6 ms·

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, an

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]
  - spoopyskelly 6y ago
    They are thugs because they beat up people, threaten to shoot them and ask for protection tax. Your internalized racism is showing.
    - dagnabbit 6y ago
      jerf is a well-known racist. He was being exceptionally polite in giving jerf the opportunity to pretend it was inadvertent use of language. But I understand that you, too, are just trying to play games to pretend that anti-racists are the real racists. This is something that many deranged right-wing extremists do to entertain themselves.
  - goatsi 6y ago
    >and there was a scuffle that ended with the tagger walking away. That was just the beginning of the confrontation. If you watch the full video the group then followed and hassled the tagger for several minutes before the tagger was hit in the face and had their glasses broken (and their smartphone was stolen from them). Someone also threatened to blow the taggers brains out.
  - Riight 6y ago
    Correct, call the looters and rioters pieces of shit. Not thugs, not protestors. Pieces of shit.
- 0x262d 6y ago
  A handful of incidents like these are being distorted and blown up by media that treats cop lies uncritically. In comparison, just a few nights ago, cops were beating people and filling the area with tear gas (banned under geneva convention) and it was seeping into residential homes so badly that even nextdoor is anti-police in that area now.
  - free_rms 6y ago
    More relevantly, they were specifically ordered by their city council not to use tear gas and then went ahead and did it anyways, all over the city. I'd like to think, regardless of anyone's politics, we could all agree that the elected government should have authority over the police.
    - DenisM 6y ago
      Can you clarify the timeline? AFAIK the police used tear-gas, then they were ordered to stop by the mayor, then they stopped and switched to other means like mace. Do you know differently?
      - 0x262d 6y ago
        that's correct, although the mayor (who has been very supportive of them forever, incidentally had Amazon campaign donation $350k) built various loopholes into the initial ban (namely, that the police chief could allow them to start re-using it). so, yeah, not much of a ban in the first place by the mayor.
      - Pfhreak 6y ago
        The Mayor ordered them to stop using one specific type of tear gas -- CS gas -- last Friday. For one day, the police used alternatives including mace, pepper balls, steel cored rubber bullets, flashbangs, and smoke with irritating agents. However, by Sunday (or maybe early, early Monday morning), the police were using CS gas again at the order of the police chief, Carmen Best.
        6y ago
- undoware 6y ago
  Hey dang, or whoever else is modding, Consider, in the above post, that 'thug' is a well-known racist epithet. Not 'racially loaded'. Straight-up racist. We see you too.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  The "new police" are constrained by a different system than the officers. Namely, they weren't police-trained. Whether that's going to be a positive or a negative remains to be seen, but that's one of the key notions in these protests.
  - dclowd9901 6y ago
    I'm dubious that the old police were "police-trained."
    - vangelis 6y ago
      Trained to be warriors: https://harvardlawreview.org/2015/04/law-enforcements-warrior-problem/ https://harvardlawreview.org/2015/04/law-enforcements-warrio...
- viraptor 6y ago
  Worth keeping in mind as well that situations like that likely happened before, but a group protecting territory and chasing someone while police is not around wasn't newsworthy.
- hedora 6y ago
  > it is definitely not "by all accounts" By all honest, first person accounts then? Two stories down in the link you sent, theres a picture of a bunch of people calmly watching a movie in a makeshift outdoor theater. It sure doesn’t look like the tear-gassed, rubber bullet fests we’ve been seeing around the rest of the country.
- nickfromseattle 6y ago
  Here is an update: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/h7f01r/i_was_wrong_about_the_autonomous_zone/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/h7f01r/i_was_wrong... My friends that have walked through the area can confirm. Why predict defeat? Why not appreciate the experiment as an alternative to our broken system? Yeah, it'll eventually go away. But maybe change will be secured, and there are some ideas that do make sense and will spread or stick around. Is the worst that could happen worse than the status quo? You sound like one of the commenters on Drew Houston's Ask HN telling him no-one will pay for rsync.
necrotic_comp 6y ago
I think it's going to be difficult to sustain without either strong leadership or strong collective decision making ; my gut tells me it's going to go the way of Zuccoti Park rather Christiana. It would be nice if it could sustain itself, but it will likely creak under its own weight in a month or so.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  Yeah, I expect it'll be an eddy in the river of history and expend its energy pretty quickly. But it has some folks involved that have leadership experience, so it'll be interesting to watch.
troydavis 6y ago
One person did try to burn it down on June 12 and got pretty close: https://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2020/06/12/detectives-need-public-to-help-identify-east-precinct-arson-suspect/ https://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2020/06/12/detectives-need-pu...
proc0 6y ago
It will be fun to watch how they eat each other alive. I would have believed it plausible had they gone outside the city to some secluded area to create their utopia, but it's being done on existing buildings they did not build, and property that is not theirs but I guess their "revolution" is to not give two shits about anything. I give them at most one more week.

