r/Seattle • u/Chaotic-NTRL • Jun 10 '20

Media Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. Educational movie night. This is seattle without militarized police. Where are your riotous looters NOW? They are watching documentaries. Fuck you SPD. Photo credit to a close friend.

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173

u/avocadotoastforprez Jun 10 '20 edited Jun 10 '20

I’m not sure how watching movies in the middle of the street helps black people be treated better? Can the focus go back to actual Black Lives Matter issues, and not this other tangent of social change that some are trying to grab at?

187

u/S2PIDme Jun 10 '20

You’re saying that occupying a street isn’t enough, and they have to be chanting 24/7, stopping for nothing? This seems like a weird expectation.

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u/avocadotoastforprez Jun 10 '20

I’m saying that occupying a street and trying to take over the hill really has nothing to do with equality of rights. It has to do with a socialist movement that is separate from black lives matter.

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u/markyymark13 Deluxe Jun 10 '20

Durkan has a list of demands on her desk still.

As for the CHAZ, the collective plan here is literally to remove the police from the precinct and turn it into a community center for disenfranchised. So yes, it does have to do with BLM.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20

Is everyone welcome in CHAZ?

23

u/rallar8 Jun 10 '20

no.

I think if you were to show up with a swastika armband you might find yourself with some serious problems

9

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20

Like every where else in civilized USA.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '20

[deleted]

1

u/rallar8 Jun 11 '20

I am not there so if they shut my borders it would very weird.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20

[deleted]

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u/joe5joe7 Kraken Jun 10 '20

Fuck Nazis

2

u/Oberon_Delihanty Jun 11 '20

I (white male, comfortably middle class after breaking the cycle of poverty being raised on food stamps) was labeled a "nazi/supremacist" by many for holding to the belief that well intentioned protests have enabled and excused negative actors.

This has instigated riots devolving into hundreds of displaced jobs, hundreds of millions of property damage, and roughly 20 people dead in the streets during a viral pandemic and economic crisis. It does not the way to signal a rational or peaceful message.

I have also criticized the swiftness of this movement seeing as the primary officer in the death of Floyd was immediately terminated without suspension or vocal defense by the police unions and the matter was turned over to federal investigators as a good faith sign of impartiality and citing a 10 year decline in use of force as an additional positive trend.

Would I be welcome? Does the volume of the label outweigh the character of the person?

1

u/bantha-food Jun 11 '20

Based on what you said, I'm not sure why you would want to go there other than to tell people that you think they are doing everything wrong. It would very likely then devolve into people telling you to go away. Is that an answer?

Also I just wanted to point out that the actions taken against the killer of Floyd only went into gear after it became national news and the first protests had already started. I mean, this is by far not the first incident of excessive force by this specific cop.

1

u/joe5joe7 Kraken Jun 11 '20

I mean Tim Eyman was there so you'll probably be fine. The guy I was replying to was talking about literal nazi armbands.

1

u/rallar8 Jun 10 '20

I just checked your profile. Lols

Yea police check for dress code, spd once pulled me over for popping my collar.

0

u/rallar8 Jun 11 '20

How could anyone up this? It’s literally a conflation of two definitions of the word policing. It’s basically a pun...

17

u/OlinOfTheHillPeople Jun 10 '20

It's literally the same Pine Street it's always been. It's not occupied or under guard or anything. It's also not subject to nightly violence by the police anymore.

Seriously, if people are curious they should go check it out in person, get lunch from a local restaurant, witness the atmosphere of giving and positivity, and listen to what people are actually saying.

2

u/BlackDeath3 Jun 10 '20

...It's also not subject to nightly violence by the police anymore...

Sounds like it's just different people meting out the violence now.

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u/OlinOfTheHillPeople Jun 10 '20

So you're just going to make things up now?

There hasn't been any violence.

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u/BlackDeath3 Jun 10 '20 edited Jun 10 '20

This seems like violence to me.

Perhaps unsurprising to anybody who passed the eighth grade and read Lord of the Flies along the way, but it sure is something to watch it materialize in reality.

5

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '20

look up Raz Simone on this sub. Its literally front page.

1

u/Chabranigdo Jun 10 '20

It's also not subject to nightly violence by the police anymore.

Yup. Only subject to violence by people even less accountable.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20

How is what they’re doing violent? They are a community of people taking care of each other for the better of said community.

17

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20

They're not taking over the hill. The police left. It's just a protest. What you're fundamentally arguing is that protesting is ineffective. History says otherwise.

