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Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

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Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#511

Post by commandlinefan »

kenneth wrote: post #486

I am rather amused that the same group is simultaneously calling for the tearing down of secessionist monuments and statues, while promoting a secession of their own. The cognitive dissonance is real.

As a die-hard libertarian, I'm amused by a group that's been telling libertarians for decades that we should move to Somalia if we like living without government so much and then creating a purely libertarian social experiment the first chance they get. If this doesn't dissolve into complete chaos it's a vindication of libertarian principles.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#512

Post by jtr1 »

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.

Revolutionary Catalonia and the Paris Commune are interesting examples of libertarian socialism. You could also look at the Korean People's Association [1], Rojava more recently [2], or the Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities in Chiapas (EZLN), which seem to be exceptional in having lasted 30 years or so.[3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_People%27s_Association_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rojava [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Zapatista_Autonomous_Mun...

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#513

Post by sebular »

zeveb wrote: post #384
cma wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fox is by far the most popular news channel in the US and pretty close to bigger than the rest combined.

I was all set to post a comment about how I dream of an honestly fair and balanced news channel, unlike Fox, CNN or MSNBC. I was going to post some outrageous headlines from each site right now. Surprisingly, the front page of foxnews.com was pretty sane and sober, remarkably so — and by far better than cnn.com or msnbc.com. I am honestly stunned. I really expected Fox News to be as much of a dumpster fire as CNN or…

Fox News has definitely not turned over a new leaf. Here's an example from the Fox homepage that impressed you so much. It's about the latest developments from the CHAZ:

"Black Lives Matter protestors say Seattle's autonomous zone has hijacked message" https://www.foxnews.com/us/black-lives-matter-protesters-sea...

This seems like a straightforward and believable article. There's infighting at the Zone because a bunch of anarchists have diverted from the core message about police brutality targeting blacks and other minorities, and now the BLM camp is pissed off. Right?

But wait, even though the title unambiguously states that BLM protestors are blaming the autonomous zone for hijacking the core BLM message, the article instead explains that the quote about "hijacking the message" actually comes from a woman who is speaking on behalf of the African American Community Advisory Council, and she's the one being booed and heckled by protestors.

So what's the African American Community Advisory Council? Probably some BLM-related thing, right? After all, if the title of the article states that "Black Lives Matter protestors" are accusing the CHAZ of "hijacking the message" while the actual quote came out of the mouth of someone from the African American Community Advisory Council, then surely Black Lives Matter == African American Community Advisory Council.

Right?

I mean sure, technically they must be two separate things because they have two separate names, but surely they're closely connected. Just to be positive, let's find out. Type that name into a search engine and click on the first result:

https://www.seattle.gov/police/community-policing/demographi...

Wait, the African American Community Advisory Council is actually a department of the Seattle city government. And they "work collaboratively with the police."

So Fox News saw a story about a city government employee scolding protestors. This employee works in a department that is closely aligned with the police and sides with the police, but because the department has a name that evokes blackness, that was enough leeway for them to write a false headline that intentionally confuses the reader into thinking that this is a story about internal conflict and infighting among the protestors.

Sure enough, the bovine reader comments at the bottom of the page confirm the success of this tactic:

"Even the idiots can't agree. What will they do now??"

"I guess nobody told BLM that you can't negotiate with terrorists."

"Leftists arguing over whose riot it is???"

"Eating their own"

Fox News knows that they can trust Fox News readers to glance at the headline, skip the article, feel confirmation of their biases and preconceptions, and tuck another false anecdote in their pocket to use as ammunition in case they get in an argument with a family member, coworker, or person online.

Here's a reminder that we should never be passive consumers of of a biased narrative!

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#514

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#515

Post by ashtonkem »

mcv wrote: post #475
ashtonkem wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As 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.

I think over the past few decades, there's been a movement towards increasingly aggressive use of some police weapons. Using tear gas to disperse a crowd is also needlessly aggressive. When I was a kid, Dutch police used water for that. And only when it was an actual riot. I've seen videos of police tasering someone who wasn't the least bit violent, but simply uncooperative. That's not what tasers are for. But if som…

Tasers a great example of the problem of "less lethal" tools.

