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Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

• kf 6y ago
  Bumping this towards front page discussion, the Wikipedia link on this got flag killed from the front page.
• Drunkfoowl 6y ago
  I'm sure there are a lot of folks here who are either living, or have been to Seattle/Cap Hill. Politics aside for a moment, this is the pinnacle of Cap Hill IMO. Good on them, as long as they stay safe and try not to get too culty.
• kf 6y ago
  So my question: will Trump quickly and lethally invoke the Insurrection act? Will the Joint Chiefs comply or create a constitutional crisis? If this isn’t shut down quickly, I predict we see a national movement like this by Juneteenth.
  • Trasmatta 6y ago
    His threat to use the Insurrection Act last week was one of the most unpopular acts of his entire presidency, and directly led to the major rebukes from people like Mattis. So I doubt it.
    • kf 6y ago
      While that’s a fair point, this situation is a more literal insurrection than the previously seen protests and taking of goods from stores. CHAZ has declared their independence from the USA and historically that kind of thing is really not allowed. Has Trump so thoroughly lost control that secession is legal now?
      • balls187 6y ago
        They haven't actually declared themselves independent from the US. That blurb on the website "You are now leaving the USA" is tongue in cheek. The actual demands make no such claim about independence, all US Federal, State, and Local laws still apply. There will eventually be arrests, and the WORST thing Trump can do is attempt to use the military to squash relatively peaceful protests.
      • Taikonerd 6y ago
        I think the Seattle Police are thinking, "these are a bunch of kids who want to play-act La Revolución. If we just ignore them for a week, they'll get bored or disillusioned and go home." So the police aren't going to storm the barricades -- they figure they won't have to.
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
        • gen220 6y ago
          This basically happens in Berlin every year on the May Day celebrations/marches. The police let the anarchists do whatever they want, within certain constraints (no injuring people, constrained to certain neighborhoods), and the anarchists only do it on that day of the year. Sometimes there are conflicts between the police and the rioters, but it never escalates to huge conflicts any more. It’s a display of mutual respect for authority, and it allows the radical groups to blow off some steam, while campaigning for progress. I know this idea makes no sense to law and order -type people, but it’s an ancient human idea to ritualize and sanctify the behaviors you want to discourage or control. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day_in_Kreuzberg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day_in_Kreuzberg
          • programmarchy 6y ago
            This is a fitting explanation, and I think developing these kinds of rituals further will help heal some of the divides in this country. Your last paragraph reminded me of Eric Gans’ “Originary Hypothesis” [1]: > Gans hypothesizes that language originates in "an aborted gesture of appropriation," which signifies the desired object as sacred and which memorializes the birth of language, serving as the basis for rituals which recreate the originary event symbolically. The originary sign serves to defer the mimetic violence threatening the group, hence Gans's capsule definition of culture as "the deferral of violence through representation." [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Gans#The_Originary_Hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Gans#The_Originary_Hypo...
            • 6y ago
      • crocodiletears 6y ago
        This is a bunch of leftists forming a squat in territory consciously ceded by local police. Hardly a national security issue. The city continues to provide the area with utilities, clean-up services, port-a-potties, and EMS when requested. Whether or not the city planned on this, it's a nice clean way to quarantine the most radical protest elements in a playground that lets them live out their revolutionary fantasies in an environment where they can either be constructive, or hurt one-another away from everyone else. In a month, they'll probably cut services and start pushing them out without making a huge deal of it.
  • smkellat 6y ago
    From 10 USC 253: “ The President, by using the militia or the armed forces, or both, or by any other means, shall take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy, if it— “(1) so hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or “(2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws. “In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.” I don’t know. Without sufficient intel as to what is happening on the ground I wouldn’t know if civil rights are being denied. If they are and the local authorities are cooperating with the rebellious group then there might be a way to utilize the act. It is just too soon to tell.
• erdos4d 6y ago
  It has the look of a mini Christiania, nice to see something like this sprout up in the US. I hope it sticks around and becomes something really cool.
• albybisy 6y ago
  From Wikipedia: Animal Farm by G.Orwell "The book tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, however, the rebellion is betrayed, and the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm
  • docdeek 6y ago
    One reddit thread suggests it is already heading that way. https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/h077uv/raz_simone_and_crew_assault_man_for_graffiti_june/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/h077uv/raz_simone_...
    • ciarannolan 6y ago
      From the OP of that post: >tl;dw: Man was tagging over someone else's art, Raz and group approach and separate him from crowd, chasing him for two blocks. He begins to film them with his phone, they take it from him. He tries to get it back and they attack him, kicking him in the head and breaking his glasses. At one point, Raz threatens to shoot the man. They then begin to gaslight him that it was all his fault. Audio only for most of the end, because woman in Raz' crew filming puts the phone in her pocket while the stream continues. [1] So it took about 3 days for this anarchist utopia to demonstrate exactly why police exist. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/h077uv/raz_simone_and_crew_assault_man_for_graffiti_june/ftkhmqn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/h077uv/raz_simone_...
      • milquetoastaf 6y ago
        Because something like this would never happen with the police involved...
        • _-david-_ 6y ago
          I don't think the person you were responding to ever made the claim that it would never happen if the police were there. I think the point is that it did happen. If this is supposed to be a utopia free of cops then they are doing a poor job. They have "cops" that beat up people for petty crimes.
• yingw787 6y ago
  I wonder if it's bigger than Sealand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand When I look at the list of demands I'm pretty quick to dismiss it. Then I remember how I dismissed the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle too, and how many of the fears those protesters had were realized over the next two decades. I might be too hopeful, but I really think the city leadership should talk to them and hear them out, instead of just trying to push them over.
  • kf 6y ago
    The city is already cooperating and providing portable toilets and tried to replace the barricades with nice planters. It’s a national conversation now.
  • ncallaway 6y ago
    The list of demands came from an open mic discussion. They let anyone come up and suggest a demand. Someonen transcribed those demands and then posted them. I think it would be better to view those demands as the union of demands of each person willing to speak to a crowd. Which is why you see inconsistency in then, why it's such a long list, etc. I just think that list of demands is better understood in that context.
    • tomschlick 6y ago
      Its not a list of demands if it's ridiculous and can't be realistically filled. At that point its just a list of wishes.
