My name is Tim Smith, and I am a violent protestor.

At 8:10 PM June 14th, 2025, I was not a violent protestor. At 8:13, just 180 seconds later, I was the only visible source of violence in the Salt Lake City “No Kings” march.

I am a 62-year-old man living in Salt Lake City. I have been attending events and marching in protests since the beginning of this year.

I did not even know that a march was planned for that day. While eating dinner out with my wife, I saw some of my neighbors moving toward the park to assemble. I didn’t feel like spending my evening that way. I was tired and sunburnt and wanted to go home and watch a movie. But I decided to go.

So, at 8:10 PM I had been marching peaceably along with every intention in the world to walk for a bit more and then go home and relax. Yet at 8:13 PM I was fighting in the streets. AND I was not fighting with the “other side” or with the police ... I was fighting with a fellow marcher on my side!

“Ok, Tim Smith, how did all THAT happen in 3 minutes?”

The specific details have very little to do with my behavior in those 3 minutes, so I will be brief on context. At 8:10 PM the crowd in front of me began surging backwards in my direction, starting to run, and shouting “Active Shooter! Active Shooter!” Some part of me took in the faces of the men, women and children as the crowd swelled around me; time enough to feel their disbelief, fear and panic. Those faces, the police, the helicopters, the possibility of being shot: the enormity of everything went through some part of me like an electric current. I stood still in the emptying street, in a private eddy of anger, and I raised my arms and shouted as loudly as I could “Bring it! I’m standing here! You want to shoot somebody you *#*! Bring it!”

[One minute: 60 seconds]

Some of the police along the route began to respond to the shooting reports and moved in my direction. I saw another marcher standing nearby, giving them the finger while they were beginning to move. I ran up to him and said, “Don’t do that! You're not helping! Stop it!” He turned around and snapped “Get out of my face! I’ll protest my way, and you protest your way!” “Oh, you’re a big man with the finger – that's really going to do it for us!” Etc. We shouted each other down in the chaos.

[One and a half minutes: 90 seconds]

By this time, the crowd had begun to regather and to fill the street again, and he and I were near the front of the newly moving march where hundreds could see us. We both backed down and then went back at each other verbally several times. Our tough talk got more and more violent. And just as moments before I had shouted out at the invisible shooter, I shouted at him “Bring it! I’m standing here! You want to hit somebody? You *#*! Bring it!” He pushed me hard, and I fell backwards ... hard. The crowd made a horrible sound as I hit the ground: the sound of hundreds gasping in dismay, shock, confusion. Out of the corner of my mind I was aware of the men, women, children looking at me in shock and fear. “... a shooting ... people fighting each other in the street ... is this ... a riot...are we in a riot...”

[Two minutes: 120 seconds]

I was getting back to my feet to ... do what? I don’t know what I was going to do. But I was quickly surrounded by a half dozen women who were shouting at me very sternly “Sir WE ARE HAVING A PEACEFUL protest! Move away!” Suddenly, in my mind's eye I was being judged as a 60 something white man fighting against protestors and being confronted by organizers. “What!? No! I AM part of the protest. I am marching WITH you. THAT guy started it ... I was just trying to keep HIM from ....” Nobody listened to anything I said. “Sir WE ARE HAVING A PEACEFUL protest! Move away!” I was confused, indignant, shocked. Everything was horribly upside down.

[Three minutes: 180 seconds]

And that brings me up to the moment where I had become the one-and-only source of violence anywhere within view. I began to return to myself and take in the fact that the other man was being surrounded too and was being given the same message: “Sir WE ARE HAVING A PEACEFUL protest! Move away!” Then it clicked: the other marchers and organizers did not care at all what was happening between he and I. They only cared that we stop IMMEDIATELY. They only cared that we were peaceful, for the sake of the real issues, the march and the safety of everyone involved. And just 3 minutes before, that was all *I* had cared about. I had understood that keeping the march peaceful was bigger than anything else that was happening, and bigger than any one person, any two people. I KNEW that. I WANTED that. And yet ... there I was, fighting another protester in front of news cameras, police, families, neighbors.

I felt sick. I quickly made signs that I was ok, that I understood everything that I was being told and that I would not be a problem. Then a few other marchers put their hands on my shoulder and spoke very gently to me. “Everyone is angry. Everyone is afraid. Everyone on every side is experiencing all of this in their own way. We need to help each other keep it together, keep our focus and our discipline. It’s ok. It’s ok. We all understand.” I began to cry. The crowds were moving forward again ... the 3 minutes was over. I was hugged repeatedly, and I rejoined the march.

As we dispersed that night, the police walked through the crowd and confirmed that someone had been hit by gunfire and was seriously wounded (and later died). Lingering on the streets, little pockets of people made up of both police and marchers talked quietly together.

I walked around by myself for many hours, trying to understand myself. “How, in 3 minutes, could you make yourself part of the problem? How could you be the one who loses it? People are getting injured, and you are behaving like ... I don't even know what. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Now, many of you reading this will want to reassure me. “There was a shooting – you were freaked out – you were trying to help the police – you were trying to prevent more conflict and panic, for the sake of the marchers, the victim, the police. You were trying to keep the other marcher from making things worse. You didn’t start it - he pushed YOU!”