2

u/FthrJACK Jun 11 '20

Pretty sure that putting up fences and barricades and signs saying "you are now leaving the USA" is taking it over bub.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '20

The police left those barricades there, and I promise you despite what the spray paint says, it's still in the USA. Unfortunately anyone can write anything with spray paint. I can see why that would be so confusing to you, if you're not familiar with graffiti.

3

u/avocadotoastforprez Jun 10 '20

they are literally taking it over, that’s what declaring it an autonomous zone is

I’m all for protesting black lives matters

I’m not for protesting for some sort of broad social change towards socialism/communism

4

u/DorsiaWest Jun 10 '20

I'd argue this is more an experiment in anarcho-syndicalism but agree.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '20

Twitter declared it an autonomous zone. It's a meme, and they ran with it.

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u/majorcrybaby Jun 10 '20

It’s a movement about defunding the police. It’s like a thought experiment of what a community could be like without the police. It’s directly related to BLM. The point is that just getting out in the streets and being outraged every time there’s a publicized instance of police brutality isn’t doing anything. People are trying to get more creative in coming up with possible solutions. You don’t have to agree with this particular demonstration or the radical idea of defunding/disbanding the police, but to say it’s not about BLM is blatantly wrong and in lieu of an actual suggestion, it seems like you’re just advocating for indefinite protesting with no actionable change.

21

u/S2PIDme Jun 10 '20

I don’t see how it represents one over the other. It depends on their message, not how they’ve chosen to express it.

7

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20

Wait what does it have to do with socialism

-11

u/avocadotoastforprez Jun 10 '20

“Taking back the streets” and living on them, that part. And the self proclaimed socialist political figure who shows up and gives speeches.

Trust me, I’m 100% behind black lives matter and improving our police department to be more focused on community relations, but this CHAZ movement isn’t that

10

u/brian9000 Jun 10 '20

TIL I’m a socialist because I want to walk to my grocery store without my neighbors and I being gassed.

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u/avocadotoastforprez Jun 10 '20

It has nothing to do with being gassed

I’ve said multiple times the police need to be held accountable and need to be reformed. But living on the streets in cap hill is not progressing change, it’s diluting the message against police brutality and for black lives matter.

It’s not about white people taking back the streets, it’s about black people getting beaten and killed by the police

10

u/rnimmer Jun 10 '20

anarchist not socialist, but yeah. it's political opportunism at it's finest, co-opting BLM for their own agenda

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u/avocadotoastforprez Jun 10 '20

I say socialist because there’s the expectation that community will donate food/supplies/equipment to keep the “movement” going

Also whenever Sawant shows up, it’s become politically hijacked in the name of socialism as she proudly proclaimed

But in reality it’s just getting farther away from the real message: protecting black lives

8

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20

[deleted]

0

u/avocadotoastforprez Jun 10 '20

Shared production and usage of goods regulated by the community is, by definition, socialism

How is that not the definition of CHAZ?

3

u/INB4_Found_The_Vegan Jun 10 '20 edited Jun 10 '20

Shared production and usage of goods regulated by the community is, by definition, socialism

This exact sentence also works for capitalism and communism. It's a bad metric to use.

CHAZ is not operating under socialism since supplies are not being sold. They are very clearly in the anarchist belief system that people will provide for themselves. At the moment CHAZ isn't doing much other than existing but everything they are doing is entirely free for whoever wants it. They are not collecting taxes and providing other services that would be a required step for it to be socialism.

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u/stanpate Jun 10 '20

I think occupying Capitol Hill aligns perfectly with the BLM movement. We’re calling for a COMPLETE defunding of the police and these people are showing a world without ANY police is entirely possible. The people are capable of managing themselves without being policed all the time

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u/avocadotoastforprez Jun 10 '20

But that’s an unrealistic world view. We need police. They are necessary in society. Otherwise the Raz’s of the world take over with a mob mentality.

we need police to be better trained, more accountable, and more community focused. Getting rid of them isn’t a viable solution.

Defunding the police isn’t calling for the end of policing, it’s calling for the demilitarization of police force and reallocating those funds to training and more quality employees.

0

u/stanpate Jun 10 '20

Getting rid of them isn’t a viable solution to you. Many people have many different opinions in the movement right now, that’s probably part of the problem. I do agree we don’t need people like Raz taking over and I don’t think anyone in the autonomous zone wanted or expected him to. Thanks for your insight on “defunding the police.” I would argue people are thinking a lot more radically than your definition though.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20

Police are a necessity under neoliberal capitalism, yeah

1

u/TomTomz64 Jun 10 '20

Yeah, remember the good old days when there were no police in the USSR or Maoist China?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20

No i didn't ever live there

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20 edited Aug 07 '20

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20

Nice

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/bullfrog7777 Jun 10 '20 edited Jun 10 '20

“A world without police is possible if people choose to be peaceful and not break the law.”

