Friday, June 5, 2020

DC ExtraTime Special: The Protests That Shut Down America - From Team MTV's Eyes

*** EDITOR'S NOTE: Due to the controversial nature of the content being featured, comments are turned off. Certain featured social posts contain scenes of an intense nature which may be distressing to some readers. Viewer Discretion is Advised. ***

BY DC CUEVA                      
■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB
Estimated Reading Time: 20 MINS. 
(does not include IGTV viewing time)

If you are a loyal viewer of everything MTV offers you in the world of reality television, no mention of it would be complete without the show that started it all... and it was just recently that MTV's Pluto TV channel added to its rotation earlier seasons of The Real World. In fall 2016 in the last season of it to air on MTV itself, Seattle not only saw "Bad Blood" take place inside the Season 32 house, but also brought us a moment that linked that season to the first one 24 years earlier in New York City, and a heated argument on race that Kevin Powell had with Julie Gentry in the streets.
   In the Pacific Northwest, the roommates partook in a protest in downtown to vent their anger at how police were badly mistreating people of color, most especially Blacks. Three years prior, young African-American Treyvon Martin was killed by white man George Zimmerman, but it was him getting away with a not guilty charge that saw everyone voice their anger and began the Black Lives Matter movement. But it would take for more high-profile murders of other Blacks and for NFL'er Colin Kaepernick to take a knee when the National Anthem was played for this to finally become a coast-to-coast movement.
   In the same city and streets that become a war zone when the 1999 World Trade Organization circus came to town, the Black Lives Matter protest that was attended by Black castmates Theo Bradley, Anika Rashaun and their roommates was peaceful. And it was when Theo's brother Kassius Bass took the mic and shared his story of being judged by his appearance and assured everyone that he would be on their side, taking place the same summer that incidents in Louisiana, Minnesota and Dallas sparked over 100 protests that summer... and this was months before that year's election.

IG @RoyleeTheBarber
But few of us could hardly imagine that, four years later, we'd be bringing up Black Lives Matter once again on this DCBLOG site... this time under much more serious matters, and in a more dire time than at any point in the lifetimes of most of us. It was what happened when Black man George Floyd was pinned down to death by a Minneapolis policeman that has caused millions of Americans to emerge out of several months' lockdown due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and erupt into a state of Total Madness... quite literally.
   Since the events of what happened on May 26, what started out as a local protest in Minnesota's Twin Cities has grown like a summertime wildfire into a becoming a super tornado, a tsunami, a category 5 hurricane and an catastrophic earthquake all rolled into one that would not even register on the intensity scale. The immense amount of anger we have felt over this latest act of police brutality the past two weeks have seen protests in over 200 cities in America and overseas. Peaceful ones in the daylight have turned into riots after dark, and have seen police & protesters face off every day since this ordeal began.
   Those who have demonstrated and braved the heat & concerns of a second virus wave are supporting Black Lives Matter in record numbers as they seek to give Floyd's family the justice they deserve and to speak out against how the cops have treated Blacks and other people of color. And it's not just in the Twin Cities where all four policemen responsible for that death being charged: other incidents have taken place in Louisville after the death of Breonna Taylor in March and David McAtee this past week, and many others across this country too many to mention.
   More than a dozen of America's biggest cities have declared nightly curfews, while over twenty state governors have asked for over 17,000 National Guard troops to watch the streets, as well as U.S. Marshals to patrol Washington, D.C. Over 11,000 people have been apprehended & placed behind bars, and it has caused widespread looting that may plunge an American economy already suffering from COVID-19 deeper into a second Great Depression. And of course, the man at the center of this is the President and whose antics have seen everyone go in on him amidst all the teargas.

We here at DCBLOG exist to be what we like to call, "The Escape You Deserve," as we have always strive to provide a place of shelter & calmness in the madness of covering the true escapism of reality TV. Same goes for when you happen to glance over at my Twitter or Instagram @DC408Dxtr, where the only mention of the events going on are posts I posted last weekend lending my support to the African-American community during this time of upheaval.
   But because of the unprecedented events taking place right now and how some of your favorite cast members from the shows we cover and you watch as a source of comfort have become actively engaged in this, we've decided to show you how they have been experiencing & partaking in the The Protests That Shut Down America, from their point of view, as seen in the following social media posts below with occasional context, description and background. We do caution that some of the content shown may be disturbing to some readers and we advise viewer discretion.


