Deja View: Great video device for demos

[vincenzo]

(Note: I have no financial interest in this product.)

http://www.mydejaview.com/pages/2/index.htm

This device continually holds that last thirty seconds in buffer. I find that it takes too long to bring a camera to bear and changes the dynamic in any case.

I would have loved having this in the pre Iraq war demos. After helping break a police blockade, a 6'4" or so cop with 50-70 lbs of muscle or so on me, jabbed his finger in my face and told me to get out of his sight before he kicked my ass. This was right before other cops pulled him away. Actually, I had alreay shrugged my shoulders and was walking away. I never engage an angy officer. There's a catch-22 that always works in their favor. No matter how unjustified an arrest might be, the second you resist it becomes justified.

(Actually, let me go into detail, it's one of my proudest demo moments. We were being herded from street to street, corralled this was and that behind metal pens. I kept trying to break police blockades at any corner I could -- talking to sympatico cops (there are more of these than you might think), starting chants of "Whose Streets? Our Streets!" -- a critical mass would often break the blockade's determination. Then I came to a line of cops across a whole street, one per yard. Nothing seemed to work. They wouldn't talk and we couldn't budge them. Finally I noticed that they had started letting people through on the sidewalk. So to no one in particular, I said "OK, we'll outflank you then." Proceeded down the sidewalk and then back into the street. All the time calling for others to join me in the street. So they had thousands of people on one side of the line and more and more on the other. Finally their commanding officers called a retreat, their position was untenable. I guess that pissed off that one individual.)