This police-free protest zone was dismantled - but was it the end? (Sawant's Seattle wreckage)

BBC ^ | 7/12/20 | Ashitha Nagesh

[Libloather]

On 8 June, after a number of increasingly dangerous clashes between protesters and law enforcement, police officers in a popular area of downtown Seattle abandoned their precinct.

**SNIP**

Crucially, Chaz had the official backing of socialist councilmember Kshama Sawant.

"The idea of occupation isn't a new one, and it's an immensely powerful idea as a part of protest movements," Ms Sawant told the BBC. "Not only social movements on the streets, but also in workplace actions through history."

**SNIP**

Then, there were the shootings.

There were four shootings at the Chop in a 10-day period towards the end of June, two of which were fatal. The first shooting happened in the early hours of 20 June, killing 19-year-old Horace Lorenzo Anderson and injuring a 33-year-old man. A second shooting the next day left a 17-year-old boy injured, and another person was wounded in a third shooting two days later. In the fourth shooting, on 29 June, a 16-year-old boy was shot and a 14-year-old boy was left critically injured. Allegations of sexual assault and mental health crises within the zone began to be reported, too.

Although protesters insisted the violence wasn't directly connected to Chop, the atmosphere in the community began to change.

[Libloather]

Has anyone seen the warlord Raz?

[Darksheare]

Occupation is okay with them as long as it’s for leftist causes.
Inconvenience their plans and they want you murdered.
Bundy ranch standoff and the Lavoy Finicum shooting for example.

[Mark17]

Occupation is okay with them as long as it’s for leftist causes.

Then these rat 🐀 bastards, like Minneapolis, will want tax payer money, to rebuild, after they encouraged it to happen. Just like Minneapolis, Trump should tell them to stick it, where the sun don’t shine.

[colorado tanker]

According to this article, Chaz or Chop was a paradise on earth. What a pantload.

[freedumb2003]

Get this, at the end of the article. It describes the communes of the 60s which were unsustainable, especially as they grew. The tyranny of the mob.

This is little children playing “let’s build a cool fort” with adult lives:

>>
I don’t want to get too specific, but the direction many people are going in is towards organising neighbourhoods, democratic structures that allow people to make decisions together, and to create an autonomous zone but the other way around - by building citizen power first, and then declaring autonomy, instead of seizing an autonomous zone in a spontaneous moment and then having to work through the chaos.”

This democracy, he adds, would be “a consensus process - it’s not electing representatives to decide for you, but it’s everybody sitting down, forming the path forward together through discussion, and voting as a direct democracy”.<<
>>

[Darksheare]

Agreed!

[blueplum]

There are/were competing factions in Chop. Militantized by age 14, Jaiden Grayson has had a running war with Raz and has been a primary in keeping the paranoia spiked. Seems to make a living soliciting donations which she doles out selectively as ‘reparations’ based on race and sex and birthdays:

https://twitter.com/soultypechild

First 13 minutes tells her story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyNFVIT6Buc