      • floren 6y ago
        Rather reminds me of the demands that used to come out when students would occupy a university building back in the 60s, where they'd demand that the president of Cowtown College get the US out of Vietnam immediately
      • ncallaway 6y ago
        Okay. You can semantically call it whatever you want! I'm just trying to give some additional context to how this list of (demands|wishes) came about. If you view it as a single list of (demands|wishes) it doesn't make as much sense. If you view it as the (demands|wishes) from a wide variety of people, that were made on an open mic at a protest that was transcribed, then categorized, then posted to the internet, it's easier to understand what it is. There are organized protest leaders that have curated their list of demands and put it out. This very much isn't that! This is basically the raw list of demands from a wide variety of different speakers. The only editing was in the transcription and the categorization of those demands.
• blaser-waffle 6y ago
  I believe Denmark had something like this for a while. It started with squatters taking over an area kind of like this. Turned into a serious drug venue and eventually fell apart. Sounds like it sort of restarted, albeit with regular Danish law enforcement and other city resources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania
  • KozmoNau7 6y ago
    > Turned into a serious drug venue and eventually fell apart. Sounds like it sort of restarted, albeit with regular Danish law enforcement and other city resources. As someone living in Copenhagen, I would not consider that anything near an accurate description of the history of Christiania. What happened was that an old military area and barracks was left abandoned and disused, so a group of squatters moved in, fixed up the place and built a community. It did not turn into a "serious drug venue". They had issues with hard drugs in the 1970s, but kicked all of that to the curb and there is a strict community-supported ban on all hard drugs. Over the years various sellers have popped up here and there, but they are generally shunned and chased out by the community. It also did not "fall apart", although it has had its ups and downs. The political winds have varied from indifference to acceptance to attempts to abolish the entire things, raze the area and built apartments. The current state is that the area is owned by a foundation and is treated partly as a part of the city of Copenhagen and partly as an independent enclave. Danish law enforcement is grudgingly accepted in cases of actual crimes, but otherwise not exactly openly welcomed.
    • bathtub365 6y ago
      I was in Christiania late last year and there were at least a dozen tables with sellers selling drugs. It didn’t seem like the community was shunning them or running them out
      • kinghajj 6y ago
        > They had issues with hard drugs in the 1970s, but kicked all of that to the curb and there is a strict community-supported ban on all hard drugs. Are you sure that the dealers you saw were trading hard drugs, and not soft ones like cannabis, mushrooms, etc.?
• sharemywin 6y ago
  According to a June 10 article by City Journal, hip hop artist Raz Simone acts as "co-leader and enforcer" of the Zone, while former mayoral candidate Nikkita Oliver formulates the commune's political aims.[24] However, according to Simone, the Zone has no central leadership, with all residents serving as leaders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone
  • kf 6y ago
    The City Journal article is interesting but has such a strange perspective and bias that I appreciate you not linking it here.
  • ciarannolan 6y ago
    I've lived in a neighborhood with an "enforcer". Let's just say most of us were happy when the police showed up from time to time.
    • kf 6y ago
      Living in a neighborhood in Oakland CA with no enforcer and annoyingly blatant property crime, I’m willing to give an enforcer a try cause it’s not like people trust the police here or that they even come when you call them.
      • tomschlick 6y ago
        Then stop electing the same people who de-prioritize prosecuting property crime. I'm amazed by SF and close areas utter disregard for what is normal crime wise. Most people in most cities don't have a story about their car window being smashed in and rummaged through. Every thread I see here / on reddit about SF someone mentions that its completely normal and should be expected there.
        • kf 6y ago
          ...living in evolving anarchy has benefits though. I suspect that San Francisco’s open air drug market with dangerously cheap methamphetamine is one of the dirty secrets behind the engine of creation of Silicon Valley.
• FisForFlight 6y ago
  This seems ideal.. protests on the east coast result in getting shot with rubber bullets and tear gased by incompetent politicians.
  • ncallaway 6y ago
    Uh...that was happening in Seattle every night. That's what led to this. There was night after night after night of police using flashbangs, teargas, and mace on mostly peaceful protests. It was extremely unpopular with both the protestors and the local residents. There have been many calls for the mayor to resign over the repeated use of force. So the police finally stopped with the violence. They just...left. They abandoned the East Precinct, expecting the protestors to burn it down. The protestors decided not to burn it down, and instead set up an occupy style movement on the streets outside the police station. But, yes. They definitely tried rubber bullets, teargas and mace first.
• eplanit 6y ago
  "Within the self governed blocks you can find food vendors, daily marches, public film screenings and community councils hosted throughout the day". Performance Art, I guess. Reads like a story of children building a treehouse/fort.
  • quantummkv 6y ago
    To me this whole thing reads more like the plot and gameplay of the next Far Cry game. What a time to be alive.
• Pfhreak 6y ago
  Seattle police vacated the east precinct, fully expecting protesters to burn it down. Instead, the protesters set up an open zone, compiled a set of demands, and from all accounts set up something cool and unique. Here's hoping it sustains itself for a while.
  • jerf 6y ago
    No, not even remotely "by all accounts". There are plenty of accounts that isn't "cool and unique" but is just another place ruled by violent thugs: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/h077uv/raz_simone_and_crew_assault_man_for_graffiti_june/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/h077uv/raz_simone_... I'm not passing judgment yet since the days are young and the political bias on the ground is thick in both directions. But it is definitely not "by all accounts". But my personal bias on the table is that yeah, trading police that were imperfectly constrained by the system for new police utterly and entirely unconstrained by the system is probably not going to go well. The real "fun" will start when Raz's faction pisses off enough people to form a violent counterfaction and you get a gang war, so give it a bit. It takes time for these things to develop. Let the honeymoon wear off and have this place showing a functioning system for, oh, say, at least a month before declaring victory. Not that you declared victory, I'm just saying, I recommend against getting too invested in this. It's not as if "a place that has no police" is some shocking new experiment that has never been run before; you've got plenty of places you can look out in the world to see what happens next. It's not a difficult-to-predict progression.
    • Pfhreak 6y ago
      I watched that video, I saw someone coming in and defacing peoples homes. The people filming asked if they had permission, then asked the person to stop. The person refused to stop painting and pushed the group of folks and there was a scuffle that ended with the tagger walking away. Aside, intentionally or unintentionally, calling a group of predominantly black people "thugs" is a common dog whistle.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
• Minor49er 6y ago
  Seattle doesn't want to be beaten by Minneapolis to becoming the next Detroit
  • jdhn 6y ago
    As someone who currently lives near Detroit, the city is faring remarkably well in light of everything that's been going on. I haven't heard anything about rioters, just people who are peacefully protesting.