The theory is that tasers are a (edit: partial) replacement for firearms for cops. The reality is that approximately 0% of cops are willing to draw a taser if they suspect that someone else has a firearm; they go for their firearm too.

Instead tasers have replaced other methods of de-escalation and containment, which is very bad if you're not a cop. Combine this with cops being called out for people experiencing mental health crises, and this is a recipe for disaster.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#516

Post by djsumdog »

mcv wrote: post #497
djsumdog wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the end game is. The police is not going to disband. People asking for that don't understand how States work. You cannot have a State without a monopoly on violence. America disbanded police once, in 2003, in a city called Baghdad. That turned out wonderfully. I suspect they'll all just get bored at some point.

They apparently also did it in Camden, NJ, and that turned out quite well. I think the real issue here is: the police want to show that without them, things turn to chaos. Instead, they show that with them, things turn to chaos. Meanwhile, the protesters want to show that without the police, things are peaceful, and they seem to be succeeding. That's not a great story for people who believe in police brutality, of co…

> Camden, NJ

People keep brining up Camden, but in that instance, didn't the State Troopers still maintain control of the area during the transition?

From a political perspective, "disbanding" will most likely mean just making existing cops re-apply for their current roles (like how TVA did mass layoffs and rehires in the 90s).

I'm still convinced actual disbanding, without a security force in the interim, will be straight up disastrous.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#517

Post by Ghostt8117 »

noelsusman wrote: post #396
hedora wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Occupy Wall Street had a tangible goal. Break up big banks, and forgive predatory loans. Even with Obama in office, we ended up with even bigger banks and a spiraling debt crisis.

I don't remember that being a consistent, clearly articulated goal. That's also orders of magnitude more difficult to accomplish than shifting some city budgets around.

Protests almost never have a "consistent, clearly articulated goal," because of the nature of protests. People protest a problem and there are sometimes hundreds of proposed solutions. Unfortunately, certain biased media outlets choose the most extreme offered solutions and highlight them to discredit the entire movement and ignore the problem. And "shifting some city budgets around" is not as easy as it sounds.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#518

Post by commandlinefan »

hedora wrote: post #174
michaelmrose wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a persistent desire to suck the funds out of the police force budget and redirect the money to things the community values. This unlike occupy is a tangible goal and if people only elect people willing to give it to them it will happen regardless of what people outside of Seattle want.

Occupy Wall Street had a tangible goal. Break up big banks, and forgive predatory loans. Even with Obama in office, we ended up with even bigger banks and a spiraling debt crisis.

> we ended up with even bigger banks

That's my prediction: they'll succeed in diverting tax funds from the police into social programs... and then three months later, the police budgets will be back where they started, but we'll be paying for the additional social programs, too. In a year, our taxes will go up, again, to pay for all of this.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#519

Post by michaelt »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #392
thu2111 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then there's also this: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaQyClgU4AEJnWf?format=jpg&name=... https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaQyCmMUEAEn_1o?format=jpg&name=... I've not before seen a summer street festival where armed militias wearing bulletproof vests patrol the streets.

I truly don't understand the problem here. Can you tell me what it is that makes these people dangerous and scary, but the similarly armed protestors who showed up at government buildings a month ago — or, frankly, the police — fine?

For some people it feels dangerous and scary because they're on the other side

For other people it feels dangerous and scary because rhetoric about "abandoned by the authorities" and "siezed by anarchists" alongside an unofficial militia sounds like the state's monopoly on violence being usurped.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#520

Post by iron0013 »

drevil-v2 wrote: post #375
pera wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Seattle police chief said on TV [1] that "Rapes, robberies and all sorts of violent acts have been occurring in the area and we're not able to get to [them]." Doesn’t sound very utopian [1] https://twitter.com/mrandyngo/status/1271291958296604675?s=2...

How, after all the events of the last two weeks, is anyone still willing to take a police-person’s word as truth?
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