IG @AshleighMorghan
One of the two cities that hosted a national convention to nominate its presidential candidate in the most recent election year in 2016 was Cleveland, which hosted the Republican convention a month after LeBron James & the Cavs snapped the city's sports title curse. Someone who is a Northeast Ohio native in Ashleigh Morghan, who six years ago was on MTV's first entry into modern day romantic reality TV, Season 1 of Are You The One? in 2014, and is now a budding actress.
   Ashleigh partook in the Los Angeles BLM protests as the town is once again at the heart of civil unrest. A photo spotted her being in the middle of the street as a car was on fire, and another was of her holding up a "Black Lives Matters" sign - and both were reposted by the Los Angeles Times and on the IG channel of Jared Leto. She wrote on IG, "I don’t believe in lighting things on fire but I understand the energy behind it. I also saw police push, shove and hit non violent protesters today. I understand the pain and frustration behind it. We are tired of our voices not being heard. We are tired of the silence. We are tired of hearing “but all lives matter” that’s not true until BLACK LIVES MATTER. I will shout until JUSTICE is served and CHANGE is made."










This is one of my best friends. @ashleighmorghan. She is hilarious, caring, talented, and a serious light in this world. We come from two different places, backgrounds, cultures, races. Yesterday I checked in on her to ask her how she is feeling, because I can’t imagine how it has to feel right now. I am privileged to not know what it’s like so I want to make sure I’m educating myself on how to properly support my friends of color and to help make change with them. On how to raise a son and pass on that same knowledge to him so that future generations can grow and get to a point that we are so desperately hoping for. To a place where they are no longer judged or targeted for the color of their skin. I just want to say on what platform I have, that this is not about white vs black, or POC saying that anyone else’s lives don’t matter. It’s about the fact that until black lives matter, not all lives matter. I want not only my friends of color to know, but also any of my followers of color to know, that I see you, I hear you, and I support you! ✊🏻✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿 #blacklivesmatter
A post shared by Shelby Yardley (@shelbyardley) on



L.A. knows all too well the chaotic scenes of racially-driven riots taking place in their streets, and two times has it been at the epicenter of it: 1965 with the Watts Riots, followed twenty-seven years later by the one most of us remember in 1992 after four policemen were acquitted of beating up Rodney King... one whose amateur video of the incident made worldwide headlines.
   The George Floyd riots taking place in the Southland have once again seen much of the nation's second largest metropolis become a war zone with hundreds of arrests, looting and curfews in the entire city of Los Angeles and neighboring cities, even though South L.A. has been spared from the damage and the drama unlike what happened twenty-eight years ago. And below, a video of last Friday's rioting from a high-rise from AYTO Season 6 alums Kareem Fathella, Anthony Martin and Ex On The Beach Season 3's Cameron Armstrong.




In a peaceful protest that also took place in L.A. during this ordeal, Ex On The Beach host Romeo Miller took to the mic as he captioned below, "Dear Warriors of the light, shoutout to all my friends and peers across the world playing their part. Although we are frustrated, we won’t beat darkness with darkness. Keep in mind that we are going through this during a pandemic. THEY want us to be violent! THEY want us to destroy! We’ve used fire, now let’s use light. Let’s come together as one and let them hear us roar. Blessings."  And it was just yesterday that Romeo was in Minneapolis for George Floyd's funeral & public memorial service.