    • Minor49er 6y ago
      I'm referring to Detroit circa 1967
      • jdhn 6y ago
        I think it would take a lot more than this to get Seattle to resemble Detroit in 1967.
  • evanlivingston 6y ago
    What does this mean?
    • staplers 6y ago
      This whole thread really illuminates how racist and sheltered this community is.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • tjr225 6y ago
    Ironically this would make the area much more affordable. I’m all for it :)
    • remarkEon 6y ago
• jacobush 6y ago
  I wondered if it's inspired by Christiania? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania It's been a thing half a century now.
  • dayofthedaleks 6y ago
    Sure, but also Paris in 1871, and Barcelona in 1936.
• gesticulator 6y ago
  This site documents the zone with a timeline, some pictures and local articles as well: https://chaz.zone/ https://chaz.zone/
• matxip 6y ago
  For those interested, this is a previously streamed speaking event in the CHAZ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7nDkd3V2V0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7nDkd3V2V0
• balls187 6y ago
  Capitol Hill's police precinct has been abandoned, however, police are still responding to 9-1-1 calls to the area. This feels very much overblown. Seattle Times has an article that outlines similar "occupy" protests. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/welcome-to-the-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone-where-seattle-protesters-gather-without-police/?utm_source=marketingcloud&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TSA_061120030533+Capitol+Hill+Autonomous+Zone+What+is+it_6_10_2020&utm_term=Active%20subscriber https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/welcome-to-the-cap...
  • FireBeyond 6y ago
    There was almost an air of disappointment from SPD that the police station _wasn't_ burned down. It seemed that they were threatening that it was only a matter of time, "We told you so"-style. But alas.
• smitty1e 6y ago
  Glad to see the #Occupy franchise has a new installment out.
• stillbourne 6y ago
  I would like to play this level of Sonic the Hedgehog. Which version is it on?
• dawg- 6y ago
  Their first demand is that the Seattle Police Department be abolished, as in 100% defunded, as in completely deleted. Coming out with a demand like that is just asking to lose right off the bat. I wish they would delete it and stick with their second demand - take all weapons away from police. No guns, no batons, no tasers. It's also crazy, but at least it's crazy in a "this might just be crazy enough to work" kind of way.
  • muricula 6y ago
    A bunch of people are calling for defunding the police and not total abolition, although that is what this site says. Socialist City Council member Kshama Sawant has already pledged to bring legislation to cut the police department budget by 50%, and city officials are going over it in depth.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Their first demand is that the Seattle Police Department be abolished, as in 100% defunded, as in completely deleted. Coming out with a demand like that is just asking to lose right off the bat. Abolition of existing centralized paramilitary police departments in favor of rethinking public safety and social services and reconstituting and redistributing law enforcement within a new framework is an idea which has fairly rapidly recently moved from the fringes to the mainstream of debate, and it is a policy openly and actively being discussed by many local governments, and already committed to by the Minneapolis City Council. It may seem, by a pre-June-2020 perspective, to be an out-of-the-range-of-serious-debate demand, but the Overton Window on that issue just underwent and sudden and massive shift.
    • gammarator 6y ago
      Here's a recent summary: https://kottke.org/20/06/police-abolition-defund-the-police https://kottke.org/20/06/police-abolition-defund-the-police
    • remarkEon 6y ago
      It's also extraordinarily unpopular, across the ideological spectrum[1]. >...which has fairly rapidly recently moved from the fringes to the mainstream of debate, and it is a policy openly and actively being discussed by many local governments, and already committed to by the Minneapolis City Council. >but the Overton Window on that issue just underwent and sudden and massive shift. Well you're right about that. Because it's insane, and generates clicks, likes, and retweets and so media keeps covering like it's actually popular despite the fact the inverse is true to keep generating their clicks, likes, and retweets. I've been waiting for the Star Tribune to actually run some local polling on this, because everyone I know still back there also thinks it's insane. My guess is they do run the polls, and don't publish the results for the same reason. [1]https://twitter.com/databyler/status/1268555840098906115?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/databyler/status/1268555840098906115?ref...
• hnarn 6y ago
  I don’t have an opinion on the morality of this instance of an “autonomous zone” but it made me think of the concept of “TAZ” as described in this book, may be interesting for those interested in anarchist politics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone
• ghostofblanqui 6y ago
  Didn't expect this to be posted here. I've put up a FAQ now answering a lot of the questions in this thread and dispelling the rumours. Thank you!
• GoodJokes 6y ago
  ITT: Patronizing fools relying on really horrible reporting to characterize something they really know nothing about.
• iron0013 6y ago
  It’s funny; this being HN, some of you must live in Seattle. So instead of spreading sub-Facebook level rumors and FUD, why don’t you walk over to CHAZ and see the reality for yourself?
  • elbigbad 6y ago
    I live in Seattle, went over yesterday with no preconceived notions of what must be there. I had seen some posts that it was pretty lawless, but really took them with a grain of salt. Nothing I had heard about it was true. I didn't see any guns, no violence, or anything, no checkpoints (just barricades stopping actual cars from coming in, but not stopping people/bicycles). Just a bunch of people kind of hanging out listening to speeches near the East Precinct building. The live stream link on the OP shows it, basically people hanging out, walking around, etc. If you do live in Seattle, you should head over and see it for yourself. It's a very unique thing and who knows how long it will be there. I assume at some point the police will drive a tank through it or something.
    • iron0013 6y ago
      There you have it folks, eyewitness testimony. And yet somehow I suspect the people that believe the rapper warlord Orwellian dystopia narrative won’t change their mind one bit.
      • fiblye 6y ago
        Stories are all over the place. How an area looks at 10 AM and how it looks at 10PM can be completely different. Some very nice and safe towns are anything but after a few hours pass.
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
      • tathougies 6y ago
        Well I am a brown man who's lived in America my entire life, and I've never been harassed by police. So there you have it... eyewitness testimony. And yet somehow I suspect the people that believe that America is a police-state dystopia won't change their mind one bit. It's almost like ... anecdata isn't trustworthy... EDIT: downvoted for pointing out the hypocrisy.
• blackrock 6y ago
  LOL. This will not end well. When will they declare independence? That’s when the fun will really begin.
