Angry Planet - When Mere Anarchy Was Loosed Upon Seattle

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, the CHAZ, the CHOP. It had many names, but from about June 8 to July 1, protesters occupied a portion of the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle Washington. A utopia to some, a nightmare to others, the CHAZ became a symbol to the left and the right. The reality on the ground, as is always the case, is far more complicated.With us today to talk about that messy reality is Nikki West. West is a freelance journalist and former Congressional staffer who lives in Capitol Hill in Seattle. She catalogued life in the CHAZ on her Instagram.Recorded on 8/10/20Daily life in the CHAZViolence in the autonomous zone“The worst Coachella ever”The CHAZ’s well organized systemsRing wing violenceCompeting activist agendasHow to build a city overnightDecolonization cafeWhite WokesStruggle sessionsWhat’s a tankie?Violence and the endThose aren’t fireworksWar College has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. There was a couple incidences besides the shooting that were pretty scary. Like there was an incident where there was a homeless man with the shetty and who was wandering around and he's like yelling. And basically security had like locked him into a tennis court and just basically let him run it out. until he just dropped it, and then they let him go. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts. Hello, welcome to War College. I'm Matthew Galt. And I'm Jason Fields. The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, the Chaz, the Chapp.

It had many names, but from about June 8th to July 1st, protesters occupied a portion of the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle, Washington. A utopia to some, a nightmare. to others, the Chas became a symbol to the left and the right. The reality on the ground, as is always the case, is far more complicated. With us today to talk about that messy reality is Nikki West. West is a freelance journalist and former congressional staffer who lives in Capitol Hill in Seattle. She cataloged life in the Chaz on her Instagram. Nikki, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, no problem. All right, so let's get the basics out of the way. What was the Chaz? How did it start and how did it end? Sure. So what the Chaz was, a couple blocks in Capitol Hill, it's surrounding Cal Anderson Park, which ironically is actually named after a gay activist. In Seattle, starting from May 30th, there was a series of very violent protest and riots that happened in downtown Seattle. And eventually those protests moved upwards towards the Seattle East Precinct, which is located right in Capitol Hill. And a nightly riot started, nightly protest, um, started, started. happening at the intersection of 11th and Pine. And so what you saw develop there was like this little mini village where you had a couple of support tents, which had food, medical aid, and no other things to support protesters along that line. And so around, I think it was June 5th or 6th, SPD announced that they were abandoning the station. They took everything out of the station.

And so the next day, those protesters and the support system that had developed over there took over the space and they called it the Capitol Hill Autonomous Sound. And you live there, right? Are you like a J, like a block away in like right in the street? Like how close? I mean, I know you, I don't want to make you unsafe, but. I'm a few blocks away. So I wasn't technically a Chas resident. My best friend actually is a Chas resident. was a Chaz resident, but it was basically right where my grocery store was, so very close. Okay. And we see a lot of coverage of these kinds of things, and one of the loglines I hear from people is that, like, these protests, they don't have concrete demands. I don't think that's quite true. Can you tell us a little bit about, like, why the protests started, obviously, in the wake of George Floyd. And then what specifically these protesters want from Seattle and from SPD. So some of the things that we saw from some of the other protests, and I think why some of the protests in other cities died down is because, like you pointed out, there weren't very concrete demands. But what you see in Seattle is you've seen a very long history of activism here. You know, talking to activists that I've seen on the ground because I've been following the protest for about three months at this point.

These people have been involved in activism against the city and incidences of police violence for the best. part of a decade. And what's different from Seattle, from other cities, is that Seattle's kind of a riot town. This is probably out of the history, out of the mindset of most Americans, but back in 1999, there was something called the Battle for Seattle. And the Battle for Seattle was basically a month-long series of protests and riots that happened in downtown Seattle to protest the World Trade Organization and globalization. And so companies like Amazon, Starbucks, Microsoft are headquartered here. And for a lot of people here, they don't feel like necessarily that the wealth drive.

So in response to WTO, Seattle police officers come out for a riot. It looks like Terminator's Army. They come out in really expensive, highly technical beer that looks like they're geared for war in 2050. In combination with some of the serious social issues here, like the persistent homelessness problem, in addition to looking, Looking at a city that is probably one of the wealthiest cities in the country and having this very militarized, highly compensated police force, it develops a sense of resentment amongst Seattle's working class citizens. Hey there, War College listeners. This is Matthew. I just wanted to chime in here with a little bit of background information. So we had this conversation on August 11th, Monday, August 11th. Nikki West actually took time out of her day.

She was reporting on a lot of the actions that were going on at City Hall and the votes that were coming down. And that evening, after we had our conversation, Seattle voted to, the city council voted to cut the salary of Carmen Best, Seattle's first black police chief by $10,000, as well as the salaries of her command staff, and to trim as many as 100 officers from the force of. of 1,400. They're going to do this through layoffs and just kind of attrition. In the aftermath of that, best resigned. So I just kind of, so essentially like protest demands somewhat were met. And I thought that was an important piece of information to share as we continue through this conversation. Back to the show.