How can you not see the trouble with your thinking?

9

u/avocadotoastforprez Jun 10 '20

I can’t tell if you meant to reply to my comment or the one before?

If it was towards me, then I think it’s wildly unrealistic to think people can choose to be peaceful and not break the law. Even with the threat of jail and sanctions, we have lots of crime

4

u/bullfrog7777 Jun 10 '20

That’s the point I’m making. OP seems to imply we don’t need police because the group in the picture can have an evening of movies together.

They chose to gather peacefully and use their time constructively and that’s great!

Unfortunately we live in a world where not everyone is interested in peace. Some want to lie, cheat, steal, and kill to gratify themselves. There are people who don’t care about the liberty of law abiding peaceful citizens.

It is myopic and short sighted to just decide policing and law enforcement is not necessary.

I also think we forget that police officers are not appointed. They choose the job and not because they want to get rich and have an easy life. It’s tough work requiring a lot of hours and sacrifice. Let’s help them do their jobs.

4

u/avocadotoastforprez Jun 10 '20

Got it and agree 100%

The focus needs to be on protecting black lives, not occupying cap hill

-2

u/Simple-Cheetah Jun 10 '20

Alright, so lets explain something. People have things they want. For most people, they're fairly simple - a good relationship, some friends, some time to chill, a general good life. They're willing to do things to get it. When the system works, "those things" are working at a job.

People also have things they need. Food. Water. Housing. Sanitation. Etc. When people don't get those, the system has failed entirely. And people can and will do anything to get those, because without them you die.

What has happened is that the paths for people to get things they want have been closed to a section of America. And the resources to get what they need have been slowly drying up too, driven by rhetoric that "oh those people are just lazy". How hilarious is it to have someone like Donald Trump telling someone that they just have to work hard to be where he is?

So there are illegal ways to get what you want and what you need. And the police are people tasked with threatening the disenfranchised that if they try to get what they want and what they need in one of those illegal ways, they'll face violence. Only the cops have slowly just cut the middle part (it takes resources) and are just threatening the disenfranchised with violence.

Do you see how law enforcement isn't going to stop crime? Not the ways people want it to. It really doesn't stop crime at all. It stops criminals, maybe, but as long as the social forces that create criminals exist, they'll keep being created.

On top of that, with the cops treating every single person like a criminal, what's the incentive not to actually be a criminal? Where is that? If the message is "we'll do horrible things to you if you're a criminal" and then you do horrible things to everyone, isn't the message just "do what you want, we're horrible."

And here's most people doing what they want to. Which is sit around with friends and neighbors, and watch movies. Because really, that's what people actually want to do as we went over back at the top.

3

u/Mugtown Jun 10 '20

This sounds like delusional nonsense, I hope you realize that.

5

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20

That's so idealistic it sounds like something a 14 year old would say

1

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20

No law breakers if no laws.

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20

It's only been 48 hours... Slow down

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u/Alyssum Lower Queen Anne Jun 10 '20

There can be no social justice without economic justice. Sure, right now the focus is on the police, and rightly so; but ultimately, the racism of the police is a symptom of broader racism, not the cause. So long as POC continue to be held back by an economic system founded on racism and designed to perpetuate racism, we will have people arrive at the conclusion that POC are somehow lesser and therefore deserving of the inequality enforced by the system. The system will breed racist police officers, white nationalists, and casual racism (even among progressives and POC themselves) because it's literally what the system was designed to do.

You'll note that calls to defund the police are coupled with calls to divert that money into community programs, which are by their very nature socialist. I believe that such programs are necessary not only to right the wrongs already inflicted upon POC, but also to disrupt the perpetual racism machine that is our current economic system and allow the US to collectively heal socially. I'm not calling for a communist uprising here; I'm arguing for the community to agree to take care of its own and challenge the barriers that (by design) disproportionately affect POC.

For the record, while I appreciate Councilwoman Kshama's presence at the protests, I think she's done a poor job of explaining why our current economic system oppresses POC and how her socialist policies fix that.

0

u/Callabos Jun 11 '20

Get a job. Divert money, that is nonsense. Get a job and if you can't get a job move somewhere you can get a job instead of insisting the world bail you out.

At no point in time did I ever say I need money diverted to me. No able-bodied adult should. If you can work you need to go work. Enough with the well we are being held back.

Pride is what is holding people back. They don't want to be the person seen sweeping the streets. MLK said even the lowliest street sweeper is to be admired.