  • vangelis 6y ago
    I doubt anything will happen. The smart move would be to let it fizzle out.
• dang 6y ago
  All: this story is here because it's an interesting phenomenon, a la https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Before commenting, please make sure you're up to date on those rules and post in the intended spirit (curiosity and conversation) not the opposite one (ideology and battle).
  • dang 6y ago
    This is a stub comment to collect replies in one place, so that it can be collapsed and prevent too much offtopicness at the top of the thread.
    • ShamelessC 6y ago
      Thanks for leaving this one up. I understand it's not the discourse this site is directly interested in, but the occasional opportunity to debate such issues in an intelligent forum is something I have trouble finding elsewhere on the internet. Having said that, I'm sure these types of post create a lot of work for you. I appreciate the upkeep and please keep up the good work!
      • dgellow 6y ago
        > the occasional opportunity to debate such issues in an intelligent forum is something I have trouble finding elsewhere on the internet. That's maybe the good place to ask: What are other places (maybe places more open to political discussions) the HN crowd would recommend for "intelligent discussions"? Twitter and Reddit are an awful mess at the moment.
        • krustyburger 6y ago
          This might merit its own Ask HN post. I’m curious what responses you might get.
        • ShamelessC 6y ago
          This has been asked before here. The best answers were essentially niche blogs with commenting systems and niche subreddits. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20023209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20023209
• malandrew 6y ago
  Two fascinating observations I've seen others have point out that are worth pondering: - One of the first things they did after seizing six city blocks is setting up a border and controlling who enters the CHAZ - How would the media have reacted if right-wing groups had commandeered several city blocks of any American city? This is super interesting to watch unfold.
  • muricula 6y ago
    I live down the block. Anyone can wander in. If you're a local politician or an unfriendly news org you might be yelled at by protestors, but that shouldn't be a surprise.
  • yborg 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Malheur_National_Wildlife_Refuge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Malheur_Nati...
    • thisiszilff 6y ago
      The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge doesn't appear to be in the middle of a city.
    • gonational 6y ago
      They were all arrested on felony charges and one was killed, and the media called them radicals... (iow, exactly what GP proposed)
• conroy 6y ago
  A friend lives in Seattle and texted me today about his visit last night: > I was there last night and it's such a cool pseudo utopian place > The media coverage of it is WILD > People on the internet are convinced it's protected by armed guards and people are dying of hunger and instead its...like a music festival campground > There are speakers, musicians, art walls. I took a group pic for a bunch of black guys last night and they were so proud of what was built because they felt like they fought for it, which in a sense, they did.
  • DenisM 6y ago
    > like a music festival campground Every generation needs a Woodstock. Burning man is not real enough.
    • saalweachter 6y ago
      The tricky part of ephemeral culture is keeping it ephemeral while still allowing it to reoccur often in new forms, and not just having a crystalized form of spontaneity that future generations are supposed to appreciate in the correct way.
    • Finnucane 6y ago
      >Every generation needs a Woodstock A massively failed capitalist project that leaves behind an enormous mess?
      • kempbellt 6y ago
        Yes, actually. The ability for people to make a mess on occasion, for whatever reason, is an essential freedom to be cherished and fought for. Every generation needs an act of rebellion. It's a sort of fundamental law of nature, as a right of passage in a way.
      • aporetics 6y ago
        The organizers of Woodstock knew they weren’t going to profit, and they did it anyway. They also knew that crowd control was going to be a problem; instead of hiring police, they brought in people from a commune who were used to doing crowd control for large peaceful gatherings.
• haram_masala 6y ago
  I don't live there, but there's something about all this that make it seem like a wildly overblown media event - that the actual thing itself is much more pedestrian and much less sensational than reports would have us believe.
  • kixiQu 6y ago
    I live there. This is correct in that the CHAZ itself has its biggest impacts through a. having free snacks and b. not allowing through traffic, but it really hasn't been stated enough how awful it had been when the police were there. Helicopters all night and if you were unlucky to be close enough: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/06/04/43840246/seattle-residents-got-tear-gassed-in-their-own-apartments https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/06/04/43840246/seattle...
    • rabidrat 6y ago
      This is correct. I live 3 blocks from CHAZ and I was gassed in my apartment 3 nights last week. I feel much safer without the police around right now.
      • DudeInBasement 6y ago
        I'd feel much safer without the looters/rioters around
      • dag11 6y ago
        Same. Nothing was more gut-wrenching than watching the flash bombing and gassing of peaceful protestors from our rooftop. Something felt so unconstitutional and fascist about it.
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
    • pera 6y ago
      This is something that cannot be overstated: the helicopters and planes, the loud bombs and the gassing, were really awful. I don't have problems sleeping but last week was really hard...
• obeyUrMother 6y ago
  GAY.
• goodmattg 6y ago
  The comparison to Freetown Christinia is thought provoking, but the key difference seems to be that Capital Hill has been a trendy part of town with new apartments going up and rents increasing for the last decade, whereas Christinia was originally an abandoned site. I don't question the resolve or peaceful intentions of the people currently occupying CHAZ, but instead the patience of property managers, local residents, and local businesses (though closed due to COVID-19).
• joeyspn 6y ago
  Seems like GenZ is having their occupy moment. The police is probably just waiting for them to get tired and go home. In few weeks back to "normal".
  • michaelmrose 6y ago
    There is a persistent desire to suck the funds out of the police force budget and redirect the money to things the community values. This unlike occupy is a tangible goal and if people only elect people willing to give it to them it will happen regardless of what people outside of Seattle want.
    • hedora 6y ago
      Occupy Wall Street had a tangible goal. Break up big banks, and forgive predatory loans. Even with Obama in office, we ended up with even bigger banks and a spiraling debt crisis.
      • michaelmrose 6y ago
        This goal can be accomplished one municipality at a time which cannot be said of occupy.
        • hedora 6y ago
          I didn’t mean to imply the current protests were hopeless. I certainly hope not, and you’re right: They can start with local action.
      • jessaustin 6y ago
        Even with Obama in office... Ha! This is a better jest now than it was ten weeks into his administration!
      • MockObject 6y ago
        What's funny is, at the time, we thoughts its goals were intangible!
• ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  I never understand why likeminded people don’t just start a city? “Wild country” was an example of this, but they were bound together by a quasi religion. There’s so much unincorporated land in the USA. So many opportunities to prove things work or don’t work. Why move into a place somebody else built?
