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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 cover
by 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 agoThe 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 agoYes, 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 agoThe 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.
- dehrmann 6y agoThen there was Altamont. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Free_Concert#Security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Free_Concert#Security
- solidasparagus 6y ago> a music festival campground Which is fun for a while until people start dying or fighting like they always do and suddenly you need a group of people who spend their time dealing with it. Anarchic utopias do not stay utopic for all that long.
- 0xddd 6y agoWhat examples do you have in mind when you say this? The main case studies that I see get brought up are Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War and the Paris Commune, but the wartime pressures that led to their collapse strike me as much different from the present situation. I think the CHAZ will be an interesting experiment given the context.
- solidasparagus 6y agoSpecifically the music festivals I've been to. It's fun and a wonderful feeling for a while, but eventually the idiots/assholes will become a problem that needs to be dealt with. Or nature throws a disaster at you and there is chaos. It's a little hard to come up with historical examples because the utopia portion is often quite short and overshadowed by the negatives that follow. Generally, I would point to almost any historical 'revolution' as a warning that tearing down a system and rebuilding it from scratch does not mean improvement, even if it appears to be at the beginning. You could probably point to the August 1789 period of the French Revolution as an example of the 'utopic' phase, but I'm not certain. The fall of Saddam's government in Iraq would be another example. Kurdish Syria is probably another decent example.
- staplers 6y agoeventually the idiots/assholes will become a problem that needs to be dealt with Like the police force?
- solidasparagus 6y agoI'm not sure what point you're trying to make. While many of the police actions are inexcusable, trying to have a society without an active group of people enforcing law and order doesn't work well. Just look at Baltimore for the downsides of police inaction.
- clairity 6y agothe annotated maps are funny, portraying a vibe of relatively relaxed occupation. but serious too, monitoring police activity nearby, like swat.
- JPKab 6y ago"they were so proud of what was built" Curious, since I can't trust news media to not sensationalize this: What has been built, according to your friend? Have they set up infrastructure of some sort for housing people? Kitchens, latrines, etc?
- staplers 6y agoAn amateur map of infrastructure right on the site: https://capitolhillautonomous.zone/img/16.jpg https://capitolhillautonomous.zone/img/16.jpg
- rtkwe 6y agoThere's a more recent map. It's a lot busier, but looks like they're building out. https://capitolhillautonomous.zone/life.html#pid=23 https://capitolhillautonomous.zone/life.html#pid=23
- Semaphor 6y agoDirect link: https://capitolhillautonomous.zone/img/23.jpg https://capitolhillautonomous.zone/img/23.jpg
- lioeters 6y agoWow, that's grown up and filled in quite a bit since last I saw the map. They seem ready for a longer haul. Now that they have our attention, I wish them the best in making their voices heard. So this is what democracy looks like.
- elicash 6y agoSounds a lot like Occupy
- libria 6y agoThat comparison kinda worries me. Occupy had some hygiene issues and did not have a coronavirus to worry about.
- artemisyna 6y agoThe city has put in Port-a-potties and there are maps of nearby businesses friendly and with restrooms. Iirc, there is also some sort of plan for trash collection. The coronavirus bit still isn’t good, but the city has learned for the hygiene bits.
- acidburnNSA 6y agoI was just down there and saw a volunteer with a trash stick cleaning the streets. Seems like a good culture.
- vmception 6y agoworries? its the most accurate obvious observation
- rtkwe 6y agoIt seems much less densely populated than the various Occupy camps ever were. Also their relationship to the cops seems 100x less adversarial given SPD has willingly abandoned the area.
- jatone 6y agothe people involved in this have a very adversarial relationship with SPD, which is likely a big part of the reason SPD abandoned the area. but the fundamental nature of these people are live and let live. So i'm not surprised at all that the area is doing fine and is perfectly safe.
- pera 6y ago> The media coverage of it is WILD I live 7 blocks away from "the zone" and can confirm, I have never in my life seen anything alike in this regard. The scale of the misinformation being spread in social networks and news media reached a level I couldn't believe possible before. Seriously, it's beyond absurd. If anyone is interested, I have been taking some pictures of the ongoing protests (including a few of the zone): https://www.flickr.com/photos/peramides https://www.flickr.com/photos/peramides
- klyrs 6y agoWere you around for Occupy, can you compare?
- chrisweekly 6y agogot a URL that doesn't require an account?