Fifty-two years ago, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech in Memphis and hours later he was assassinated, sparking similar scenes of now in riots and looting among the city's African-American community and forcing authorities to call in the National Guard, among other riots that took place in reaction to MLK's death. Someone who comes from this town by the Mississippi is Candace Rice, who MTV viewers first saw as a contestant on its 2017 revival of Fear Factor but who has gained much more fame as part of the cast of Floribama Shore, the Southern-based sister of Jersey Shore.
   When not being out in Florida with her castmates or the occasional visit with family back home in Tennessee, she is in Los Angeles. And she joined the peaceful protests where, unfortunately, she was arrested... and it came at a price as she notes in the tweet below as well as video of the day after. And before that all went down, her fellow Floribama castmate Kirk Medas joined her on YouTube.







✊🏿   ✊🏾   ✊🏽

There were not only riots in Memphis in 1968, but also unrest taking place up north when Chicago hosted that year's Democratic National Convention. A scathing editorial by CBS's Walter Cronkite over his handling of the Vietnam War led President Lyndon B. Johnson to not seek reelection... and while Hubert H. Humphrey was named the Dems' nominee, the attention was outside the convention hall when counterculture and anti-War protesters clashed with police all over town.
   As a town that has gone through a lot including the infamous fire that burned the town down in the 1800's, the Windy City has been through hell and back... and it also has seen intense protests. One who took part in those is Jordan Anderson, who was part of that aforementioned Real World Bad Blood cast four years ago, and where these protests have coincided with both her 25th birthday and her last week in her Chicagoland home before moving out west. The third post in her Instagram post sees a Chicago Police van in motion with a demonstrator on their window, and protesters running after the van, one of over 250 incidents involving protesters and the Second City's police force.
   She captioned in part below, "I am so proud I got to be apart of this today. The behavior of so many police officers is disgusting and they need to start holding each other accountable, along with the system. ... WE ARE DYING and if that doesn’t make you upset, you are apart of the problem. We need to do better, we need everyone to be outraged no matter your race. Thank you for everyone in Chicago who came out to protest #justiceforgeorgefloyd #blacklivesmatter #chicagoprotest ✊🏽"







I am so proud I got to be apart of this today. The behavior of so many police officers is disgusting and they need to start holding each other accountable, along with the system. If you have a problem with the “rioting” and “looting” you are apart of the problem; the Boston tea party rioted because of tax on tea and that’s seen as “American”. Peaceful protest aren’t working..we have been doing them for years, and so we can handle this anyway we see fit when innocent black lives are taken. Malcolm X said you have to deal with people in the language they understand, if violence is that language then you have to deal with it in violence. Buildings and objects are replaceable, Lives are not. WE ARE DYING and if that doesn’t make you upset, you are apart of the problem. We need to do better, we need everyone to be outraged no matter your race. Thank you for everyone in Chicago who came out to protest #justiceforgeorgefloyd #blacklivesmatter #chicagoprotest ✊🏽 (And the 3rd video I recorded literally shows police brutality. Cops are in a car with a bullet proof vest, a helmet on and driving over unarmed pedestrians. “scared” no. Keep that same energy with white protestors holding AK47’s yelling in cops faces; no tear gas no beating, for us it got much worse after that recording I posted and that is exactly the problem.)
A post shared by Jordan A (@jordiedanielle) on



Twitter @Jossie_Flores
Police brutality being caught on camera by an MTV Reality star was also the case in where some of the most intense battles between protesters and the police have taken place. Jozea Flores of The Challenge, Ex On The Beach and Big Brother has been part of the demonstrations taking place in New York City, and he was a bare witness to the incident in Brooklyn last Saturday of two NYPD cruisers driving into protesters who were on their way to marching onto the Brooklyn Bridge, and like in Jordan's Chicago video saw protesters voice their disgust at the PD.
   But it isn't the only police moment Jozea got to witness last weekend: below, he captured on tape an incident involving a cop who was going to go after a Black man when another member of the police force, an African-American lady, told him to not even go after him. And in another photo Jozea wrote, "At approximately 1:08 right now we the people have successfully taken over our city ! In a peaceful way ! No i did not have anything to do with the burning of this police car but i do acknowledge and feel the pain for the other protesters that want to show their frustration and pain in this way! We will not be silenced our voice will be heard !!! DON’T TALK ABOUT IT BE ABOUT IT !!!! Pray for me y’all shit is getting real out here right now ✊🏾✊🏽✊🏼#nyc #blacklivesmatter #georgefloyd #justiceforgeorgefloyd #explorepage #icantbreathe"