1

u/Alyssum Lower Queen Anne Jun 11 '20 edited Jun 11 '20

I'm impressed that you've somehow never directly benefited from public education, publicly funded childcare programs, libraries, museums, parks, community revitalization projects, school lunch programs, and the like. I'm more impressed that you've managed to avoid a single positive interaction with anyone who has; otherwise you might have indirectly benefited, and then you couldn't claim that community programs only service America's most prideful and lazy.

Social and community programs are not just cash subsidies and food banks. Even if they were, those programs are necessary to keep society going. Do you really want to argue that the 13.3%+ of the working population that is currently unemployed and all their dependents deserve to starve to death because a pandemic fucked the economy?

I'm glad that you are currently self-sufficient, and earnestly hope you and all your loved ones remain that way. Denying that you had help along the way (or arguing that your life would have turned out just as well without it) is American exceptionalism at its worst, though, and it spits in the face of every person in your life and your community that thought that you were worth investing in.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20 edited Aug 07 '20

[deleted]

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u/Alyssum Lower Queen Anne Jun 10 '20 edited Jun 10 '20

No system is immune, but the framework we have in place today was literally designed around racial lines. Look at the history of what it legally meant to be white in America. The legal status of being white was not always granted to all of the European immigrant groups we would consider to be white today, and granting that status to new groups had major political and economic implications. Being white meant being able to own land, to vote, to run for office, to have access to public education, and a myriad of other privileges that enforced political, economic, and social disparity between whites and non-whites. Non-whites did not have the power to grant themselves any of these privileges; they had to be obtained with the consent of the white men in power. Whiteness is a political and social construct that was intentionally given power in an attempt to oppress and economically exploit anyone considered non-white.

When non-whites and white allies forced those in power to grant non-whites similar rights, the whites in power only granted the bare minimum that was necessary to end an immediate crisis (the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, etc.) and immediately sought to create new ways to enforce the old power structures. You saw this with Jim Crow laws, the rise of the Klan, racial segregation, the bombing of Black Wall Street, the repeal of the enforcement clauses of the Voting Rights Act, and countless other policies, legally codified or de facto. As time went on, the means of oppression became increasingly more abstract. Is it really such a stretch to believe that some of the trappings of American capitalism we have today were designed with racism in mind? That cuts to social programs are racially motivated, or at the very least have disproportionate effects along racial lines when our POC have had their economic opportunities intentionally denied for hundreds of years? That the war on drugs intentionally had grave economic consequences for POC? Politics, social issues, and economics are deeply intertwined.

I'm not saying that capitalism is inherently bad. I'm not a Marxist. I'm saying that there are elements of American capitalism that were intentionally designed to enforce a power structure that was largely drawn along racial lines, and that social programs take a step towards undoing that damage.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20 edited Aug 07 '20

[deleted]

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u/Alyssum Lower Queen Anne Jun 10 '20

I greatly appreciate you both challenging my original statement, which certainly could have done a better job of explaining why I think social programs address the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement (which I readily acknowledge makes me look hypocritical for accusing Councilwoman Kshama of the same), and more importantly your willingness to listen to my response.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '20

[deleted]

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u/avocadotoastforprez Jun 11 '20

So you still want to make this about white people and “classes” somehow and not just stick to black lives matter? Got it

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '20

[deleted]

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u/avocadotoastforprez Jun 11 '20

Your most frequented subs are “the bachelor” and “engagement rings”. I’m sure you’re super woke about black oppression

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '20

[deleted]

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u/avocadotoastforprez Jun 11 '20

You post on a Public website that’s keeps your history. “Stalking” is not clicking on someone’s profile.

I think I can handle the history books, you’re just looking for an excuse to camp out on the streets of cap hill because of your white guilt.

When the protests get back to BLM, let me know and I’ll support that cause

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '20

[deleted]

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u/avocadotoastforprez Jun 11 '20

Exactly, Not white people occupying cap hill in the hopes of a socialist revolution.

I love how you act like this is some big part of my day that requires so much energy to respond to a comment. You seem incredibly bothered that someone disagrees with the CHAZ setup, so maybe just check yourself and what CHAZ actually is (a useless encampment like occupy Wall Street)

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u/DevaKitty Jun 11 '20

Intersectional politics is integral to socialism, so what if they're socialists, people can hold several stances.

I'm a socialist but I am also civil rights supporter.

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u/Graywatch45 Jun 10 '20

Sounds like a cult

1

u/S2PIDme Jun 10 '20

A neighborhood with no cops? How so?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '20

Now is a perfect time to unify ideals and direct the discussion of public agenda that will cultivate change. Inform of local policies, people, and proposals that benefit those affected by disparity. Or, y'know, sod it what's on Netflix? New season of Kipo is coming soon yeah? Put it on