- xwowsersx 6y agothis url (maybe they updated it) does not require an account
- chrisweekly 6y agoYou're right. What actually happened is it opened in the Flickr iOS app, to which I hadn't logged in. (Poor UX, giving new visitors a much better experience than logged-out users w the mobile app installed.)
- everly 6y agoYep, I’ve been staying in Seattle with my girlfriend since quarantine began. We live about 9 blocks away up Madison and have been walking around the zone almost daily. Hard to believe how much fear-mongering, disinfo, and straight-up lying I see in every thread/post about the subject.
- TimSchumann 6y agoI'm up north about the same distance. Only bad days have been this Sun/Mon with all the gas/flash-bangs and the sheriff's plane flying loops over the city until the wee hours of the morning. Since the police cleared out, everything has been much MUCH nicer around here.
- ashtonkem 6y agoAs someone who has never been to Seattle, I am shocked by how bad your police department appears to be. Even the LAPD behaved ... well, less bad from what I’d heard. Flash bangs? Those are for assaulting buildings, not crowd control.
- sterlind 6y agoI mean, it's par for the course across America during protests. It's important to remember "less than lethal" doesn't mean safe - I saw a photo of a dude who's eye was.. exploded by a tear gas canister. Forget where that was but it was not Seattle. If anything's weird about the Seattle PD, it could be they remember the 1999 WTO protests and want to crush them this time. But overall they all seem to be around the same -- very low -- standard
- craftinator 6y agoThe other issue I've noticed with the less-than-lethal ordnance use is that in order to be non-lethal, they need to be used according to manufacturer guidelines. I've used rubber coated bullets, bean-bag guns, and flashbangs. The police are not using them according to non-lethal guidelines. Example: Rubber coated bullets have explicit instructions to be aimed at shin height or below. This is because everything below the knees doesn't have large masses of non-muscular soft tissue, reducing the chances of permanent injury. These rounds are designed to hit the ground first, lose some velocity, and skip into crowds, causing pain but not debilitating injuries. I haven't seen a SINGLE video of police using them like this. It's absolutely insane.
- dag11 6y ago> The media coverage of it is WILD Yep. I live three blocks south of CHAZ and it's so overblown. Conservative family from the east-coast have told me they're very worried for me, and I check fox news and see images from "Seattle" of parking lots of cars on fire. Those images were from Minneapolis last month, not even from Seattle. As another nearby commenter said, last week when the police were here gassing us, throwing loud bombs at protestors at 1am, and having 24/7 helicopters directly overhead, it was hard to sleep. We could feel the gas blocks away. Ever since the police vacated the precinct and "CHAZ" started, things have been so peaceful and safe in this community.
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y agoOn the right, I am seeing: - It's called Antifastan - Warlord Raz is prone to violent outbursts, and is an AirBnb Superhost. - There are open carries with automatic rifles. They get the most respect. - Laughing out loud at an attempt to create a vegetable garden. Didn't appear promising. - Laughing harder at a cry for 'please send vegan meats and soy products, the homeless took all the food!' My thinking is, the truth is much more clearly painted in this forum than on either side of the mainstream media. I do consider them the enemy of the people for dividing us, pitting us against each other, and creating an oppression of fear. So they can sell more clicks.
- cylinder 6y agothey're just supremely bored, hateful, paranoid people with literally nothing to do but read outright fraudulent "news" reports, never critically thinking about it but just riding dopamine hits.
- fsckboy 6y agojust so I can calibrate the scale of all those descriptors, could you give a list of descriptors you would use for yourself and how you spend your time? does your brain not regulate with dopamine?
- alasdair_ 6y ago
- narrator 6y agoI think the media has been playing this up like crazy to try and get the alt-right to react. The alt-right consensus, at least on 4chan, is the absolute best thing for the alt-right to do to get the Democratic party to look stupid and inept and invite a voter backlash is to do nothing.
- chrissnell 6y agoThis jibes with what I'm seeing. Fox News is trying their damndest to get people worked up and generate support for intervention. Amongst my friends (many right-leaning), there is a strong consensus that this is a trap laid for Trump and that the best thing to do for everybody involved is to ignore it and leave it to the Seattle government. If it really is as chill as folks say here, it settles down and is out of the news cycle in a week. If it gets truly bad, the egg is on the face of the mayor and governor for not dealing with it sooner.