There's a couple of times you've conflated riot and protest. and it's interesting to me, what did you think, what did you see? I mean, did you, did it sometimes feel like a riot? Yes. And so why I have to, I guess why I might conflate protest and riot is because there are two factions going on. There is a legitimate faction of people who are peaceful protesters who are, I'm trying to say this in this politically correct way possible. There is basically a group of peaceful protesters that just want to go out. They are sincerely involved in community activism and reforming their community. And then there is basically a professional class of mayhem makers. So Antifa is more like a recent development of these characters. But things like the Black Block, to some degree,

there is left-wing terrorism in the Pacific Northwest. They gravitate to moments like this in order to basically throw a brick through a Starbucks. Not Seattle's best, just Starbucks. Seattle's worst. I put a pin in that because I definitely want to come back to it. But can you tell us what daily life was like while the Chaz was operating?

Yeah. So I have been to the Chaz every day And it kind of changed from day to day, but some people described it as kind of a street festival. And I think there is definitely an element of that. Like there was music, there was artistic, sort of like murals happening, like collective murals. Sometimes there was like poetry happening. There are sometimes like cultural displays. Like there was a day where a lot of indigenous dancers like basically did displays.

And there was kind of a moment. A lot of protesters were really angry about. where I kind of call it the Coachella moment, where I kind of started to attract a lot of alternative festival goers who had flowers in their hair, and you suddenly start to see these signs of saying, this is not Coachella, please leave. This is a protest for Black Lives Matter. I think there's some fairness to it, because some people really did come to the chast of party, and they kind of just didn't have a concept of what was really happening here, and that they had taken over a police station in four blocks, and this was,

a protest against its date. And then there was other things going on as well. So if some people try to call this Coachella, I would say this is the world's worst Coachella. Like you're everyone sitting around eating food and then out of nowhere someone with the megaphone will just like start a protest and then start marching downtown. It was a very strange, chaotic environment.

There's different factions, right, that kind of developed within the Chaz. Can you kind of talk about some of those? I mean, you've kind of lighted on them now. Yes. So there is probably, I can't put a number on it, but I would say there's a couple of major groups that had developed with the Jazz.

So there were, like I had mentioned before, this group of Black Lives Matter activists and Native American activists who had been in Seattle for the better part of 10 years, and so they had been there as well. So there was also another class of black community leaders who originally came to the Chaz. They had came from Seattle Central District,

which is about a mile or two away from Seattle, and that's the traditional black neighborhood here in Seattle. They had came for a couple days, and then they had left pretty early on. And they had left pretty early on because there was also a faction of anarcho-communists who were there as well. And then there was kind of your group of Capitol Hill residents who were tangentially interested in Black Lives Matter.

They didn't know much and they just wanted to show up and participate. And obviously other Capitol Hill residents who may just completely weren't on board at all. And so it's kind of chaotic's the wrong word, but there's a bunch of different viewpoints all kind of colliding, right? It's not like one group. Was there one group that was kind of leading everything, or was it really kind of a daily debate over what the actions were going to be and how business was going to be conducted within the area? It was a daily debate, and I think that's probably the reason why it led to the decline it did, is simply because they emphasized from day one, this is decentralized, everybody has a role, everybody has a part to play. That's part of the reason why the no cop co-op eventually descended. So what the no cop co-op was basically, it was a series of tents and it came from

donations from the community and outside of the community. They actually brought in a lot of food and money. It was like six-tenths long. Pretty much anybody could come and just like grab a loaf of bread, grab some lunch, whatever you needed in that moment. And then midway through the chas, it disappears. And part of it was that they had gotten to an argument. with other organizers and the organizers of no cop co-op had just basically left.

And so because there wasn't one group particularly steering the ship, the ship just kind of was like... So it was discussions between people. You said it was a daily thing, but was there violence as well? Yes, there was violence. And why there was a lot of violence is that you were dealing with people who have experienced significant violence or trauma at behest of the state in state institutions, have serious mental illness, are dealing with this extremely stressful environment because they didn't know when the police were coming back. They didn't know if federal officers had infiltrated the camp. A lot of them were very sleep deprived, so some of the people were sleeping at the chas, and it was a very just chaotic kind of crazy environment there at night. And so they're being forced

to relives the worst memories of their life in front of strangers. So you could, and then they're trying to coordinate like this mini society together. So there was a lot of clashes. I mean, I personally had to break up a few fistfights myself. A homeless man put his hands on new ones. There were a lot of incidences of petty violence, for sure. Did, was there any kind of internal justice? I mean, were.

