Seems like GenZ is having their occupy moment. The police is probably just waiting for them to get tired and go home. In few weeks back to "normal".
Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
151–160 of 920 posts
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#152A 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…
> like a music festival campground Every generation needs a Woodstock. Burning man is not real enough.
>Every generation needs a Woodstock
A massively failed capitalist project that leaves behind an enormous mess?
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
It's also extraordinarily unpopular, across the ideological spectrum[1]. >...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. >but the Overton Window on that issue just underwent and sudden and massive shift. Well you're right about that. Beca…
“Cut funding for police departments”, that is shown in that poll isn't what the dismantle/abolish is about (it's not even a fair portrayal what “defund” is centrally about, which is shifting funding from PDs to alternative services.) And that poll is from near the beginning of the recent protests.
More recent polling shows much higher support for both “defund” and “dismantle” than what that poll found for it's lopsided framing of “defund”.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-poll-e...
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#154I never understand why likeminded people don’t just start a city? “Wild country” was an example of this, but they were bound together by a quasi religion.
There’s so much unincorporated land in the USA. So many opportunities to prove things work or don’t work. Why move into a place somebody else built?
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
> relatively unpoliced for the last 50 years Source on that? 75% of that link talks about: - riots following police action - attacks on police stations - special policing tactics for that region - evictions by the police
My source is first-hand experience: the police do not enter Exarcheia, because they know that they'll be attacked if they do. The Wikipedia page documents precisely what has happened each time the police have tried to establish a foothold in the neighborhood since the 1973 student uprising. They currently operate from patrols and bases outside of the neighborhood. Any effects they have on the neighborhood (like squat…
Very interesting. Although from what I could find on it, it doesn't really sound like a good example to argue that an unpoliced society can be a nice, safe place to live. I certainly wouldn't describe it as utopic.
> locals and activists help with the cleaning and cooking and even take turns being a night watch after someone – reportedly far-right activists – set a squat on fire.
> “It’s hard to live in peace when teenagers come here just to get high or you need to run to your car because protesters are setting them on fire,” says Dioni Vougioukli, a journalist who has lived in the neighborhood for 10 years.
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a fitting explanation, and I think developing these kinds of rituals further will help heal some of the divides in this country. Your last paragraph reminded me of Eric Gans’ “Originary Hypothesis” [1]: > Gans hypothesizes that language originates in "an aborted gesture of appropriation," which signifies the desired object as sacred and which memorializes the birth of language, serving as the basis for ritual…
It’s definitely not an idea that originates with me! :) I think I got it from a German Literature class. The professor had us read some formational texts, and one of them was a theory for the establishment of religion, written by some German 20th Century thinker. I can’t find the source now, but it was probably a pretty mainstream one, for all you internet sleuths out there. He tried to put forward an evolutionary th…
Ah, yep! Gans’ work is heavily based on Girard.
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#157Seattle 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…
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.
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#158I never understand why likeminded people don’t just start a city? “Wild country” was an example of this, but they were bound together by a quasi religion. There’s so much unincorporated land in the USA. So many opportunities to prove things work or don’t work. Why move into a place somebody else built?
> I never understand why likeminded people don’t just start a city?
Mostly, probably, because starting a city has a process defined in state law (or, out of the US, law of some other higher level of government) which is different than “a bunch of people just buy up land and decide to declare it a city”, e.g., California’s LAFCO process.
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the OP of that post: >tl;dw: Man was tagging over someone else's art, Raz and group approach and separate him from crowd, chasing him for two blocks. He begins to film them with his phone, they take it from him. He tries to get it back and they attack him, kicking him in the head and breaking his glasses. At one point, Raz threatens to shoot the man. They then begin to gaslight him that it was all his fault. Aud…
> So it took about 3 days for this anarchist utopia to demonstrate exactly why police exist. Yes, but not current american police. What is demonstrated here is that unchecked power is bad, which is pretty close to what the american police currently seems to have, leading to crimes like the one that started the whole protest.
Well said. It's about checked power - abolishing police totally would just end up with them recreated again when the need arises, but without the proper infrastructure to control them.
What we really need is a system of accountability and control over police. Police should be as accountable for their actions and mistakes as every other citizen (equality under the law!), or at least that's the idea.
We can start by:
- getting rid of police unions that hide information and do stuff like have police be judged by three of their peers, one picked by the accused, and prevent police from getting fired.
- get rid of qualified immunity
And so on.
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#160A 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 zon…
Were you around for Occupy, can you compare?