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Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

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Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#671

Post by catacombs »

rovolo wrote: post #649
catacombs wrote: post #478

Serious question: What's to stop Seattle Police or state authorities from removing people from CHAZ? I wouldn't be surprised if there are city, state and federal officials drawing up probable cause to shut it down.

Protestors occupied the intersection of 11th and Pine (1 block from the police station) for multiple nights prior to the police abandoning the precinct. The police tried clearing people multiple nights with tear gas and flash-bangs, but the images and video of clearing the protestors night after night became politically unsavory. They probably won't try evicting people from the area again because they didn't succeed…

> They probably won't try evicting people from the area again because they didn't succeed politically the previous times they tried.

Interesting. The city might not, but feds might try, as they probably don't have much to lose.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#672

Post by ColanR »

colinmhayes wrote: post #645
dgellow wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the occasional opportunity to debate such issues in an intelligent forum is something I have trouble finding elsewhere on the internet. That's maybe the good place to ask: What are other places (maybe places more open to political discussions) the HN crowd would recommend for "intelligent discussions"? Twitter and Reddit are an awful mess at the moment.

LessWrong and niche subreddits depending on the political views you hope to find.

> depending on the political views you hope to find

It seems like the really good discussion places wouldn't have to carry this caveat. It's too bad those are even harder to find.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#673

Post by SkyBelow »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #183
deathgrips wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With regular assholes you have the right to self-defense. With the police you don't.

Without police or “criminal justice apparatus” your rights are merely theoretical.

If anything I would think them even more practical, but require one to be more active in their enforcement.

But that is the thing I don't see being recognize. While the current institute that is the police could pass away, society will still have rules and will still want enforcers of those rules (though not all rules are equally enforced). And you see this in any supposedly anarchic community, they still have social standards they enforce, they just do not rely the nearby government for enforcement of smaller issues (though there is still a reliance for larger issues, such as stopping annexation by an entity with a larger force). In turn this makes me think all such communities are actually minarchist instead of anarchist, which is a drastic difference in base assumptions.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#674

Post by Fellshard »

rideontime wrote: post #657
Fellshard wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because some people are still rational enough to treat individuals on an individual basis.

And this particular individual has already had to walk back false statements: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-area-prote... > The Seattle Police Department walked back its claim, widely repeated in the news media, that denizens of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone are extorting businesses. > "That has not happened affirmatively," Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best in a news conference Thursday afternoo…

That's an individual, correct.

My response, if you look, was to a post that posed the question:

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

That is not speaking of an individual, but of a group, and then asserting claims regarding all members of that group.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#675

Post by subsubzero »

If you are trying to start a respectable state at least spell correctly, it really makes people not take it seriously:

>siezed!! by anarchists, BLM supporters and other protestors who have since transformed it into a unverisal!!

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#676

Post by renegading »

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…

Are media being allowed in? If independent journalists were there then maybe more people would know the "truth".

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#677

Post by codyb »

alex_young wrote: post #603
undefined1 wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Portraying it as some mad max wasteland is absurd, but so is referring to it as even pseudo utopian. It's not sustainable in any way and there wasn't exactly a democratic process by which the residents of Seattle agreed to having a section of their city turned into an autonomous zone. Though it could be an interesting experiment to do this somewhere, I think it'd have to go through a vote.

> Portraying it as some mad max wasteland is absurd, but so is referring to it as anything remotely utopian. Why couldn't it be positive? I think it's fair to say that these are early days and there is a general lack of data about what's going on, but most of what I've seen has been pretty positive. Here's a video I watched from inside: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=610393902995230

I don’t think parent meant to imply it couldn’t be positive, just that the general process of declaring an autonomous zone as was done here has a few warts when you consider property rights and the context within which it has occurred.

I think parent mostly meant mad max wasteland and utopian are both two extremes.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#678

Post by dmix »

rideontime wrote: post #668
pera wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI the Seattle Police Department retracted previous claims yesterday: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-area-prote... This is not the first time Chief Best and the SPD made things up during these events, and in fact they have a long history of misbehavior: https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/... Note that in your video Best is not being too explicit on where exactly those crim…

Note that Andy Ngo himself, author of the tweet linked in the grandparent, helped spread the false claims that SPD has retracted: https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1270820367573999616

He was quoting the police chief in the video? Doesn't seem very malicious to me.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#679

Post by asdff »

at_a_remove wrote: post #631
plokiju21 wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the right was in power (Congress, media, and so forth), they would be left. How much power does the right need before they're considered "in power"? They controlled both branches of congress and the presidency until 2018, and have a majority on the supreme court. Fox news is the most popular media platform, and have tremendous (but not full) control over the mainstream narrative. This as "in control" as a single…

You have left out a word perhaps I should have included in all caps: MEDIA.

Whose media is the question. A bit under half of the votes went to Donald Trump 2016, and I bet few in this demographic are listening to NPR just like few who voted for Clinton are watching Hannity. There is this narrative among the right that the vast majority of media is left leaning, but given the numbers and viewership of conservative voices on cable news, talk radio, the internet, and the fact that nearly half the voting block of this country consumes this media and votes R, I don't buy the argument. A lot of the supposedly leftist major media articles I encounter read as firmly centrist or even center right to me at least.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#680

Post by ALittleLight »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #448
dgellow wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect that someone with an assault weapon and what looks like a bullet proof vest is scary for quite a lot of people. And that's notable in the sense that is goes against the idea of "a peaceful event similar to a music festival" (paraphrasing).

But you see stuff like that at music festivals as well, in the form of police. So I'm asking why this is scary or notable but that is not.

The policeman is a trained and vetted, albeit imperfectly, professional standing in a venue, the likes of which you've encountered many times. That policeman's goal is (highly likely) to keep order at the venue and collect a paycheck.

Contrast this to armed anarchists, anti-fascists, whatever, occupying city blocks as part of an organization that's connected to street violence and looting. The CHAZ guard, hasn't been trained and vetted and you don't know what his goals are and you haven't experienced it before.

As others have noted, it's a bit of a false premise to ask "Why are we scared of these people but not those other recent protests?" Because, of course, you assume people weren't scared by the other protests, which is not necessarily the case. Imagine someone who worked in one of the government buildings that the end-lockdown people occupied, there are now a hundred guys with masks and rifles occupying the building - is that imaginary worker scared or disturbed, and can you see why "But you aren't scared of the armed courthouse guards" isn't exactly equivalent?

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