There was some people on Twitter who commented last weekend that something was wrong in this country when people in the usually conservative town of Salt Lake City are rioting and protesting, and a day ago three men were charged in fed court for torching a local police car.
   Seven years ago this month saw one of the most infamous moments in MTV Reality history when a fight ensured on Real World Portland involving Nia Moore... two years later, she also had an incident of her bullying three-time champ Jordan Wiseley cost her a finals spot. She is now a traveling flight attendant who spends more of her time in the skies flying across the country, and she captured on video the looting that was taking place in SLC.




✊🏿   ✊🏾   ✊🏽

Nia comes from Atlanta, where the most recent season of The Real World took place last year when the capital of the Deep South hosted Season 33 that began streaming a year ago next week on Facebook Watch. Not surprisingly for a season that harkened back to its old-school roots and perfect for binge-watching in a time like this, much of the conversation in the house centered around issues relevant to the times were living in, including immigration, virginity and most especially race.
   The man at the heart of much of the race talk was Atlanta resident Justin Blu, who was an activist of the Black community with a large Instagram following before walking into the Real World house and has remained a voice for the large African-American community in North Georgia. Below, he shared five extended IGTV videos of him taking part in the demonstrations.











✊🏿   ✊🏾   ✊🏽

In the City of Brotherly Love, several days of protests in Philadelphia have seen a policeman get blasted for striking a protester with his baton, while its mayor has announced that a mural of Frank Rizzo will be removed after his history of racial tensions and police brutality during his tenure as police commissioner and mayor in the '70s. The one challenger on Total Madness with the longest lineage between her original MTV season and the 2020 season of The Challenge, Aneesa Ferreira, took part in peaceful demonstrations in Philadelphia last weekend.











A post shared by Aneesa Ferreira (@aneesamtv) on










✊🏿   ✊🏾   ✊🏽

And now, other scenes of the MTV Reality family taking part in the BLM protests.

✊🏿 LEROY GARRETT ▪ Real World Las Vegas 2011 & The Challenge







A post shared by RoyLeeTheBarber (@royleethebarber) on



✊🏽 ADORE DELANO ▪ Ex On The Beach Peak of Love & RuPaul's Drag Race






A post shared by Adore Delano (@adoredelano) on



✊🏾 JASMINE GOODE ▪ Ex On The Beach Season 1 & The Bachelorette






A post shared by Jasmine Goode (@jasminegoode_) on




✊ CHLOE TRAUTMAN ▪ Siesta Key





✊ BRIANA LaCUESTA ▪ Are You The One? Season 2 & The Challenge (2X)










✊🏿   ✊🏾   ✊🏽


But not everything we have shown has been about people voicing their anger in loud voices, looting, violence and the bad stuff that have defined the past two weeks... and for every one of those moments involving those four things, there is always that one moment of inspiration. And this leads us back to when Black Lives Matter made its way to The Real World, and to the guy who watched his brother speak at that Seattle protest four years ago.
   Theo Bradley came to Season 32 where he had to deal with Kassius being one of the seven bad blood counterparts after an incident involving the police and a pot of weed saw him get arrested while in college... and leading to a fight they had that saw him also get kicked out of Seattle. But many of you best know Theo as the man who quit an elimination on Invasion of the Champions and got a shellacking from the social media herd as the scene of him being brought down from the sky in that bungee cord became an Internet meme.
   An hour's south of Chicago, Theo went to the protests in Kankakee, Illinois, a much different and more calmer demonstration in small towns like his compared to what those in the big cities have had to deal with the past two weeks.




