I still remember an editor in New York once telling me not to include a protest image in my portfolio. I understood their point - protests can be too easy to document, access is easily given (just show up) and the editor wanted to see longer term photo stories that showed a "greater commitment to storytelling" . Plus I imagine every other photographer editors saw after 2011 had portfolios filled with protest images, all pretty much the same.

On the flip side, though, I've known plenty of amazing photographers who have made incredible work covering protests over the past decade, Rian Dundon's work in Portland and Yunghi Kim's work in NYC, being some of the best. So take all advice with a giant grain of salt.

2011 was also the time I started to notice there were as many cameras at protests as protestors, and the lines between journalists, police and protestors pretty much vanished, as evidenced the day I was clubbed by an anarchist right after the photograph of me here was taken; it was the first, and only time, I’ve been assaulted doing my work. The images here were taken during what I call ‘the great unwinding’ - the Occupy Protests, in 2011, in Seattle.

Photo: Moments before I was attacked by anarchists smashing windows of the Nike Store in downtown Seattle. Photograph by Joshua Trujillo.