Yes. So, this has been. talked about a lot, but the Chas didn't have a security system, and it's actually it was actually pretty sophisticated and multi-layered. So they had basically, the best way to put it is

like a three-tier security system. So you basically had like a central authority, and then they broke it down into like six or seven people controlled a certain intersection. So like you would run your shift that day. So like there's the 11th and pine guys.

And then there's the like on the north side, right? And then you have the guys who are down towards Rancho, Bravo. And then you had the second tier guys who are basically watching what's going on inside the camp. And so I had said that with people and I noticed that they would just like come by every 20 minutes and are like, are you okay, is everything fine?

And that was their job. It was just basically keep eyes on what was going on in the camp. And then the third team was like the direct response like internal team. And so I've actually interacted with all three. when I mentioned what happened with the homeless guy. So what happened in that incident is that I had been sitting in the mental health care tent. And so I have a background of mental health care.

And I was just curious as hell what was going on there. And so we were just taking it down for the night. And this guy comes up to me and says, I'm in distress. I need help. And I was like, okay, let's get you somebody. And before I can get there, he pushes me and starts screaming, pulls down the decorations on the tent. and my partner just goes and grabs one of the mediators, they call insecurity.

We get everybody separated and safe. They reproach me again and say, hey, are you safe? What do you think is the appropriate response to this? And I'm like, I don't care if this guy sleeps here tonight. It's not a big deal. And eventually, we actually went to one of the medic tents and they had pre-packaged care packages for homeless people there. so like stuff like socks and toothbrushes and things like that. We made sure he was set up for the night.

How did things become that level of organized? I mean, if it's sort of anarchic, why is there a mental health tent? I'm not saying it's a bad idea. It sounds like it's a really good idea. But I think it's really interesting that so much of this came together out of what might have been a total anarchy. So I think it's a combination. of some of these activist networks were pre-existing.

So a lot of these people knew each other from college. Like there's a lot of universities here in Seattle, and so they had been working in activist networks before. So the mental health care girls, they all went to Antioch together, and so they had put that together. And so there was kind of like these pre-existing cliques. And then they heard about Chaz.

They like, they came and coordinated, and then just sort of like this, if you're familiar with the concept of spontaneous order, spontaneous order just started in this situation. And it was quite impressive just how much coordination started to develop in these subplex. If we can talk a little bit about the police, the actual, as opposed to the people meeting out justice inside the jazz, what were they doing on the outside? Were they trying to maintain some sort of order? Were they trying to pen people in?

Were they coming in? No. Actually, this is a problem that residents who were not involved in Chas, I made friends with the guy who actually, a guy who lives in the building next to the old precinct. And they basically said, unless there is like a fatality, SPD will not go to that area.

They were specifically ordered not to be dispatched to that area in the surrounding areas. So there is that. And I personally never saw SPD officers within the surrounding six blocks of that section of Capitol Hill. There probably were undercover officers. Now, I'm not somebody who can spot an undercover officer unless they're very obvious. I assume there were ones around there and they did keep their cameras up around the station but no like the SPD officers just straight up

went like this. If you called 911 and said, hey, I heard screaming, they're like, oh well. Not our problem anymore. That's the Chaz now. Yeah, pretty much. That's literally what they would say to you. So you kind of talked,

touched on this a little bit earlier, that there's this perception that the place was patrolled by left-wing militants, but there's also a lot of right-wing militants there, too. Can we talk about that? Can we talk about like proud boys coming to visit and what happened there? Yes. So this is a continuous problem that they're dealing with. So the thing that a lot of people don't realize about the Pacific Northwest

is because the Pacific Northwest has the Portlandia reputation that it's hyper, It's hyper-lefty out here, but Ruby Ridge also happened in the Pacific Northwest. There's a lot of extreme radical right-wing militias that do exist in the Pacific Northwest. They just don't live in Seattle and Portland. And so moments like this, they will attempt to infiltrate and start violence. And so I personally never saw it because I'm a woman of color. I just tried to stay basically as far away from situations where it could attract it. but I personally did see some videos from friends who had seen guys like tiny, I can't pronounce his name.

He's a major proud boy where he violated probation by getting into a fist fight, at Capitol Hill parking lot outside the Chas. What they would try to do is they try to do little pot shots basically is like they'd be around the perimeters and basically just try to like corral or harass somebody into a fight. They never full on invaded the camp and there was definitely a sense, of paranoia around them being around. And I do know that they basically attempted to start a lot of chaos, but they never full-on invaded.