- sterlind 6y agoIf CHAZ is successful, it'll be a template for other protests.. protestors will realize they can push for "autonomous zones" and it can actually happen.. if protests are battles, now land can be won, at least for a while. I think that has conservatives (and probably neoliberals) pretty freaked, so they want to hit it like Waco, to snuff out the idea.
- viro 6y agoThe issue that I think a lot of people are missing is that CHAZ paints a picture of " protests are battles, now land can be won" The American people have proven they are willing to turn a blind eye to nasty(evil) shit being done in their name during war. If CHAZ spreads it makes it easier for the right to paint them as terrorist or a armed rebellion. Its nearly asking for a false flag.
- mcv 6y agoCHAZ seems to be a response to a pretty extreme situation. If you don't want these sort of autonomous zones, just don't create those sort of extreme situations. And I think that's ultimately what everybody wants: for police not to use unreasonable violence to crack down on peaceful protesters and harmless citizens.
- downerending 6y agoNot sure anyone is "convinced", but yes, there are stories of uncertain believeability suggesting that there are people with guns at the "border" demanding ID to enter. Sounds dubious. Also, that the Antifas are asking for protection money from businesses within the zone. Again, dubious. But, if either of those things are happening, I'm pretty okay with putting an end to them, by whatever means necessary. Threatening Joe and Jane citizen with violence is not cool.
- dilbertforgenz 6y agoDid you hear about the ice cream man who goes around town serving rancid rat milk sundaes to kids? Of course, he doesn't exist, but, if he did, I'm taking a strong stance against him being taken down, by whatever means necessary. Threatening to serve dubious sundaes to kids is not cool.
- thu2111 6y agoThey don't exist? Why are there photos of them then? https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2020/06/1862/1048/seattle-protest-4-Getty-Images.jpg?ve=1&tl=1 https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/conte... https://twitter.com/DrewHolden360/status/1271196018554494977/photo/1 https://twitter.com/DrewHolden360/status/1271196018554494977... The claims that these militias are extorting businesses doesn't come from "the right", it comes from claims by the local police chief. Addressing the takeover of the area surrounding the Seattle Police Department’s abandoned East Precinct building, Chief Carmen Best said ... using air quotes, that police had heard reports of armed people “patrolling” the area, which she said was “very concerning.” “Especially because we don’t know who these people are,” she added. And she hinted that they may even be extorting local business owners and demanding local residents show identification. Chief Carmen Best may be totally wrong or making that up. But knowing these sorts of things is part of her job, so to dismiss it would take something stronger than some mocking denial. Especially because this is exactly what always happens when police vacate an area. The result is not "no police", the result is that militias and mafias step in to do it themselves. But worse.
- colllectorof 6y ago> 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 This seems like propaganda in its own right. With the exception of Fox and Sky, most news coverage I see on YouTube is neutral or positive: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=capitol+hill+autonomous+zone https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=capitol+hill+au... Most mainstream coverage of protests in general seems to be totally biased in favor of the protestors and against the police. The only big channels that show anything going in the other direction are, again, Fox and Sky.
- space_fountain 6y agoIt's wild that the first time I saw this on the NYT was an article talking about Trump's tweat about it. I don't quite understand why they didn't think it was newsworthy
- koolba 6y ago> I don't quite understand why they didn't think it was newsworthy It's pretty obvious that they do not want to go into detail on anything that would paint the actions of the past two weeks in any negative light. There's no positive way to spin losing control of multiple city blocks, including a police station. Bias does not have to be a slant in an articles content or writing style, though that happens as well, e.g. including phrases like "mostly peaceful protests" in articles describing looting. It can also be as simple as not reporting things you do not want to publicize.
- cma 6y agoFox is by far the most popular news channel in the US and pretty close to bigger than the rest combined.
- billylo 6y agoMore details on the numbers. https://www.statista.com/statistics/373814/cable-news-network-viewership-usa/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/373814/cable-news-networ...
- undersuit 6y agoMy friend in Seattle told me they put up a wall, armed thugs are shaking down businesses inside and ICE agents were controlling admission. I'm glad to know it's just a mural.
- twirlip 6y agoHas your friend gone to witness it themselves? I had gone to the local protest in our city. My next door neighbor, unaware that I had marched, told me that it was a violent mob. She didn't believe me when I contradicted her until I showed her video footage I took with my phone. She didn't have a good answer when I questioned who told her it was violent; I'm assuming it's just wrong information passed along in social media.
