I Was at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, Let Me Tell You What Everyone Missed
November 9, 2020 — I was on a small documentary crew covering conspiracy theories surrounding the election.
We were told at first Trump would be addressing people at the Four Seasons, we piled into our rental and were told en route that it was going to be a lawyer speaking. I compulsively scanned political news as I have every 5 minutes since Tuesday and screamed, BBC had just called it for Biden.
At the same time the crew-member who was driving said, “this address is for a landscaping company, did we make a mistake?” Trump’s tweet confirmed we were heading the right direction. We rolled up and saw procession of cops and some protestors. It was a super dingy weird industrial part of town. Trump supporters were on one side of the street, Biden supporters on the other and they were screaming insults. Total clown show vibes. Horns honked, ‘fuck yous’ were exchanged on each side. A woman raised her hands in prayer holding a plastic rosary. There is a chain-link fence with razor wire on the top and the police were only letting a certain number of press members in. We were too late to enter however fence was opened for the Epoch times.
Here’s what most people missed: it got really heated between the two groups as the event went on. I watched the Biden supporters and the Trump supporters yell at each other, eventually moving to the same side of the street to escape the sun. They screamed with just a few cops and a few press between them. I’d move the camera back-and-forth and catch the insults. One sweet-looking elderly black woman on the Biden side screamed some of the nastiest (and frankly funniest) insults I’ve ever heard at the majority white male MAGA side. One uncomfortable teenager who looked shy nervously adjusted his Trump 2020 mask as his older brothers yelled things like, “hope you enjoy your welfare!”
As the crowd finally disbursed and there were just a handful of people left they actually started just having a conversation. Two protestors, one on each side of the line hurling insults screamed about Hitler then quickly discovered they were both Jewish. The crowd dispersed, the mood began to calm, the two began to talk. It was really civil, they introduce themselves, and were using first names. They continued to disagree but eventually bumped elbows, the Biden supporter saying to the Trump supporter, “Mark I think normally we would be friends, dude.” I even got two of them to smile and take a photo together. It was a hell of a moment, without their packs behind them they softened and became human again.
Breaking the spell of this whole nightmare of the last five years is really about getting ourselves out of these groups and talking to people like individuals again.
At the end of the event as we were packing up our gear I saw some poor sap trying to shove Giuliani’s podium into the backseat of a small sedan and I don’t know why but it struck me as the funniest fucking thing I’ve seen during this entire week long circus.
Then we went back to our hotel and partied hard with the people celebrating, the city was jubilant.
Biden 2020.
