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Christopher Rufo joins Brian Anderson to discuss Seattle’s activist-controlled “autonomous zone” in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of the city, established after police evacuated the local precinct building.
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, activists and police in Seattle clashed until the city decided to abandon the East Precinct and surrender the neighborhood to protesters, who declared it the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ). More than a week later, the future of CHAZ—now increasingly called CHOP, for Capitol Hill Organized Protest—remains unclear.
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Rufo’s explanation of the real significance of the change from CHAZ to CHOP was eye-opening.
CHAZ was a promise to set up a government, but the deeply divided occupiers were unable to come to a consensus what to do. For that reason, they chose to downgrade their pretensions to CHOP, a mere “organized protest”.