These reassurances would all be true. But they would only apply to the first minute or so. By 60 seconds *I* was well beyond that. *I* did not back down. *I* kept going. *I* kept provoking. I kept ...... I kept... what? “Yes, what exactly where you doing Tim? Really... what the hell? What you did was so ... DANGEROUS. Dangerous to yourself, to others. You violated the trust and goals of the other marchers, of those who protected the march and those on the sidelines. Why the hell did you not just turn away and maybe focus on helping people who were frightened by the shooting? How did it become about you? Where did THAT even come from? Ok, OK - you can see that it came up from deep stored up anger – that part is not so hard to figure out. But ... the way it came out of you - the speed, the suddenness, the blindness - that is DANGEROUS. If you don’t understand this and come to grips with it, YOU are a problem. YOU are dangerous. YOU can’t be here like this. PERIOD.”

I don’t think my behavior made the news. Two grown men pushing each other around like adolescents while others face real danger. Tawdry, embarrassing ... unimportant. An ugly moment washed away quickly in the current of swiftly moving events, forgotten by all except me and perhaps the other marcher.

So, why am I sharing this bit of embarrassing and unimportant tawdriness?

It is partly for me and partly to generalize my experience in case it is helpful to somebody else. I have found that the best way to learn from very serious mistakes is to dig deep into some of what goes into them. When I do, I sometimes realize that there was not much that is unique about it, and that most likely some other people are struggling in the same way.

The realization that core parts of what I am experiencing in myself is not so unusual creates a chance for me to try to observe myself and forgive myself as I would observe and forgive someone else.

So here is the key observation about myself that I want to share from my somber hours of walking around talking to myself. (If it resonates with your emotions or situation, maybe it will be a little useful. And maybe it might help someone not to behave the way I did.)

My Observation About Myself:

___

When I join a march, I bring my feet, my body, and my voice. THESE are what I add. I am a number. I occupy a space. I am a statistic. I am sound. That is exactly as it should be. I willingly bring my feet, my body and my voice to the cause. That is what I want.

But I am a whole person: not just feet, body and voice. I bring my years of anxiety; I bring my exasperation; I bring my disbelief; I bring bravery, and I bring cowardice; I bring discipline, and I bring lack of control; I bring sincerity, and I bring hypocrisy; I bring intelligence and understanding, and I bring ignorance; I bring fairness, and I bring unfairness; I bring selflessness, and I bring a craving to be important, to be seen to stand for something; I bring my peace, and I bring my aggression; I bring my love and my hope, and I bring my anger and my despair! I can never just bring my feet, body and voice. I bring all of me, every single time. And I always will.

___

You can stop reading here if you don’t relate. If you do relate a little, the rest of the words are about what I do with this observation about myself.

Do I try to root out and eliminate my anger? No. I think some parts of it are right, correct and useful. In that case, I will need the ability to manage it. For example, I need the ability to manage when to confront and when to walk away. Will I be able to manage my anger completely in the next couple of weeks. No. I am too complex, and the anger runs too deep, has too many faces, too many voices, has worked its way into too many spaces, and has been part of me for too long. In that case, can I make sufficient and effective strides right away? Yes, my experience is that I can.

How? This episode reaffirmed to me that by far the most important and effective method is to get by myself and settle down enough to observe as best I can what is going on inside my head and heart - almost as if I was studying someone else. As I observe myself as best I can, I tell myself the truth about what I see as best as I can. I do this on my own, PRIVATELY.

Why privately? Because when I try to explain myself to others, I can hear myself posturing, justifying, and prevaricating, and confusing words for the emotions and thoughts that I have tried to make them stand for. And like a child telling lies, I will need to keep track of and defend my words. I get caught up in defending verbal approximations for what are really complex mixtures of emotions and thoughts, mixtures that can only ever partially be put into words – never entirely – never completely.

The only way I have ever been able to avoid this posturing is to work on my own until I can tell MYSELF the truth, as best I can, in some private internal space, the truth about what I see in myself. In that private internal space, I begin to find and use the wordless language of my mind, my emotions and my heart, with less and less posturing, more and more directness and simplicity. A space where I can take time to be patient, to let the layers and layers of experiences, memories, emotions and thoughts (and the words that I have used to imperfectly represent them), to let them relax and unravel a little and try to see what is laying around beneath them. Eventually I get a close enough understanding that I feel that can I trust my evaluation and judgement of myself. Then, and only then, I forgive myself (or decide not to) and get on with the business of deciding what to do about it: address things, get some help from others if I want, and start moving back into action.

Finally, this process of observing and telling myself the truth, privately, about what I see, gives me, for free, a very clear realization of responsibility. We cannot see what others bring with them into events like marches. We can only see what we bring, even if imperfectly. And so, responsibility for seeing what I bring is mine alone, not because I am an especially responsible, good, wise, or observant person. It is my responsibility because it is impossible for it to be anyone else's responsibility. All any of us can know is that we are all bringing unseen things, and that we do well to be vigilant in observing ourselves, to see more of what we are bringing, to tell ourselves the truth privately about what we see as best as we can and then, to bend it as best we can to the behavior we hope for.

I went to a march, and I stumbled and failed. Now I have done some work, and I will march again as soon as I can. I will bring my feet, my body and my voice, and I will bring, not less, but MORE of myself. I know myself better, and I will use myself better.

I am Tim Smith, and I am a violent protester who has learned something about himself.

I am a 62-year-old man, and I will keep learning like this until I’m 70 and beyond. For me, THAT is the LONG MARCH, the most important march. And if you have read this far, it is highly likely that you are walking that LONG MARCH too, somewhere nearby, in the same general direction as me, no matter what each of us is marching for in the shorter marches.

Friend, thank you for reading. See you on the LONG MARCH!