  • rglover 6y ago
    When you ran away from home, why did you go to your Grandma's house? Because you were a child.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > I never understand why likeminded people don’t just start a city? Mostly, probably, because starting a city has a process defined in state law (or, out of the US, law of some other higher level of government) which is different than “a bunch of people just buy up land and decide to declare it a city”, e.g., California’s LAFCO process.
  • rtkwe 6y ago
    Unincorporated but not unowned and there's a huge amount of infrastructure and money required to setup even a small town ex nihilo in some randomly selected part of the country.
    • ed25519FUUU 6y ago
      Building infrastructure is something easily solved by capitalist. Can it not also be solved by likeminded people with alternative economic principles?
      • rtkwe 6y ago
        Because beyond doing it by hand and setting up a city sized septic system the equipment for stuff like processing waste and preparing water is extremely expensive and the only sources want lots of money for them. It's doable just very delicate and requires permission and buy-in from actors in the existing system.
• throwawaysea 6y ago
  It is plainly illegal. A bunch of criminals have barricaded several city blocks that do not belong to them and barricaded shared public infrastructure (roads). These are crimes. They should be apprehended, charged, and sentenced. This is very straightforward. Either the laws exist and they are enforced equally upon everyone or we do not have a functioning society.
  • ahelwer 6y ago
    You break the law many times per day, we all do. Enforcement of law is always discretionary and thus political.
    • deathgrips 6y ago
      Do you mind if I put up a barricade around your house so cops can't come near us? :)
      • ahelwer 6y ago
        Don't threaten me with a good time!
      • vangelis 6y ago
        If you're paying!
• telaelit 6y ago
  I love CHAZ so much, I hope it becomes a national trend. If city councils would defund the police and use the money for actual good things then we wouldn’t have this problem of police brutality and police being above the law. But no, the police need to buy tanks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• api 6y ago
  Nice to see this here. Maybe the "hacker" in HN is returning. Wish I was in Seattle to go check it out. I love this kind of thing.
  • kf 6y ago
    ...eh it took two dead versions of this story and multiple emails to the mods for this to get unkilled and it’s still weighted off of the front page. So it took serious effort and intention to front page a story over the power of flag mods and because of weighting still barely got the discussion deserved. I think a lot of people just must defacto flag things that aren’t about software or business? I would come back here more regularly if I knew that actual huge news would be regularly discussed here, or if I thought interesting articles not about coding had much of a shot. As good writing about CHAZ keeps happening or the situation evolves I’ll continue trying submissions.
• VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
  I lived in Seattle Capitol Hill (Harvard Ave by SCCC) area for 10 years and left the state in 2010. I went back a few years ago for a visit and it looked like the homeless population had doubled in the time since. All of King and Pierce counties are completely overrun by homelessness and drug addiction. I remember it was a big deal when they would go sweep out "The Jungle" tent city under I-5 at Beacon Hill. Now they're building tent cities right in the middle of residential neighborhoods. Seattle and the Puget Sound is a beautiful place but horrible place to live. They have an absolutely useless government that has no idea how to solve any of their problems. So they end up with stuff like this.
  • jessaustin 6y ago
    Recent events cast doubt on your judgment of the government there. Unlike e.g. New York they have dealt somewhat effectively with the pandemic. Seattle was hit first yet seems to have brought the situation under control with fewer deaths than other American cities. At the very least, they didn't force covid-positive patients into old folks' homes.
    • VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
      There's a pretty big difference between Seattle and NYC in terms of size and population density. Like many orders of magnitude difference. But you're right that NYC didn't handle the outbreak very well.
      • jessaustin 6y ago
        MSA population: 19M/4M -> less than one order of magnitude City population: 8.3M/750k -> one order of magnitude City density: 28k/8400 -> less than one order of magnitude This is not what one imagines when one encounters the sentence fragment "Like many orders of magnitude difference." [EDIT:] Normally technical correctness is appreciated? If anyone here really thinks that New York has done a better job dealing with the pandemic than Washington State, I would love to see the reasoning. ISTM this argument from population proves too much; why can't it be invoked anytime New York's performance lags other states?
• danharaj 6y ago
  "... The demonstration, an irregular event created by the demonstrators, nevertheless takes place near the city centre, intended for very different uses. The demonstrators interrupt the regular life of the streets they march through or of the open spaces they fill. They ‘cut off these areas, and, not yet having the power to occupy them permanently, they transform them into a temporary stage on which they dramatise the power they still lack. The demonstrators’ view of the city surrounding their stage also changes. By demonstrating, they manifest a greater freedom and independence – a greater creativity, even although the product is only symbolic – than they can ever achieve individually or collectively when pursuing their regular lives. In their regular pursuits they only modify circumstances; by demonstrating they symbolically oppose their very existence to circumstances. ... Either authority must abdicate and allow the crowd to do as it wishes: in which case the symbolic suddenly becomes real, and, even if the crowd’s lack of organisation and preparedness prevents it from consolidating its victory, the event demonstrates the weakness of authority. Or else authority must constrain and disperse the crowd with violence: in which case the undemocratic character of such authority is publicly displayed. The imposed dilemma is between displayed weakness and displayed authoritarianism. ..." https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj/1968/no034/berger.htm https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj/1968/no03...
  • TomMarius 6y ago
    This seems like a false dilemma. There is a third option: Do not tolerate crimes but otherwise let it be.
• tomcam 6y ago
  Have all the business owners whose storefronts are now covered with graffiti ceded their properties to the group voluntarily?
• 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
  It has reflections of the Summer of Love and 'Human Be Ins'. Instead of racism, the common cause was the Vietnam War. Instead of CHAZ, the Haight Ashbury. From the descriptions of Seattleites (sorry) in the thread, it seems there may be more to compare than contrast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Love Have we been here before?
• gorgoiler 6y ago
  I hadn’t heard of CHAZ until now. Zona, Galaxy News Radio, Radio Free Europe... so many cultural touchstones for CHAZ to riff on. It must be a designer’s utopia! It also reminds me of Daily Mail Island but at another end of the political hyperspectrum.