Like, I know that there was a lot of rumors about the bikers for Trump coming in. And they never did, as far as I'm concerned, actually, in fact, a left-wing bike gang actually came around to protect against bikers for Trump. You know the name of the left-wing bike gang? I am just so entranced by that idea. I'm from the Northeast, and just all we ever hear are bike gangs, health angels, people like that. I don't know off the top of my head, but they are currently actually part of the protest security team now. So the protest security team, which I know is a different subject, they actually, so there's actually a bike, like bicycle security team, a car brigade, and now there's actually a motorcycle brigade,

well. Those are the same guys. Okay. Sorry. It's actually really cool to get your perceptions sort of knock back a little bit. Yeah, it's the Wild West, literally. All right, can we start getting into some of the, like, the intellectual mood and some of the racial politics of the Chaz? I think this stuff is really important and very interesting, right? Yes. Okay, so Bipak means black indigenous people of color, which is a broad section of people. And there's this idea, I think, that's misunderstood. You've kind of touched on it earlier that they agree on things collectively, and that's not true, right? Can you kind of talk about like the differences of opinion between people in the Chaz? And like especially kind of interested in like black community

leaders in Capitol Hill and kind of what they thought of things and how the things were operating. Sure. So I'm a, I hate to have to use the term, but I'm a woman of government of government myself. And so I've always particularly held issues with this terminology myself because it is so broad. This is a term that includes someone like me versus, as well as an Ethiopian, a Pakistani, people who have broadly different experiences in America and in the world. And it kind of promotes an idea. that like it's us brown people versus white people. And it's a version of history that, I don't know, it feels very reductionist.

And so like I touched on before, there wasn't a consensus on how to approach policing issues in the black community. And there's two very large and robust black communities in Seattle. So there is the central district, and then there's the Rainier Valley. And so a lot of older black leadership tends to be very conservative.

They don't vote Republican, but these are kind of your old school Blue Dog Democrat types, right? Versus some of these younger black activists who went to college and have more Marxist leanings. And actually, a lot of people who were Black Panthers in the 70s actually came on to be Republicans. And part of it was disagreements about how to manage issues

around the family and around the state. And you're kind of seeing that same dynamic, kind of come out here. And another source of conflict that I saw was the conflict between indigenous versus black activists in Seattle. And so

the Pacific Northwest has a very robust Native American population. And a lot of them do live in pretty terrible like impoverished conditions. Some of the most major police brutality case that is well known around here is

a case called about John T. Williams, who was a Native American guy, he did wood carvings at Pike Place. He was deaf in one ear and a police officer shot up. Some of the frustration that I had heard from the Native Americans is, one, Cal Anderson is actually considered a very sacred Jwamish site. And so there was a lot of conflicts about making sure that land was respected. And two, they felt like their voices weren't being heard or that they weren't being centralized in the conversation. And so there were simply just a lot of conflict. And I don't, I, I, I, I, I, I thought a lot of it was very reasonable. A lot of the conflict was very reasonable or like a lot of the requests of Spurton groups was very

reasonable? I think like a lot of the, the requests for giving more, giving indigenous voices, more airtime was like was very reasonable. And we understand that kind of the branding per se is Black Lives Matter, right? But ultimately what Black Lives Matter is supposed to be right is about discussions of police brutality and economic injustice against African Americans and ethnic minorities. What this brings up to me is just a question of whether people thought they could genuinely accomplished much. It just sounds like so many people had so many different agendas, and it might come under the overall heading of Black Lives Matter. But was the feeling really optimistic, or were people a little bit resigned and thought, hey, this is a temporary thing, but we want to

take advantage of it as much as we can? I think with activists, they just had no idea the chest was going to happen. Like, there's kind of this perception in the media that, like, they had played in jazz. And, like, this was, like, their idea. And what happened is this thing got kind of sprung on them. They had no idea that SPD was going to abandon this police station. The city kind of forced them to deal with all these problems in the middle of their protest. And so I think there was, like, a degree of optimism.

But I think there was, you know, I think there was more sense of exhaustion. Because what they were dealing with was, like, a kind of a kind of. the insane thing that no one has ever dealt with before. I don't think there's precedent to what happened with the Chaz. This whole community was asked to essentially completely take care of itself overnight, right? With kind of no discussion of what that was going to look like. All right, we're going to pause there for a break. You are listening to War College.

We are on with Nikki West talking about the Chaz. All right, welcome back from the break. We are talking to Nikki West about life. Seattle's Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. Was there, I'm interested again, kind of the intellectual mood of the place. Like, what are the books that were being passed around? What is the ideologies that people were talking about?

Was it abroad? Was it narrow? What was the arguments around that? Sure. Actually, I can grab some pamphlets really quick because I just need to remember them. Perfect. So, like, so there was a couple things going on. There was a conversation cafe, which had kind of started with just a couple lawn chairs, and people were sitting out.

And then eventually it kind of evolved and moved into this like organized thing. And they actually still do conversation cafe. They just kind of move venues now called decolonization cafe. And so what it had was like a series of prompts about like issues in race and racial justice. and then they would just basically have strangers come down, sit down, and you were encouraged to talk. And I participated in one. And it was definitely very eye-opening. And I'll speak to that later, but there was also a couple other things happening intellectually.