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]
- spoopyskelly 6y ago
  They are thugs because they beat up people, threaten to shoot them and ask for protection tax. Your internalized racism is showing.
  - dagnabbit 6y ago
    jerf is a well-known racist. He was being exceptionally polite in giving jerf the opportunity to pretend it was inadvertent use of language. But I understand that you, too, are just trying to play games to pretend that anti-racists are the real racists. This is something that many deranged right-wing extremists do to entertain themselves.
- goatsi 6y ago
  >and there was a scuffle that ended with the tagger walking away. That was just the beginning of the confrontation. If you watch the full video the group then followed and hassled the tagger for several minutes before the tagger was hit in the face and had their glasses broken (and their smartphone was stolen from them). Someone also threatened to blow the taggers brains out.
- Riight 6y ago
  Correct, call the looters and rioters pieces of shit. Not thugs, not protestors. Pieces of shit.
0x262d 6y ago
A handful of incidents like these are being distorted and blown up by media that treats cop lies uncritically. In comparison, just a few nights ago, cops were beating people and filling the area with tear gas (banned under geneva convention) and it was seeping into residential homes so badly that even nextdoor is anti-police in that area now.
- free_rms 6y ago
  More relevantly, they were specifically ordered by their city council not to use tear gas and then went ahead and did it anyways, all over the city. I'd like to think, regardless of anyone's politics, we could all agree that the elected government should have authority over the police.
  - DenisM 6y ago
    Can you clarify the timeline? AFAIK the police used tear-gas, then they were ordered to stop by the mayor, then they stopped and switched to other means like mace. Do you know differently?
    - 0x262d 6y ago
      that's correct, although the mayor (who has been very supportive of them forever, incidentally had Amazon campaign donation $350k) built various loopholes into the initial ban (namely, that the police chief could allow them to start re-using it). so, yeah, not much of a ban in the first place by the mayor.
    - Pfhreak 6y ago
      The Mayor ordered them to stop using one specific type of tear gas -- CS gas -- last Friday. For one day, the police used alternatives including mace, pepper balls, steel cored rubber bullets, flashbangs, and smoke with irritating agents. However, by Sunday (or maybe early, early Monday morning), the police were using CS gas again at the order of the police chief, Carmen Best.
      - 6y ago
undoware 6y ago
Hey dang, or whoever else is modding, Consider, in the above post, that 'thug' is a well-known racist epithet. Not 'racially loaded'. Straight-up racist. We see you too.
shadowgovt 6y ago
The "new police" are constrained by a different system than the officers. Namely, they weren't police-trained. Whether that's going to be a positive or a negative remains to be seen, but that's one of the key notions in these protests.
- dclowd9901 6y ago
  I'm dubious that the old police were "police-trained."
  - vangelis 6y ago
    Trained to be warriors: https://harvardlawreview.org/2015/04/law-enforcements-warrior-problem/ https://harvardlawreview.org/2015/04/law-enforcements-warrio...
viraptor 6y ago
Worth keeping in mind as well that situations like that likely happened before, but a group protecting territory and chasing someone while police is not around wasn't newsworthy.
hedora 6y ago
> it is definitely not "by all accounts" By all honest, first person accounts then? Two stories down in the link you sent, theres a picture of a bunch of people calmly watching a movie in a makeshift outdoor theater. It sure doesn’t look like the tear-gassed, rubber bullet fests we’ve been seeing around the rest of the country.
nickfromseattle 6y ago
Here is an update: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/h7f01r/i_was_wrong_about_the_autonomous_zone/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/h7f01r/i_was_wrong... My friends that have walked through the area can confirm. Why predict defeat? Why not appreciate the experiment as an alternative to our broken system? Yeah, it'll eventually go away. But maybe change will be secured, and there are some ideas that do make sense and will spread or stick around. Is the worst that could happen worse than the status quo? You sound like one of the commenters on Drew Houston's Ask HN telling him no-one will pay for rsync.

necrotic_comp 6y ago

I think it's going to be difficult to sustain without either strong leadership or strong collective decision making ; my gut tells me it's going to go the way of Zuccoti Park rather Christiana. It would be nice if it could sustain itself, but it will likely creak under its own weight in a month or so.

Pfhreak 6y ago
Yeah, I expect it'll be an eddy in the river of history and expend its energy pretty quickly. But it has some folks involved that have leadership experience, so it'll be interesting to watch.

troydavis 6y ago

One person did try to burn it down on June 12 and got pretty close: https://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2020/06/12/detectives-need-public-to-help-identify-east-precinct-arson-suspect/ https://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2020/06/12/detectives-need-pu...

proc0 6y ago

It will be fun to watch how they eat each other alive. I would have believed it plausible had they gone outside the city to some secluded area to create their utopia, but it's being done on existing buildings they did not build, and property that is not theirs but I guess their "revolution" is to not give two shits about anything. I give them at most one more week.