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Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

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Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#701

Post by dannyw »

renegading wrote: post #676
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".

It’s a public space. You can walk in. No one mans the gates.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#702

Post by arctangos »

renegading wrote: post #676
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".

It’s awfully hard to tell whether this is parody or not, but yes, media are “allowed” in. In fact, far as I can see on the various vids, anyone can just walk in

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#703

Post by downerending »

loeg wrote: post #632
_-david-_ wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The police left because they were told to leave not because they wanted to leave.

It is really not clear at this time why they left. Chief Best claims she did not order police to leave. SPD's organizational structure is such that the police report only to the police chief. However, it was clearly organized — police brought in a rented commercial truck and removed some belongings, and boarded up the outside.

It's somewhat telling that both the mayor and the police chief deny ordering the abandonment. Who the hell is running the city?

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#704

Post by rideontime »

dmix wrote: post #691
rideontime wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He refers to his "sources" right in this tweet, which predates the police statement.

Ah, I thought you were referring to the original tweet which has the source video in the tweet. So that separate claim of business extortion is what was retracted by SPD?

So far.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#705

Post by dickjocke »

Auracle wrote: post #661
dickjocke wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?.

That was the news story of the month. This has barely been talked about in most of the media.

That isn't what OP was talking about, but to answer your separate question--in Seattle you have unarmed people who pushed some concrete blocks into the street, in Oregon you had well armed people occupying a federal building.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#706

Post by umeshunni »

kyleblarson wrote: post #573

My first thought was 'I feel bad for the people who spent a million bucks on a condo in Pike / Pine', but my second thought was that these are likely also people who voted for people like Sawant so they made their own bed.

Given that Sawant won with a tiny majority, that's an unfair judgement of those people.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#707

Post by appleflaxen »

ogre_codes wrote: post #427
drevil-v2 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> Seattle police chief said on TV And the media didn't post a non-biased account of what's going on? It's become incredibly difficult to take what the PD says at face value anymore.

and the media

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#708

Post by loeg »

ashtonkem wrote: post #298
TimSchumann wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm up north about the same distance. Only bad days have been this Sun/Mon with all the gas/flash-bangs and the sheriff's plane flying loops over the city until the wee hours of the morning. Since the police cleared out, everything has been much MUCH nicer around here.

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.

LAPD was handling the protests extremely badly to begin with as well. They may have calmed down sooner than SPD did. As far as major west-coast city police departments, both LAPD and SPD have handle things somewhat better than the Portland Police Bureau (PPB).

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#709

Post by pacala »

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…

Seattle has 600,000 people. In a given year there are 30 murders and 300 rapes. One can collect 175,200,000 amateur camera footage of 'an hour in the life of the average Seattle-ite' until one encounters an hour with a murder, or 17,520,0000 such peaceful one hour videos until one captures a rape on camera.

Does the presence of overwhelmingly peaceful footage of average people going by their average days make Seattle at large an Utopia with no crime? Is that footage in itself sufficient evidence to abolish the police and the court system, because, look, there are 17,520,000 hours of peaceful footage before something terrible happens to someone?

It is incredibly difficult to build an accurate image of a large scale group of people judging by a few hours of direct experience. 1000 harder if through footage selected by people with their own agendas. Media coverage, especially audio-visual coverage, is wild because media coverage is simply an inappropriate way to depict such phenomena.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#710

Post by loeg »

Auracle wrote: post #647
mcv wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

High pressure water can cause injuries, especially eye injuries. I believe tear gas is relatively benign other than possibly for asthmatics. Fully agree with you on the tasers though. They should be just one step below using a gun, not “I’m lazy and don’t want to deal with this person.”

I don't think OP said "high-pressure."

On tear gas, CDC has https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/riotcontrol/factsheet.asp :

  People exposed to riot control agents may experience some or all of the following symptoms
  immediately after exposure:
  
  * Eyes: excessive tearing, burning, blurred vision, redness
  * Nose: runny nose, burning, swelling
  * Mouth: burning, irritation, difficulty swallowing, drooling
  * Lungs: chest tightness, coughing, choking sensation, noisy breathing (wheezing),
    shortness of breath
  * Skin: burns, rash
  * Other: nausea and vomiting
  
  Long-lasting exposure or exposure to a large dose of riot control agent, especially
  in a closed setting, may cause severe effects such as the following:
  
  * Blindness
  * Glaucoma (a serious eye condition that can lead to blindness)
  * Immediate death due to severe chemical burns to the throat and lungs
  * Respiratory failure possibly resulting in death
Coughing and shortness of breath are especially nasty during the COVID pandemic. And none of blindness, glaucoma, immediate death, or respiratory failure sound especially fun.
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