So there was the tiny library, which was like those little tiny libraries that you see when you're walking around town, you put a book in, you take a book out. They had a more sophisticated version of that. It was called the tiny library. It was a lot of books like by Bell Hooks, Marxist readers, a couple independents, the white fragility book, and then kind of the socialist and anarchists. They had their own like set up stations and they would hand out literature either you could read or buy. There was one that was like handing out zines like this. Like it says accomplices, not allies, abolishing the ally industrial complex and indigenous perspective.

of really big pamphlets like this about like various different riots like ideas on like race and the state just I'll send you guys pictures of these like this one is like a cartoon on like socialism

can you describe it a little bit to us yeah so this one is called war community politics and war and it's basically like a comic that goes over a Marxist perspective on like how capitalism demoralizes you and like how to move forward like in a communist society. Were there ideas that were like anathema that no one wanted to discuss or that if you

brought certain things up that they would they would shut you down like was Trotskyism less popular than Leninism or anything like that or is it just kind of a free for all? Oh, so at the free library, bless his heart, this kid, he brought a copy of like John Locke's, like a John Locke book. And he's like, why won't anyone take it? And I'm like, oh, honey, like you're in the wrong place. To some degree, yeah. So there were some communists, like, ideas that they wouldn't kind of let be around. And actually what was really interesting is I saw a piece of street graffiti.

So someone graffitied the Hammer and Sickle. and these Eastern European guys were like, hey, they wrote on it, I have a picture, I'll send it to you, don't use the symbol because to me, I grew up in the Eastern Bloc, and this to me is a symbol of fascism, genocide, violence, and discrimination, and like, for the sake of what you're doing, don't use the symbol. And I was just like, whoa. That's what I think a lot of people were miss, a lot of people were missing in this debate is that, like, some of these debates were actually very constructive and interesting intersectional discussions of like state power and violence. So does that mean like the tankies did get pushed back on them? Is that? Did you see that?

Yes. Yes. I did see some, I did see tankies get pushed back on. Yes. What's a tankie? Yes, define tankie for the old person in the audience. Yeah. So what a tankie is. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the old person. in the audience crack. Okay. All right. Go for it. Yeah. So a tankie is somebody who basically excuses the violence of communist leaders like Ho Chi-Men or Stalin or Troski, basically. And so there are the bad commies in the commie umbrella. Perfect. Thank you. But so they did get the tank people did push back against them then. And then you did see these discussions of like state power even in reference to former communist countries. Yes.

Okay. And so one of my experiences with the decolonization cafes, I sat down there and I was, and I met a friend there, this, this young, young gay guys basically trying to talk about his experience with his racist family and how he was learning how to like uncover it. And he points to me and he says, you have been through so much oppression and all this other stuff. And I'm like, but I, and then I countered, I was like, but actually not. My grandparents didn't have issues with my father marrying a black woman. Like most of my extended family is college educated.

You're making some pretty weird assumptions here, buddy, aren't you? And he just shuts down. And that was an experience that I had seen with other black activists where they're saying, it's almost like there's this script that some of these white liberals want you to subscribe to. and if you break the script, it's like, do not compute. Well, there's this, well, let's get into this, because I think this is super interesting, too. It's like talking about white fragility,

it's this book that's gotten a lot of press lately. I have not read it. I'm probably not going to. It seems like there's an air of like a religious aura around it for white woke people, and it does feel like it is feeding a certain script, and it is asking other people to play a part in this role. And so did you see much discussion around that book?

How, in general, were white people conducting themselves in the space? Yeah, so I haven't read white fragility myself either, and that's partially because I'm trying to lower my blood pressure. But I think there is some credibility to the, you know, the idea of white fragility. Because if you think about sort of when millennials came about, right, is millennials are defined to 80s. to 95, right? And I think that's about the peak time white flight and when Americans took their white children to the suburbs, self-included. And so a lot of woke liberals, for the most part, have not been socialized around black people. They didn't go to college with a lot of black people. They didn't go to high school with a lot of black people. And so basically they're reading

things out of either intro to African American studies or intro to gender studies. And so, like, they have been introduced to the concept of privilege, but they just don't have much context for black people in general, right, like in a real practical way. And so, like, there is this guilt and discomfort where they feel like, okay, so I've been told that I am complicit in your oppression, your inability to access wealth and power in this country. But they, because they haven't met very many black people, they are coming with assumptions that they've learned academically. Now, I don't think it's malicious. I think it is simply nativity. And so, like I was how I was talking about before where that guy comes at me and is like, you're so disadvantaged,

you're so X, Y, and Z. And I'm like, but that's not really the case. There is a black middle class. We do exist. There was a lot of moments like this where I'm talking to other black people, and they're like, dude, these white folks, like, they just want you to, like, basically play, like, basically a poor victim, like, the entire time. And it's not, it's not a dynamic perspective of, like, what it means to be black in America. And it's, it's not to say that, like, a lot of black Americans don't experience significant poverty and oppression in the country. It's just that, like, it's almost like, I need to feel like a good person and I understand you and your oppression and like if you break the script I don't know how to

deal with it. Are they looking for forgiveness? Do you think you think I mean yeah at to be absolved? Right. Like when we're talking about religiosity right like it's like they're coming they're they're coming to the rock and they're looking for reconciliation like I am a bad white person because my parents were white and they moved me to the suburbs of Cleveland or whatever it may be. They're just not listening. How do you break through that then to like after that script is short-circuted, how do you start to talk to people that are well-intentioned, wants to learn about this stuff?