• Animats 6y ago
  They need a political win on something in the next few days. Otherwise this thing fizzles out, is crushed, or turns into a joke like the 2016 bird sanctuary occupation. Some of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" apply. ⬤ "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag." ⬤ "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative." That's the problem with "defund the police". "We'd all love to see the plan", as John Lennon once put it. Camden NJ did do this. They fired their entire police department and started over. Sometimes you have to do that. Sometimes you just need to fire the bottom 1-10%. Maybe give randomly-chosen civil grand juries the power to fire cops. Not just for criminal offenses, just for being subpar at being a cop.
  • joshuamorton 6y ago
    There have been lots of mid-sized political wins for these protests. Breanna's law, Minneapolis defunding it's police, etc. It's sustained distributed action, and some of it is not real (the NYC chokehold ban), but there's still real stuff happening.
    • hoten 6y ago
      None of that is a result of CHAZ.
      • hsod 6y ago
        seattle schools has disaffiliated with SPD in large part due to the protests that led up to CHAZ
      • rantwasp 6y ago
        how do you know / make that claim? i guess i might be in a minority but the large scale protests led to these outcomes. most politicians don’t give a flying forest for an isolated protest that happens all the way across the country. now if this happens in your backyard you pay attention. so i would say that the protests in Seattle and the emergence of CHAZ did contribute to some of the outcomes (present and future ones). it’s really easy to be cynic and write off the efforts of people that are, in a sense, helping to write history.
• alkibiades 6y ago
  send in the 101st airborne https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/seattle-autonomous-zone-business-antifa https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/seattle-autonomous-zon...
• rexarex 6y ago
  Reminds me of Christiania https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania
• daenz 6y ago
  I live nearby but I haven't visited. I've been staying up on different livestreams however. I would say it's a naive waste of time, but clearly it is an outlet for people to feel creative and free, and there is some value in that. I think the long term is that people who support it are going to look back at it and cringe at some of the fantasies being played out.
  • SI_Rob 6y ago
    All the clubs, bars, and schools have been shuttered for months. That buildup of stifled young adult socialization energy had to be dumped somewhere.
• aazaa 6y ago
  The first (of several) demands reads: > The Seattle Police Department and attached court system are beyond reform. We do not request reform, we demand abolition. We demand that the Seattle Council and the Mayor defund and abolish the Seattle Police Department and the attached Criminal Justice Apparatus. This means 100% of funding, including existing pensions for Seattle Police. At an equal level of priority we also demand that the city disallow the operations of ICE in the city of Seattle. https://capitolhillautonomous.zone/demands.html https://capitolhillautonomous.zone/demands.html This is a fascinating experiment that seems to channel a number of forces bubbling just below the surface for decades. The futile, never-ending war on drugs. Police violence. Lack of police accountability. Institutional racism. What will be more fascinating is what new political parties develop. These demands are well outside the mainstream, but given recent events, not impossible to see being implemented to one degree or another. But neither party has the alignment of interests for this kind of reform. Without a political party, it's hard to imagine how anything changes after the banners and barricades come down.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • tvanantwerp 6y ago
    As someone with close ties to an existing third party, they shouldn't put much hope on forming one and seeing it succeed. The American electoral system makes it nearly impossible for third parties to gain traction. And that's before you take into account that the people most likely to join third parties are also the most likely to be fringe personalities with little mainstream appeal and a penchant for causing internal strife.
    • Taikonerd 6y ago
      > The American electoral system makes it nearly impossible for third parties to gain traction. That's true, under the existing system. And that makes it attractive to reform the system, to make it easier for third parties to grow. For example, approval voting was passed in Fargo recently: https://www.electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/approval-voting-in-fargo-will-increase-underdog-candidates-chance-of-success/ https://www.electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/approval... tl;dr -- third parties can't grow as long as "splitting the vote" is a thing. But some voting systems have that and others don't.
• superfrank 6y ago
  Oh, Jesus Christ... I live about 3/4s of a mile from the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone". The way people are talking about this is ridiculous. It's basically a bunch of wannabe Marxists LARPing. They call the area "self-governed" and "abandoned", but the city had workers mowing the grass at Cal Anderson Park, two days after it was "established". There are cops sitting like 10 blocks away in case things get out of hand. CHAZ is basically a block party at this point that the cops letting exist while tensions cool down a bit. If anything started to get of hand, you can be certain the police would be on the scene any moment. It's autonomous in the same way my house is autonomous. The police will let me do my thing until they get wind that I'm doing something decently illegal. If you want to see a real "Autonomous Zone" in Seattle, 3rd and Pike is your spot. The cops let pretty much anything go there and it's a crap hole. Edit: I'd like to add, I'm not trying to take anything away from their message. I think these protests need to be happening. I just think it's stupid that people are acting like some outside of the government people first commune has been created when really, it's basically the same as when people set up a bunch of tents in the park during the Occupy movement.
  • binaryfour 6y ago
    > If you want to see a real "Autonomous Zone" in Seattle, 3rd and Pike is your spot. The cops let pretty much anything go there and it's a crap hole. Too true
    • rantwasp 6y ago
      too too true. for more color, the locals call that area McStabbys (also heard CrackDonals). It’s really really bad
      • binaryfour 6y ago
        LOL I used to switch buses there and "CrackDonalds" is way too fitting of a name
        • rantwasp 6y ago
• yspeak 6y ago
  Link to thread of video of clash with police https://twitter.com/chaseburnsy/status/1269460571327393793?s=08 https://twitter.com/chaseburnsy/status/1269460571327393793?s... Link to interview with former at CHAZ precinct https://mynorthwest.com/1934871/east-precinct-seattle-cops/ https://mynorthwest.com/1934871/east-precinct-seattle-cops/
• roflburger 6y ago
  Lucky this is in Seattle, any other city would have crushed this bunch of snowflake communists. The entire concept of a protest with the backdrop of a pandemic, and the lack of logic that somehow racism is a more immediate problem than the virus that has killed 100k Americans is nonsensical. Good luck with your autonomous zone, soon to be the coronavirus zone.
• roflburger 6y ago
  Is this what they're calling homeless camps now, cause it looks like one.
• jmpman 6y ago
  I’ve always wondered, if a community like this were able to completely leave the US, and didn’t have to pay for the military, or the police, would they be able to fund their own demands for free healthcare, free college, etc? I’m going to guess that overall, the occupants are below the average income level of Seattle, but would they be able to afford the lifestyle they’re requesting?
  • wombat-man 6y ago
    I mean, they're setting up shop in the center of a city. They are building on top of everything they claim to not need.
