I live right by the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle. For those reading from further away â itâs important to keep in mind what the past week has been like in this area.
Every night, the cops would attack peaceful protestors after it got dark. The violence was apparently pointless, was often completely unprovoked and massively disproportionate when provoked, and seemed almost perversely dedicated to eroding any remaining public trust in the police.
Day after day of events likeÂ
- âtear gas is wafting into nearby peopleâs apartments, it made someoneâs baby wake up foaming at the mouth,â or
- âyou know how, after people were furious about the tear gas, the mayor and police chief declared the police would not use CS gas for 30 days? well, itâs been less than 48 hours, and they just used CS gas againâ
- âout of nowhere, a guy drove madly into the cop/protestor standoff and shot someone, and the protestors did more to stop and apprehend him than the copsâ (see also here, etc.)
Events of this kind became almost surreally predictable, not in their details, but in their shape: no matter how badly the police are behaving, theyâre going to hit a new low tomorrow. If they seemed indefensible today, theyâll somehow make themselves into even more clear-cut villains tomorrow. (Example: the night after the âtear gas ban,â they used OC gas, whereas technically the ban was limited to CS gas â and the night after that, they abandoned all pretenses and used CS gas again.)
No one understood why the cops did what they did. In press conferences and the like, the mayor and police chief contradicted themselves from day to day and sometimes seemed to be unfamiliar with the basics of the previous nightâs news. The city council was baffled, everyone was baffled â the cops even found an odd, tangential way to piss off the Seattle School District in the process of doing all this other stuff.
When the cops left the precinct two days ago, all of that stopped. I donât mean to sound like the protest isnât important anymore, or something like that, but âa continuous peaceful protest is happening in your areaâ is ⊠well, a lot more compatible with ordinary life and work than than âyou now live in a warzone where the city attacks its citizens every night.â
Right now it doesnât feel like some new group has come in and âtaken over.â Really, itâs the opposite. The very unwelcome group that âtook overâ last week â âtook overâ in terms of their new aggressive behavior if not in terms of literal physical presence â is finally gone.
discoholicmusic
theartofmadeline
gummygunk
stormborns
janainaart
dailybridgerton
izzy806
jbbartram-illu
kaledo-art