Or do you think that there's a certain block and that people just want this to be simple and they just want to purchase their absolution and move on or their indulgence and move on? Well, here's the other, here's the other shoe, is that there, when you've been exposed this kind of conversation, there develops a sense of resentment. And so with black activists, they started to get to a point where they were basically saying white people shut up. And there was like variations of this message where it's just like, you are not the center of the conversation, we're tired of your perspective, shut up and listen, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so it's like forcing these people even further inwards. My personal voice in like, my personal voice in like,

like breaking the code is actually I'll get back to that I'll think about it in a second but I have I have gotten people to break out of the script but it but I think it's really important to know that like there is a problem where you have white liberals who are very guilty very who want to come for absolution and then you have black activists who are emotionally exhausted beyond all belief and they are resentful of having to play this character. And so now they're responding with hostility. And so it's like this really uncomfortable, crappy dynamic. And you saw it play out a lot at jazz.

Was that during a lot of these decolonization sessions? Did you see a lot of it there? Yes, I did see a lot of it there. Did they have an air of like a struggle session sometimes? Or is that a whole different thing? Oh, that's a whole different thing. There were definitely struggle sessions, but I don't think that was the decolonization. Can you tell us, tell the audience what a struggle session is and what they looked like in the Chaz?

The struggle session was something, it was a form of public humiliation and torture that came out of Maoist China. And so what the purpose of it was was to reinforce what was acceptable thought within the Communist Party of China. And so it plays upon a very human impulse for belonging in community. And so I did see some struggle sessions. The first one notably to me was this was the very early days of the Chaz. And so there was kind of like an impromptu like speaker stage in front of the old police station. And there was this old Polish guy and he's talking about how he has a very thick Polish accent, by the way, that he had been involved with black activism.

for a very long time and that he was, you know, very invested in the community. But he thought that Black Lives Matter was a fascist organization. And, like, you could have heard a pin drop. And it was suddenly just like, you, like, felt everybody's hackles come up and people start yelling. And, like, this other black guys are like, hold on, everybody. Like, but you started to see it, like, come up, devolve into a full on struggle session. but had that guy not intervened,

I think that's what would have happened. And then there was another incident. And this was published on Twitter, and I can send you guys the video of it. But there is this guy, he's a Christian guy, and he's anti-abortion. And however you feel about abortion, I think it is a relevant discussion

when we're talking about racial justice and politics, right? So he starts talking about that. And suddenly the speaker goes, this guy's all right, this crowd, like 200 people surround him, and they say, get this guy out, and they're chasing him out of the chas. And while they're doing it, they're going, peaceful, peaceful, this is peaceful. And I'm like, they're chasing him out, they're like, fuck you, blah, blah, like cheering, all this other stuff.

Meanwhile, like the crowd in the background is chanting peaceful, peaceful. You get to the end and they start arguing. And you later find out, like, this guy's anti-abortion, but he's probably. Black Lives Matter. There's this perception, I think, and that all Black Lives Matter activists are socialists, communists. The struggle sessions are certainly born out of communism, but there are also anti-communist Black Lives Matter activists, right? How did they interact? And you kind of mentioned, like, how some of this played out in street art and graffiti, but was there more direct confrontations? there were so a lot so there's a lot right like how you said there's a lot of anti-communist black lives matter people

a conservative activist that i know personally said to me on a phone call the other day he's like i call myself like a little BLM activist like rather than like a big BLM activist and that like i support the basic premise but i'm just not a socialist and i'm bored i'm like okay that that that makes sense to me and so there's a lot of different groups like religious groups or alternate political groups like the libertarian party of Washington state attempted to like set up a group it wasn't successful but they tried and oh and they've done a lot of racial justice and policing justice as well so there were small little scuffles but I think a lot of these people were frankly too scared to enter the room fair enough switching tracks

just a little bit can we talk about what happened at city hall during all of this too and who Kashama-Sawant is and how it's all related to Jeff Bezos and how that is an important background for this story too. You think you kind of touched that at the very beginning, but I kind of want to swing back to it. Yes. So Kashama, God, I have a hard time pronouncing her name too. Kashama Sawant. She is our city councilwoman in Capitol Hill. And so her background is that she is a socialist Marxist. She attempted to run for Statehouse a while ago. It wasn't successful, but she's been our city council woman for a while. And so what happened to last year is that she was running against this guy who was Amazon back.

