Gustavsson took the stand in Scarsella's defense on Friday.

Under questioning by his attorney Laura Heinrich, Scarsella described the protesters as the antagonists that night.

Scarsella told the jury that at the protest, he and three friends quickly found themselves surrounded by an angry crowd, questioning whether they were with the police or KKK.

Men were wearing masks

Protesters earlier testified in the trial that they asked the men to take the masks off their faces. Scarsella said he didn't comply because "I didn't feel it would be prudent at the time."

After Scarsella took a punch to the cheek, the four started walking away from the crowd when Gustavsson got punched. Scarsella said he picked him up by the coat and kept walking north up Morgan Avenue. Scarsella said they saw a group of five to seven protesters break off and come after them.

Scarsella said he told them to get back "20 or 30 times." But he said the group continued to yell at them, threatening to beat them. "One said, 'White boy, you're going to die,'" Scarsella testified.

About a block from where the confrontation started, he said he saw a man closest to him pull out what he believed was a weapon. Scarsella pulled out his gun and opened fire.

Under cross-examination, he said he didn't warn the protesters that he had a gun or that he was going to fire.

His testimony finished Monday; the defense is expected to continue its case on Tuesday.

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On stand, Scarsella tells his version of shooting at Black Lives Matter protest - Minneapolis Star Tribune

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During an anti-Trump protest in Seattle this weekend, an activist associated with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement took to the megaphone to voice her support for, among other things, killing people, and killing the White House.

While she said that, another protester can be heardsaying, Burn it!

She also says, White people, give your fucking money, your fucking house, your fucking property, we need it fucking all, as another protester responds reparations!

Fuck white supremacy, fuck the U.S. empire, fuck your imperialist ass lives. That shit gotta go.

Pay the fuck up, pay the fuck up. It aint just your fucking time, its your fucking money, and now your fucking life is devoted to social change, she said.

While speaking, shewas wearing a jacket that said Black Lives Matter on the back.

According to the channel that uploaded the clip to YouTube, the activist saying these things is a teacher.

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BLM Anti-Trump Protest In Seattle: 'We Need To Start Killing People' - Daily Caller

The Undefeated

Eagles' Malcolm Jenkins is committed to teaching others about Black Lives Matter The NFL player joined the Caucus of ... The Undefeated Continuing the conversation toward healing in the community and moving forward with the Black Lives Matter movement is a major priority for Philadelphia Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins. So it was no big surprise when Jenkins joined members of the Caucus ...

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Eagles' Malcolm Jenkins is committed to teaching others about Black Lives Matter The NFL player joined the Caucus of ... - The Undefeated

Protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting of Michael Brown in August 2014. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

There are no stories in the riots, just the ghosts of other stories. So says a voiceover in Handsworth Songs, the Black Audio Film Collectives dense and resonant response to the 1985 riots in Birmingham. Its a notion that infuriated Salman Rushdie, who wrote a strident essay for the Guardian in which he claimed the film-makers, too wedded to avant-garde hermeticism, had spurned the opportunity to offer a loudspeaker to marginalised immigrants. He was on the side of a dominant style of journalism in which reporters race to burning neighbourhoods to track down and interview locals who can explain, preferably in outraged sentences, why people are angry, who is to blame for the mess, and what will happen if things dont change.

They Cant Kill Us All is Wesley Lowerys memoir, compiled from the Washington Post reporters messy notes, which aspires to tell the story of Ferguson, Missouri where, in August 2014, weeks of protest and rioting broke out in the aftermath of the shooting of an unarmed black American, Michael Brown, by white police officer Darren Wilson. Its author came to public attention when he became the first journalist to be imprisoned albeit for barely 20 minutes for covering the arrest. He later played a key role in the Posts Pulitzer prize-winning fatal force project, a database that, in the absence of comprehensive federal government data, assembled information on police shootings in 2015.

He excels in his evocation of story gathering in the digital age , where a hashtag can be as galvanising as a photograph

What was Ferguson? Its a name, a kind of brand, a fuzzy signifier. For Lowery, there are no isolated incidents, yet the medias focus on the victim and the officer inadvertently erases the context of the nations history as it relates race, policing, and training for law enforcements. While conservative pundits, often with barely suppressed glee, used it as a byword for dysfunction, many black men and women hauled it into a much longer history of racial terror within America. Did it give birth to the social movement Black Lives Matter? If it didnt kickstart, it certainly intensified a national and perhaps even international debate about whether Barack Obamas presidency had really ushered in a post-racial era.

The people Lowery encounters come across as soundbite sources rather than fully fleshed-out individuals. Although he spends more time hanging out in the communities hes reporting on than many of his colleagues, the character and texture of those neighbourhoods are missing. His medium-roast prose Knowing that a police officer is responsible causes a special, deep pain for the families of those who killed cant compare with the lyricism of Jesmyn Wards Men We Reaped (2014) or the caustic heft of Gary Younges Another Day in the Death of America (2016).

Where he excels is in his evocation of story gathering in the digital age. His Ferguson is viral, logged and distributed by online activists and citizen reporters, a hybrid newsfeed, broadcasting platform and ongoing group therapy space. A hashtag can be as galvanising as a photograph or an eyewitness account. Journalists are cameramen, podcasters, format-neutral.

Lowery, committed but exhausted, says that since Ferguson more or less my job has been to bear witness to pain and trauma. Its worse for his subjects. A protester promises him: One day, one month, one year from now, after you leave, its still going to be fucked up in Ferguson.

They Cant Kill Us All by Wesley Lowery is published by Penguin (9.99). To order a copy for 8.49 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99

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They Can't Kill Us All: The Story of Black Lives Matter by Wesley Lowery review - The Guardian

Danielle Brooks is really worried about the future of our countryespecially when it comes to young black men.

"When it comes to Black Lives Matter, I feel like it's very important," the Orange is the New Black actress told ELLE.com at the SAG awards in Los Angeles on Sunday. "Now our president is talking about more law and order. It made me nervous."

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Brooks, who shared in OITNB's award for best cast in a TV comedy, is concerned about new presidential crackdowns that could lie ahead. "When it came to Ferguson, when it came to Eric Garnerwe as the cast of Orange Is the New Black marched for Eric Garnerit makes me nervous that if something else was to happen in this country, what would happen? What would the actions be? So I just want to make sure that our young black men feel supported and that they feel worth being on this earth, and being in the U.S."

As for other causes championed by Brooks, she says standing for women's rights is an obvious choice. "I went to the Women's March in D.C., so I definitely stand for women's rights. I am a woman. Why wouldn't I?"

Despite her concerns, Brooks is determinedly optimistic that telling diverse stories will bring positive change. "How do I stay hopeful? I would have to say through the artsbeing on a show like Orange, where we get to actually talk about so many topics that are important to our country, and people are listening. Our former president, President Obama, did a wonderful thing where he allowed 500 people that have been incarcerated to have a second chance, and I'm not saying that's solely because of Orange Is the New Black, but I do feel like he's a person who's watched it. I feel like they're listening. So I think with telling stories like Orange, telling stories like Moonlight, telling stories like This Is Us, things will start to happen."

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Danielle Brooks Says Black Lives Matter, No Matter - ELLE.com