  • danharaj 6y ago
    Is "lifestyle" the most appropriate word you could choose for "access to healthcare and education"?
    • superdisk 6y ago
      How is that not appropriate?
    • jmpman 6y ago
      Each of those items have a cost associated with them, at least at a societal level, even if they are provided free to the end consumer. A doctor, even if providing free services in a completely altruistic manner, must eat and be housed, as do college professors. A society must choose how to allocate their resources. Based upon the CHAZ demands, they wish to have a society which provides healthcare and college. I would call that a lifestyle. My question was, does there exist a sufficient productivity in the population in the CHAZ to provide those services to their population? From Wikipedia: Lifestyle is the interests, opinions, behaviours, and behavioural orientations of an individual, group, or culture. The demand for access to healthcare and education does seem to be the interest, opinion and behavior of this group.
  • fallingfrog 6y ago
    Remember too though that they would likely declare all property to be the property of the people of the zone, which means no rent to any landlords and no overhead going to owners of capital, plus no taxes going to the state, so they would be able to free up a lot of resources. The Zapatistas in Mexico have been quite successful at building a decent health care system out of nothing, despite being some of the poorest people in the world.
• chaoticmass 6y ago
  Looks like my employer was quick to add this site to the block list of sites we can't access using the company network.
• motohagiography 6y ago
  I defer to moderators whether this crosses the line on political content. It's interesting how this is organized by largely college educated people, many of whom are not PoC, and I think the federal response to this will be tolerance because these people are ultimately vying for institutional power, and feds realize they will all be working for one another in 10 years. It's less about right/left than how I'd posit if CHAZ were operated by non-college educated people or even was exclusively a movement by people of color, the federal authorities would have already found some pretext for lethal force. It's not like the CHAZ organizers are poor or relatively uneducated people without political recourse, like say, a niche religious sect, some ranchers, or even just a radicalized family - all examples of subjects of federal sieges in recent memory. Communes and autonomous zones are romantic, but they exist because they are tolerated or explicitly used as a source of volatility by a movement already within the establishment. If this seems provocative, I'd argue it gets to the crux of the issue of why certain movements are tolerated and others are not. CHAZ is a tactic in a conflict between movements that are far above it within the establishment. That it has not been subject to an ATF-style siege shows it necessarily is the expression of top level political backing. There are numerous precedents for how this plays out, as it has throughout history in France, Russia, Germany, China, and Cambodia. Unfortunately, the advice I have for people everywhere is above all, you must find a way to resist the isolation, paralysis, and atomization that separates people from their communities, which will be used to cow people into tolerating horrible things that will themselves just build momentum. The only way for CHAZ and related movements to yield peace is for people to recognize that before their relationships to these movements (positive or negative), you are members of families, neighbourhoods, communities, trades, professions, regions, and not insignificant atoms subject to global forces of history and nature. Especially if ostensibly isolated acts of terror begin. I think it is urgent to recognize that there are precedents for what's happening today that provide predictive power to how this could play out, and to equip people with a reminder to above all resist political atomization, especially when it becomes hard to do so, because it deprives us all of our humanity, which is the only thing standing between us and the darkest chapters of history.
  • carapace 6y ago
    Capitol Hill is the gay neighborhood of Seattle. Could you imagine the reaction if the feds raided the Castro district in San Francisco for hosting a mostly-peaceful TAZ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone
• scarythoughts 6y ago
  Is assumption here that if you are a technical enthusiast and read this site, you have to support whatever leftist phenomenon is happening? This has nothing to do with technology at all.
• dgellow 6y ago
  Now that’s an impressive achievement: https://www.reddit.com/r/CapHillAutonomousZone/comments/h7kmha/beautiful_black_lives_matter_painting_in_chaz/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CapHillAutonomousZone/comments/h7km... “Black lives matter” art painting in the street. Splendid!
  • dgellow 6y ago
    I don’t understand why would someone downvote this comment... anyone willing to explain the issue with it? It’s just a link to great art made at CHAZ, I don’t see how that can be taken negatively.
• jhallenworld 6y ago
  "Autonomous Zone" is a reference to this book by Hakim Bey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone It's an interesting read.. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/hakim-bey-t-a-z-the-temporary-autonomous-zone-ontological-anarchy-poetic-terrorism https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/hakim-bey-t-a-z-the-...
• williesleg 6y ago
  Idiocracy at it's best. Raz from Chaz! Can't wait for the sponsors to start! Brawndo and Costco!
• catacombs 6y ago
  Serious question: What's to stop Seattle Police or state authorities from removing people from CHAZ? I wouldn't be surprised if there are city, state and federal officials drawing up probable cause to shut it down.
  • rovolo 6y ago
    Protestors occupied the intersection of 11th and Pine (1 block from the police station) for multiple nights prior to the police abandoning the precinct. The police tried clearing people multiple nights with tear gas and flash-bangs, but the images and video of clearing the protestors night after night became politically unsavory. They probably won't try evicting people from the area again because they didn't succeed politically the previous times they tried. (Plus, tear gas would seep into the nearby residential buildings) https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/06/after-mayors-speech-on-deescalation-police-making-strongest-show-of-force-yet-at-standoff-at-11th-and-pine/#more-2067257258 https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/06/after-mayors-spee...
    • catacombs 6y ago
      > They probably won't try evicting people from the area again because they didn't succeed politically the previous times they tried. Interesting. The city might not, but feds might try, as they probably don't have much to lose.
      • golf1052 6y ago
        Both the governor and the mayor said they won't let the Feds try that.
        • catacombs 6y ago
          Wouldn't the feds just overrule them anyway?
          • rovolo 6y ago
• kenneth 6y ago
  I am rather amused that the same group is simultaneously calling for the tearing down of secessionist monuments and statues, while promoting a secession of their own. The cognitive dissonance is real.
  • chimeracoder 6y ago
    > I am rather amused that the same group is simultaneously calling for the tearing down of secessionist monuments and statues, while promoting a secession of their own. The cognitive dissonance is real. From the webpage: > Fundamentally, CHAZ is an occupation of Capitol Hill, not an official declaration of independence. They are fairly clear that their ultimate goal is neither secession or independence. The area was abandoned by the police in a political move, and CHAZ is occupying it as a statement of how they would like to see the city as a whole run instead.
    • mcv 6y ago
      Not only that, but those secessionist statues being turn down, are about people who lead a violent rebellion against the US in order to protect their ability to enslave people. This protest is quite the opposite in nearly every possible way.