They put $1.5 million into his campaign. And the reason why they did that is that she had proposed the head tax, which would have, which was basically directed at Amazon, but any company that's over a thousand employees would have to pay like an extra $235 per employee, which for the big four tech companies out here would have put them out at least $11 to $12 million a year, like, in a pretty hefty tax. And what the purpose of that was was to fund social programs, including programs for homeless relief. And so she had came out to the chas a couple of times. And she's a bit of a firebrand, obviously.

She's the first socialist they've elected here in Seattle since I think like 1918. She's openly a communist. as she's doing these speeches in Chad. She's like, let's march on down, comrades, which for me, having went to college in the South, is still very surreal to hear people talk like that. And so what had happened is that she had brought a lot of the tax Amazon people into the Chas, because that was what was coming on the ballot in city council

at that same time. And so one of these days, during the chop, She basically had her rally, which was about, I have a picture of it. It was like about roughly 400 people. She basically gathered the troops and they charged through City Hall, broke through the doors. They basically demanded to tax Amazon. And yeah, that was just one of the things that happened during the jazz days. Well, and how did that play out?

You know, the crazy part is that it actually worked. they actually did manage to that's the craziest part it actually did work they actually did pass a piece of legislation now I'm not as well versed on this one just because there was a lot of things happening at the time but they did end up passing a tax

reform bill that would basically require Amazon to pay taxes to the city of Seattle how else did civil leadership respond to all of this what did the mayor say and do oh oh the mayor The mayor, she's made a lot of strategic mistakes in this moment. And a lot of why this activism is happening the way it is,

is because a lot of people are extremely displeased with how Mayor Jenny Durkin has responded both to issues of homelessness in the city as well as the protests here. If there's one thing everybody in the city kind of agrees on left wing, right wing in between is that Jenny Durkan has done a terrible job at men's. this crisis. And so her initial response to the jazz was, it's the summer of love. And it's such an inappropriate response if you really think about what had happened here. Like we had touched on before, this is an incident where the city basically abandoned a pretty large, commercially viable section of the city and just basically said, have at it. So she was buying into the idea that it was Coachella herself then. She's one of the people that was kind of enforcing that idea.

I think so, but the impression that I get is that she didn't know how to respond in this situation and that there was kind of a PR crisis happening where there was during the protest, there was a seven-year-old girl who had gotten tear gas, some of the police

response was inappropriately excessive, but at the same time downtown was on fire and there was windows being smashed. And that that some of these activists actually come and march to her house. And so with her, she kind of, I can't get into her headspace, right? But you're looking at a city that is an open revolt against city leadership. You have extreme unpopularity with the police department.

You had to abandon a police station because you're afraid of the Minneapolis situation happening there. And the difference with the police station in Capitol Hill versus Minneapolis, list, which is standalone, is that the Capitol Hill police station is surrounded by apartment buildings. And so if they torch that, they could have put a lot of lives in danger. Who lives in those apartment buildings? White people or mixed? So Seattle University is very close nearby. And so it's like a combination of like Seattle U-Kids, Amazon employees, people have been to Capitol Hill forever. Just like, there's actually some old people that live in there as well.

There is, if I can remember that square block, there's basically like four major apartment buildings with I think 100 units each, roughly. Was there ever a threat that that police station was going to be burned down? Yes. Was it, okay. So was there a sense, speaking of the summer of love,

was there a sense that some of the people there are training for a greater revolution and that they're going to move this thing outside of the bounds of the Chaz? Was there greater aspirations and ambitions for some of the people there? Oh, that was openly what they said. Some people had basically just said to me outright that they're like, this is a training camp, but like an army base camp that you can walk through. So when you're there, they have the conversation cafe where you're like strengthening in your ideas, they're handing out literature, they're training you, they're teaching you like about

the ideas. and then every single day, they had a march that would just run through every day. They'd be like, it's seven o'clock, it's March time. And they, you know, gather the troops and go march down to the West Precinct, which is downtown Seattle, march up to City Hall, do the chance, come back around. And then at the end of it, they have like food, mental health care and all the other odds and ends. And so it quite literally was, it became sort of like Seattle activism's base camp. And that's how, that to me is what the major difference between the Chaz and something like Occupy was.

Like the purpose of Occupy was basically sit and physically make space. The point of Chaz was that it originally started off as, okay, well, this is a self-standing community because it kind of got forced on us. And then it evolved into, this is a space to openly train and organize and mobilize across the city. and developed activism groups. And several groups did come out of Chaz, major activist groups, because these people literally had met here. Like, they didn't go to college together. They didn't know each other at all.

