Live data from Hacker News

Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

capitolhillautonomous.zone

621–630 of 920 posts

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#621
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…

I think the media has been playing this up like crazy to try and get the alt-right to react. The alt-right consensus, at least on 4chan, is the absolute best thing for the alt-right to do to get the Democratic party to look stupid and inept and invite a voter backlash is to do nothing.

Yeah, they don't need a ton of help there. Biden's response is to shoot them in the legs, not the chest! The entire Democratic establishment seems completely unable of taking a moral stance for fear it would offend somebody.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#622
post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make it their duty to protect you.

It's really strange how people in this thread refuse to believe that the "reform the police" option even exists. As though we must either have a subpar police system or no police system at all. It's also strange how many people think that getting rid of the police will just work itself out. 1. Abolish police. 2. > 3. Prosper.

If reform worked it would have already worked.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#623
post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there's a valuable lesson in that too: foster a sense of community, instead of trying to control people by force. My impression is also that many cases of police abuse in the US happen in situations where most of the police officers policing a community are not themselves members of that community, but outsiders looking down on that community.

> foster a sense of community, instead of trying to control people by force. The institutions that are most effective at "fostering a sense of community" are voluntary ones like churches and cultural centres, not coercive ones like police. Social scientists have known for a long time about the critical importance of this sort of civic and community engagement, but it is often misunderstood and considered irrelevant a…

which often advocate for a mixture of extreme social individualism and a radical redefinition of social groups

Additionally, they advocate mixing together people who have little in common, to obtain diversity. That's not conducive to sense of community either, as Robert Putnam's research showed[1].

[1] - https://www.puttingourdifferencestowork.com/pdf/j.1467-9477....

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#624
post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American police departments have no duty to protect you. They are law enforcement officers who choose at their own discretion to arrive at your home seven minutes after you dial 911.

Make it their duty to protect you.

Right, because police rarely break the law?

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived 1 block from there, by Lindas until a year ago. What kind of interactions with homeless people did you have to say it is absolutely terrible? I occasionally saw a homeless person, but that was about the worst of it. And I was out on the town a lot. Oh my car got broken into once as well. Once in 11 years.

I just saw so many of them .. more than I have in any other city in the developed world (and I've lived a lot of places). I never had any bad interactions with them I guess, but I broke my heart to see that many of them, especially in the downtown areas and further out towards the Interstate and underpasses. I dunno, maybe I'm too sensitive, but it broke my heart. It's one of the many reasons I left Seattle.

[deleted]

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#626

Does anyone think this would not have been crushed without mercy if the protestors were 'white supremacists'? Serious question. The irony is that if these AZs were permitted it could give said segregationists exactly what they had been after for decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Malheur_Nati...

Like this scenario in 2016 that ended when the last far-right occupiers of a national wildlife refugee left after 6 weeks?.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anarchic utopias do not stay utopic for all that long. At least one counterexample to this is Exarcheia[1] in Athens, which has been relatively unpoliced for the last 50 years. I was there about a year ago and was struck by how both peaceful and lively it was. Nowhere in Athens felt nearly as alive. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exarcheia

It's not a utopic commune though, it's a normal neighborhood, apart from frequent violent and spectacular fights with police.

Yes, that's the end goal of a utopic commune - normal life.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#628
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...

Yeah, that is flat-out misinformation. The SPD has been lying left and right.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't a useless piece of turf, it was a park that the residents of the neighborhood, myself included, used to be able to enjoy. Now we can't, because hundreds are camping on the area. I am all for their cause, but I feel like the methodology of 'camping in a park' is not the right way to enact civic change at a policy level.

You can't go to the park, because it's too crowded, because people are gathering there to enact change. I'm sorry, I simply disagree as to the role of public space in a free society -- them occupying the park is the LEAST objectionable thing about this.

How is occupying the park enacting change?

I thought the meetings with the mayor were excellent, but via this avenue, all they are doing is changing the park.

There's a whole city out there where cops still operate under the same laws they have for many years. Protesters should try and change _that_, imho.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#630
post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The police follow orders from their chain of command that goes up to an elected official. You can petition the elected official, occupy their building, grill them in the media, and vote them out if you convince the other citizens. For example the knee-to-the-neck move was a part of the "orders" in that it was part of standard procedure and it is now being revised and removed. Similarly the tear gas was part of the pr…

I believe the issue today is that the police are causing violence against the people with little power in our political system. To those people the distinction you are making is without a difference.

I feel like you're taking my reply out of context. Specifically I was addressing this questions:

> 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?

and explaining why replacing police with warlords is not progress.

Are some classes of people unable to influence the system? I readily agree with that. Are we making our society better by replacing police with warlords or anarchists? I argue not.

Post reply on HN