- undersuit 6y agoActually no, I called him out about it but he's not that interested about going the 8 blocks East to check it out in person.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Reedx 6y agoPortraying it as some mad max wasteland is absurd, but so is referring to it as even pseudo utopian. It's not sustainable in any way and there wasn't exactly a democratic process by which the residents of Seattle agreed to having a section of their city turned into an autonomous zone. Though it could be an interesting experiment to do this somewhere, I think it'd have to go through a vote.
- alex_young 6y ago> Portraying it as some mad max wasteland is absurd, but so is referring to it as anything remotely utopian. Why couldn't it be positive? I think it's fair to say that these are early days and there is a general lack of data about what's going on, but most of what I've seen has been pretty positive. Here's a video I watched from inside: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=610393902995230 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=610393902995230
- codyb 6y agoI don’t think parent meant to imply it couldn’t be positive, just that the general process of declaring an autonomous zone as was done here has a few warts when you consider property rights and the context within which it has occurred. I think parent mostly meant mad max wasteland and utopian are both two extremes.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- acomjean 6y agoburning man?
- hirsin 6y agoBasically. Between covid masks and the music, nice weather, art, co-op style stuff it looks and feels very Burning Man. Which is a popular event for folks here anyway so perhaps unsurprising.
- 6y ago
- devalgo 6y agoYeah unaccountable armed guards blocking residents from entering and a warlord that assaults journalists is so cool man, what a utopia!
- hopfscotch2 6y ago"unaccountable armed guards" Just like the police you love so much? What's the problem again?
- devalgo 6y agoProbably not wise to put words in my mouth. I have no love for the police but the kumbaya bs people are spouting about the CHAZ is ludicrous.
- hopfscotch3 6y agolol who cares? I'll take "kumbaya bs" over a lot of alternatives.
- renegading 6y agoAre media being allowed in? If independent journalists were there then maybe more people would know the "truth".
- dannyw 6y agoIt’s a public space. You can walk in. No one mans the gates.
- renegading 6y agoThen why are they building walls? Why are there armed guards?
- newguy1234 6y agoThere are no armed guards. Some nut jobs did go there with guns but they didn't do anything. The current state of it...think of it like kids hanging out at the mall - skateboarding, socializing, eating and then they go home at night.
- arctangos 6y agoIt’s awfully hard to tell whether this is parody or not, but yes, media are “allowed” in. In fact, far as I can see on the various vids, anyone can just walk in
- renegading 6y agoThis guy certainly isn't welcome. https://twitter.com/Julio_Rosas11/status/1271224115576180737 https://twitter.com/Julio_Rosas11/status/1271224115576180737
- jatone 6y agoprobably they claim hes a white supremacist. i suspect he is probably know by the locals as being associated with proud boys or some shit. notice how they are peacefully escorting him from the area? its fine.
- pacala 6y agoSeattle has 600,000 people. In a given year there are 30 murders and 300 rapes. One can collect 175,200,000 amateur camera footage of 'an hour in the life of the average Seattle-ite' until one encounters an hour with a murder, or 17,520,0000 such peaceful one hour videos until one captures a rape on camera. Does the presence of overwhelmingly peaceful footage of average people going by their average days make Seattle at large an Utopia with no crime? Is that footage in itself sufficient evidence to abolish the police and the court system, because, look, there are 17,520,000 hours of peaceful footage before something terrible happens to someone? It is incredibly difficult to build an accurate image of a large scale group of people judging by a few hours of direct experience. 1000 harder if through footage selected by people with their own agendas. Media coverage, especially audio-visual coverage, is wild because media coverage is simply an inappropriate way to depict such phenomena.
- partiallypro 6y agoIsn't it also possible that your friend is experiencing confirmation bias because they agree with CHAZ? It wasn't reported until much later but during the Occupy movement, rapes skyrocketed around and among the encampments. I have little doubt that there are a lot of things that are going unreported at the moment which will eventually come to light when people don't feel coerced or intimidated by the community (and they probably will barely make the news, unfortunately.) I've seen enough videos from inside the encampment to know that your post isn't the entire story. Group think is a very strange thing, and sometimes it takes a while of removing yourself from the group to realize some of the wrongs (look at cults/extremist groups.) Again, people said the same things about Occupy, I walked the grounds myself and it looked fine...but under the surface, women especially, were being taken advantage of/raped at a high rate.
- cl0ne 6y agoOne of my friends that lives in Seattle gave me a very similar description and also mentioned how differently it is being portrayed in the media than it is in reality.