It just kind of, like, that's kind of where it all went down. It accelerated some organization. And also it now has given, I would imagine, some groups like something, like a cause is maybe the wrong word, but like a memory to kind of, a myth to kind of build things around, I guess, right? is maybe what you're seeing now? Yes, but to some degree, there's so much baggage with Chaz. And we'll touch on that later with some of the violence that did happen.

Well, let's talk about that now. Like, let's talk about some of the baggage and the shootings. Like, what happened? And, like, how, and just kind of generally, how often were there just open firearms? So there's very few people who are open, open care. I saw it a couple times. Now, my limitation in telling the story is that I often did not go to Chaz at night. And that's just a safety thing for me.

And so there was a couple incidences besides the shooting that were pretty scary. Like, there was an incident where there was a homeless man with the shetty and who was wandering around and he's like yelling. And basically security had like locked him into a tennis court and just basically let him run it out until he just dropped it and then they let him go. There was a lot of stuff like fist fights and a lot of small or petty violence. But in regards to the shooting with Horace Lorenzo Anderson, there's still a lot of stuff that's coming out during that night. And the reason why is that that night beyond his shooting was just extremely chaotic. So the night that Lorenzo Anderson died was the night of June 10th. And so it's a night. And so it's a night.

it's a huge celebration. And so how it's often celebrated is it's celebrated with fireworks. Now, fireworks, as we all know, sound a lot like gunshots. And so that night it's going, and a lot of these people are sleep deprived, have trauma, and everybody's just all over the place. And so it was extremely chaotic that night. And why I wasn't there when Lorenzo had been shot is that previously before my friend, he was a veteran, he got extremely triggered. We had to carry him back to his tent. And then what I had heard is basically what sounded like a lot of creepy chanting, people screaming and they started running. And what I found out what that was later is that a man had driven up to, I think it's like the east side of Cal Anderson and had brandished a pistol. And everybody basically surrounded him and was trying to get him to drop it. They think he was maybe a proud boy. We don't quite know. But that night, the shooting of Lorenzo was not the only incidents of, you know,

violence that had happened that night just because so many different parts and pieces were moving. But there was a lot of drama with what happened with the city and the fire department with letting him through because, like I had touched on before, basically the city's response to if there was any sort of incident within the Chaz was basically your problem and so there had been

an argument between security and fire that night basically like do we let this guy through like do we let fire through now supposedly the protesters said that they begged like Seattle city fire to come in and grab Lorenzo this is what they're saying

now the city said that they blocked him I think it's going to be a while before we figure out who's in the right in that situation. My personal inclination is probably neither. It's frankly a really ugly, ugly situation, and it's awful that Lorenzo had to die over it. So how did it all end? So Chaz basically died by degradation. So with the shooting of Lorenzo, to me, was the steep drop-off. and everybody attending Chaz.

There were, there was two more shootings that happened afterwards. And eventually a lot of people had, a lot of activists had basically abandoned it. And why it ended up getting abandoned is a lot of people, like including gangs. And homeless folks had basically moved in at that point. And, you know, I'm trying to say this in a more articulate way. It basically became so dangerous that the average activist just didn't want to touch it. Activist leadership didn't want to touch it. It just became like this third rail.

And so the mayor and the police basically said, okay, we're going to come in July 1st. Everybody's got to leave and we're going to clear it out. And what's life like there now? So it's in Capitol Home General. So they keep closing Cap Hill or Cal Anderson on and off. And the reason why is that a lot of protest organizing still happens to there. Because now, like you had mentioned before, like there's this mythology around chop and everything like that. Cal Anderson is now like the place that we know of as like an activist center.

So protests still come and organize out of Cal Anderson all the time. In fact, so they actually closed off three streets yesterday just to like hold another round. So what happened the day that shop closed down is that it activated everybody. A lot of the people who had left Chaz came back

and rallied around it because what happened the day that they closed down Chaz is that the mayor actually kind of the best way to put it, she declared martial law on those three blocks and I have pictures of it I can show you guys but

they basically required you to like show your driver's license in order to enter the zone for a couple days. They would not let anybody who wasn't a Capitol Hill that wasn't a resident or wasn't doing commerce in the area to enter the area. They have a really huge fenced area around the police station now. It's like it had three layers of fencing actually, like cement blocks so that people can't enter it. It basically looks like the Gaza Strip.

And there was a lot of protests that had. happened that day, and now they've evolved to the place that they are now. Nikki West, thank you so much for coming onto the show. This is a subject I didn't know very much about it all, and I'm really glad for your insights and information. Yeah, no problem. It was a pleasure joining you guys today. That's it for this week, War College listeners. War College is me, Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell is created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like the show, we have a substack, AngryPlanat.substack.com, where we pull

all of the best defense news of the week and kind of try to put it together and make it make sense. Again, that's at angryplanet.substack.com. I'm on Twitter at MJG, a ULT. The show is at War underscore College. We will be back next week with another conversation about conflict

on an angry planet. Stay safe until then.