  • enumjorge 6y ago
    That misses the point. The problem people have with the statues is that they honor people who they feel promoted/protected the subjugation of another group. They’re not taking offense to the act of secession.
  • gerbal 6y ago
    > secessionist monuments You misspelled white supremacist. All of the confederate monuments I know of were built during _CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENTS_ as an expression of power by white supremacist governments and political traditions.
  • commandlinefan 6y ago
    As a die-hard libertarian, I'm amused by a group that's been telling libertarians for decades that we should move to Somalia if we like living without government so much and then creating a purely libertarian social experiment the first chance they get. If this doesn't dissolve into complete chaos it's a vindication of libertarian principles.
• elric 6y ago
  Any chance of this turning into something like Copenhagen's "Freetown Christiania"?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• throwaway98asfd 6y ago
  Interesting and relevant speech from Abe Lincoln: http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/lyceum....
• sirgg0119 6y ago
  Everythings peaceful... for now. What happens when something gets out of hand. It's always easiest in the beginning when everyone's on the same page. Given time disagreements are bound to flare up.
• kyleblarson 6y ago
  My first thought was 'I feel bad for the people who spent a million bucks on a condo in Pike / Pine', but my second thought was that these are likely also people who voted for people like Sawant so they made their own bed.
  • umeshunni 6y ago
    Given that Sawant won with a tiny majority, that's an unfair judgement of those people.
    • golf1052 6y ago
      Sawant was running for re-election for her third term. She wasn't an unknown political figure.
• growlist 6y ago
  Does anyone think this would not have been crushed without mercy if the protestors were 'white supremacists'? Serious question. The irony is that if these AZs were permitted it could give said segregationists exactly what they had been after for decades.
  • headcanon 6y ago
    well this thing did happen in Charlottesville a couple years ago, and resulted in massive counterprotests by the left. I would imagine the same would happen here. In terms of declaring themselves "autonomous", I'm thinking (and I imagine others in power are thinking as well) that this is simply done as a statement of protest, rather than an actual serious attempt to form a sovereign government. So crushing this without mercy is politically infeasable, especially given that the whole protest is about police and justice reform. I don't think this sets any kind of legal precedent. Better let them make the statement and let it run its course on its own.
  • jwilber 6y ago
    Serious answer. Hoping for an actual reply but if feels like you’re just baiting given your “white supremacist” line in quotes (???). If you mean to ask what would happen if white people took it over? Having been through chaz a few times, the population is overwhelming white (Seattle itself is only ~7% black). Capitol Hill is itself a white, gentrified area. Or do you mean actual white supremacists? Charleston went down fine without a hitch. I seem to recall our President call them some, “very fine people.” [1] I also don’t recall any police response to the recent armed Michigan courthouse takeover. I did, however, see multiple beatings and tear gas used against protestors for no reason at peaceful, unarmed protest events. Maybe you can explain why you out “white supremacists” in quotes? Maybe you could list some recent examples of protestors being “crushed without mercy”? (I can list plenty, but none that are white movements. Please inform me!) [1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/trump-defends-2017-fine-people-comments-calls-robert/story%3fid= https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/tru...
    • namrog84 6y ago
      Not OP. But lots of people just use single quotes for emphasis. And not neccesarily the way i think you think it to mean. Not sure OP intention but kust wanted to say lots of people use single quote to imply italicized(emphasis).
• andred14 6y ago
  good for you Capitol Hill your friends in Vancouver support you :)
• oh_sigh 6y ago
  If this is going to be anything like the autonomous zones I've visited in Berlin and Copenhagen, it is going to be filled with graffiti, drug dealing, and not much else in terms of public use.
• rayhendricks 6y ago
  Walked though it yesterday, wearing a mask. The majority of people are also wearing masks and seem to be peaceful. Mostly a bunch of protestors and people milling about. There was one argument right by the speaker, but it didn’t look violent. Here is a link to my video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/8kktcXopLDdFKbQP9 https://photos.app.goo.gl/8kktcXopLDdFKbQP9 IMO it will last a month or two then engine will get bored and it will fizzle.
• cancerSpreads 6y ago
  I just read their demands.. anarchists who want government healthcare? Reminds me of might makes right mentality rather than anything coherent.
• subsubzero 6y ago
  If you are trying to start a respectable state at least spell correctly, it really makes people not take it seriously: >siezed!! by anarchists, BLM supporters and other protestors who have since transformed it into a unverisal!!
  • ChristianBundy 6y ago
    > anarchists > state Why would you think that anarchists are trying to start a state?
• renegading 6y ago
  Is this comparable to the Paris Commune?
• aaron695 6y ago
  They already have a warlord, they aren't just LARPing https://nypost.com/2020/06/12/raz-simone-accused-of-acting-like-warlord-in-seattles-chaz/ https://nypost.com/2020/06/12/raz-simone-accused-of-acting-l...
• erulabs 6y ago
  I have mixed feelings on my own reaction to this. A huge part of me loves this - and supports a huge chunk of their demands. Then they talk about free housing and rent control... and I can feel myself shy away. I can imagine how other moderates / economics students / actual conservatives might react. It pains me to have to split my values. Do you support good intentions paired with policies you believe will cause more harm than good - or do you side with policies you agree with even though it makes you an “enemy” to the peer culture you yearn to belong to. Republicans won’t listen to comments about open borders, and Democrats won’t listen to comments about the issues with nationalization. This has been my political problem my whole life. Agree with old white boomers on tax policy and with young radicals on immigration policy. Far too often my brain says “keep your mouth shut” - “save it for other Econ nerds” - and I’m beginning to think I’m no longer OK with that conclusion. Support to Seattle!
• maa5444 6y ago
  that barricade are better than the ones near the Mexican border .... will do the same soon
• vsmatck 6y ago
  If anyone is interested in an unfiltered view of CHAZ I've been going down there every day and filming. Here's a link to the first video in my playlist about CHAZ. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJblgfCwWtU&list=PLlgnc9WjogB67st9GXzit3YTlHxfoXgM-&index=25 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJblgfCwWtU&list=PLlgnc9Wjog... I can confirm that the media isn't accurately representing what's there. It was a little crazy up until last Sunday (before the formation of CHAZ, right before the police left). It's totally peaceful now. People are bringing their families down there. I've even been there in the middle of the night and it's fine.