IG @MTV_THEO
It was during the protests there that he and his neighbors witnessed something special: a 29-year-old man who calls the Far South Side of Chicago decided to go back to his Kankakee hometown... but instead of taking the hour's drive down I-57, Keenan Love decided to take a walk all the way back home with only $9 in his wallet. By sure measurement, the route he took from our nation's third largest city to where he grew up was 46 miles... the same age George Floyd was when he was killed.
   Love told WLS-TV, "I just had to find a way to not be like everybody else and protest and make a stand for (George Floyd)," and his peaceful protest walk was livestreamed on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok as everyone watched his 18-hour walk from the big city to this town of over 50,000. Family, friends and onlookers offered this personal trainer food, water and fresh pairs of shoes while also wearing a pin of his late brother Terrell who was killed last year though it didn't involve police.
   Theo captured the moment of Keenan's last mile of his trek, as the hometown hero was given a police escort for the homestretch, and just yesterday the city's mayor gave him a key to the city as Keenan now plans to make this an annual tradition to walk 46 miles for George. Theo captioned on IG @MTV_Theo, "This is self explanatory. He needed no help to do this. He didn’t have someone in his ear giving him the idea. He did it on the will for his people. This is the definition of a BLACK MAN #46forFLOYD Y’all go show him the biggest support!!! @thekeenanlovebrand"










✊🏿   ✊🏾   ✊🏽


A post as complex and complicated as this covering THE hot topic of the moment right now would not be complete without the thoughts of the blogger on Black Lives Matter. And I joined with the rest of the social media community in observing #BlackoutTuesday earlier this week and I replaced the weekly tradition of me posting a "DC Selfie" picture on Sunday on my Instagram @DC408Dxtr with some brief thoughts of mine on where we all stand right now... that picture is below. And it remains one of the handful of mentions of Black Lives Matter and the protests on my social media channels, as I prefer to have my Twitter, Instagram and other channels be places of escape during times like these - thus no flooding of timelines and stories relating to BLM.







Usually on a weekend like this, I would be punctuating this Sunday with a DC Selfie picture. But that won’t happen this week, as the week we have had has given way to what has gone on in the world right now. And that’s given me this chance to offer my thoughts under this black picture above… The unrest gripping our nation since a heinous act committed up in Minnesota last week has given all of you the time & opportunity to vent your feelings, your pent up anger and to stand up for what you believe in. And the killing of George Floyd by a white policeman has united all of you like no other in this time where we have all been divided, and when it seems we’ve lost our way in 2020. Being a lifelong Bay Area kid, I live in the part of this nation that gave you the man who, thanks to doing an end-of-game ritual before kickoff in his several seasons with the Niners, introduced all of us to a movement that cannot be ignored in police brutality and social injustice - and whose impact has been felt beyond the gridiron. To those I know personally and those who I follow on here on social media who are in the Black community, I have your back in this battle where we, you & I are united as one to defeat that one common opponent: racism. And also, to making sure that those who are responsible are held accountable for their actions. Be safe and strong, and make your voice heard. You will all overcome this, and your loud voices will make a change that will have a huge impact on the world, our country & in the community where you call home, as you all are at this moment as these protests have raged on from coast to coast. I may not be there in person as we also continue to fight another battle of beating the pandemic going on in our world, but in spirit I stand & walk alongside you as we fight this fight together. We love you, we support you, and we won’t declare victory until justice is served. Black Lives Matter. #blacklivesmatter #blm #justiceforgeorgefloyd A message from your friend, @dc408dxtr.
A post shared by DC Cueva (@dc408dxtr) on




Posts like these are only part of DCBLOG's view of the world of MTV Reality as seen through the vantage point of ExtraTime, where we offer a look at the people, moments, TV's most fascinating reality series and the world around us as seen through this community... in addition to the usual array of weekly episode coverage including recaps and the episode social reaction including The Challenge Total Madness, Siesta Key and starting this month, A Double Shot at Love.
   Like what you've read above? Bookmark us and like, comment & share our posts on the social media platforms of your choice, and include the hashtags #DCBLOG & #SeeForYourself in your posts to @DC408Dxtr, and make sure to tell a friend about us so that they, and more of your fellow MTV Reality fans, can be introduced to the outstanding content we offer... and thanks for reading.

- I AM DC
#DCBLOG
Posted by at
Labels: ,