Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
On the BLM-Antifa Nation, Seattle
Christopher Rufo just published an excellent piece in City Paper on the failed city of Seattle’s capitulation to a thousand rioting thugs in Capitol Hill. For a little background, I will refer you to the tourism page for Capitol Hill here. The title is “The vibrant center of Seattle’s LGBTQ community offers endless entertainment, morning till night.” and, naturally, pushes the vacation destination angle with overpriced food, overpriced shops, and overpriced lodging situated in a dank and rainy climate.
By this point, I doubt many tourists were caught in the occupation. Only fools would be vacationing in Blue cities at this point. Rufo sets the stage for us:
For the past week, Black Lives Matter and Antifa-affiliated activists have engaged in a pitched battle with Seattle police officers and National Guard soldiers in the neighborhood, with the heaviest conflict occurring at the intersection of 11th and Pike, where law enforcement had constructed a barricade to defend the Seattle Police East Precinct building. Hoping to break through the barricade, protesters attacked officers with bricks, bottles, rocks, and improvised explosive devices, sending some officers to the hospital. At the same time, activists circulated videos of the conflict and accused the police of brutality, demanding that the city cease using teargas and other anti-riot techniques.
Then, in a stunning turn of events, the City of Seattle made the decision to abandon the East Precinct and surrender the neighborhood to the protesters. “This is an exercise in trust and de-escalation,” explained Chief Carmen Best. Officers and National Guardsmen emptied out the facility, boarded it up, and retreated. Immediately afterward, Black Lives Matter protesters, Antifa black shirts, and armed members of the hard-Left John Brown Gun Club seized control of the neighborhood, moved the barricades into a defensive position, and declared it the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone—even putting up a cardboard sign at the barricades declaring “you are now leaving the USA.”
On the new rebel state’s first night, the atmosphere was festive and triumphant. Hooded men spray-painted the police station with slogans and anarchist symbols, renaming it the “Seattle People’s Department East Precinct.” Raz Simone, a local rapper with an AK-47 slung from his shoulder and a pistol attached to his hip, screamed, “This is war!” into a white-and-red megaphone and instructed armed paramilitaries to guard the barricades in shifts. Later in the night, Simone was filmed allegedly assaulting multiple protestors who disobeyed his orders, informing them that he was the “police” now, sparking fears that he was becoming the de facto warlord of the autonomous zone. A homeless man with a baseball bat wandered along the borderline and two unofficial medics in medieval-style chain mail stood ready for action.
This is war? Clearly, their target was chosen for the lush accommodations and the fine restaurants. This is summer camp for traitors and gangsters. This is nothing that would give the Screaming Eagles a moment’s difficulty. They know the Hamas playbook cold already, and these guys are not even a Hamas-level A-team. This is about a mayor, Jenny Durkan, who somehow thinks her surrender here will be remembered as Trump’s America when voters vote in less than five months.
…
[A] coalition of black activists associated with the autonomous zone released a more specific list of demands, including the total abolition of the Seattle Police Department, the retrial of all racial minorities serving prison time for violent crimes, and the replacement of the police with autonomous “restorative/transformative accountability programs.” Activists pledged to maintain control of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone until their demands are met—setting the stage for a long-term occupation and the establishment of a parallel political authority.
The city government has not developed a strategic response to the takeover of Capitol Hill. According to one Seattle police officer with knowledge of internal deliberations, the city’s “leadership is in chaos” and “the mayor has made the decision to let a mob of 1,000 people dictate public safety policy for a city of 750,000.” The officer said that Chief Best had dispatched high-ranking police officials to the autonomous zone to establish a line of communication, but the officials were immediately sent away by armed paramilitaries at the barricades. “The tide of public opinion is on the side of the activists and they’re pushing the envelope as far as they can,” said the officer. “It’s not hyperbolic to say the endgame is anarchy.”
Seattle is getting the government they deserve, good and hard.
Published in Policing
Where does their food come from?
You said it, man.
Funny you should ask:
Well, it’s not going perfectly:
You mean now? Donations, they’ve already run out and are begging for vegetarian supplies.
If you already burned down the restaurants, stores, and hotels, you might want to reconsider your decision to occupy. Just sayin’.
-edit- Here is Headedwest’s image enlarged:
Why not just name it Thunderdome and be done with it. You know what, I love it when lefties get bonked on the head by Reality.
You know, the decision for police to abandon the area might have been a stroke of genius after all! Things are developing in a perfectly predictable way, but I’m surprised it’s happening so quickly.
Time travel, Berlin Airlift.
If they knew any history.
Personally, I would barricade them in, and send minimal rations.
Seriously, this is scary. West coast. We don’t need freaking enemies giving the West Coast away.
But letting it crumble and fizzle? Ok.
I hope that’s true. Just like kids to plan a runaway without a plan.
Forgot to bring the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Oops.
But these logistical geniuses imagine themselves fit to reorder the most successful society in human history.
Send them whole milk, eggs, fish and cheese. That’s food. But they won’t eat it.
Waahhhh. Crybabies.
I remember when I ran away to the backyard, with a sleeping bag and Archie comic. Thanks to the crabapple tree and an unhealthy capacity to hold a grudge, I lasted for several hours!
Between the lack of food and local “warlords” taking over in lieu of the police, the situation is certainly providing a cold, hard dash of reality for anyone paying attention.
But…will the media let accurate information out?
We could use some people on the inside.
Given what they’ve decided to stream so far, maybe not. All selfie all the time. These guys have less communication discipline than Trump.
The homeless probably filled their pockets and left. And so the more noble-minded agitators and anarchists are seeing that people don’t naturally share and do what’s right. Hmm. This could be one teaching moment of many.
That is a very good question. Sigh.
Well, aint’a that good news!
When considering food donations, remember, a sandwich is a sandwich, but a Manwich is a meal.
Decades of work and these chumps are the best Hamas and the Nation of Islam could put together. The murders and looting have been heartbreaking, the destruction of lives and neighborhoods for decades to come, but the only reason these guys are still at it is enabler yo-yos like Mayor Jenny.
Saw someone else snark that, on the heels of declaring he doesn’t want people who don’t support #BLM as Amazon customers, maybe Seattle resident Jeff Bezos will send some drones from Whole Foods into the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. It would be like the woke, virtue-signaling version of the Berlin Airlift.
It would be like skeet shooting.
Ten million dollars to support Hamas terror operations in the US. What a prince! You would think he’d look a little closer before attaching his name to something like that.
This is somewhat reminiscent of when Occupy Wall St. (remember them?) “took over” McPherson Square, a formerly nice park in central D.C. For a brief while, things went swimmingly, with food donations and a tent city that had a used book store and “teach-ins.” WaPo’s architecture critic even wrote a long and fawning article on the whole thing. Then, needless to say, things went south, deteriorated quickly, and the park was ruined. The cost to put it back together was enormous, but, by then. the media had “lost interest.”
I just can’t believe this is real. Seems like a bad movie…
They pretty much turned the park into a Superfund site before it was over:
The big difference between that and Seattle is — D.C. homeless aside — no one was supposed to be living in McPherson Square, while 500 people reportedly live in the area that the CHAZ militants have taken over, along with the businesses in that six block area (some of which supposedly have already been shaken down for money by the local warlords).
I consider the failure of government to protect property rights of the owners a taking that deserves compensation. Someone needs to sue the city.