I spent Saturday filming a pro-Palestinian rally at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. The rally was part of a three-day conference held by a group that seeks to force the university to sell holdings in companies that do business in Israel. Because Rutgers is funded by the State of New Jersey, the conference became a political hot-potato that eventually involved Governor Jim McGreevey.

At the rally, participants and organizers alike tried to shut down my camera. (I don’t really know for sure why they didn’t want me shooting video there, but it made me wonder whether they were familiar with any of my previous work.) For a while, they surrounded me and hit the front of my camera with signs to stop me from filming the rally’s speakers. Eventually, they backed off after realizing that cameras from several other media outlets—including NBC News, WCBS-TV, and Channel 12 New Jersey—were capturing their actions.

Channel 12 made minor mention of the scuffle that night on the air, saying that the rally was “relatively peaceful, but there were some on hand, mainly with cameras, who were met with tension.” The report then shows a brief clip of my reaction to the people who were trying to censor my coverage of the rally: “I have every right to be here.”

I plan on posting an article describing the entire event, which I’ll then follow up with a short video.

Update: 
Apparently, I am not the only one to have faced the wrath of protesters seeking to censor citizen journalists.