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Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

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Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#111

Post by dragonwriter »

dawg- wrote: post #59

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 o…

> 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.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#112

Post by free_rms »

0x262d wrote: post #88
jerf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_... 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 y…

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.

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.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#113

Post by kinghajj »

bathtub365 wrote: post #91
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, fixe…

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

> 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.?

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#114

Post by solidasparagus »

0xddd wrote: post #99
solidasparagus wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What 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.

Specifically 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.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#115

Post by staplers »

JPKab wrote: post #101
conroy wrote: post #84

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 las…

"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?

An amateur map of infrastructure right on the site: https://capitolhillautonomous.zone/img/16.jpg

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#116

Post by staplers »

solidasparagus wrote: post #114
0xddd wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What 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.

Specifically 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 a…

  eventually the idiots/assholes will become a problem that needs to be dealt with
Like the police force?

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#117

Post by shadowgovt »

jerf wrote: post #21
Pfhreak wrote: post #16

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.

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_... 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 y…

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.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#118

Post by pera »

conroy wrote: post #84

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 las…

> 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

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#119

Post by Kye »

solidasparagus wrote: post #114
0xddd wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What 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.

Specifically 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 a…

They're trying out the many proposed and proven methods of community management other than armed, poorly-trained cops. Music festivals aren't trying to prove the viability of alternative societal structures. They're different things.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#120

Post by gammarator »

dragonwriter wrote: post #111
dawg- wrote: post #59

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 o…

> 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 fa…

Here's a recent summary: https://kottke.org/20/06/police-abolition-defund-the-police
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