Occupy Capitol Hill | St. Mark's says no to Occupy Seattle HQ tents in parking lot

Occupy Seattle, originally uploaded by hopeisalot.

A proposal to erect "two tents to be used as administrative offices" in the parking lot of St. Mark's was rejected by the board pondering the possibility on behalf of the Capitol Hill congregation.

"This conversation is not over.  We continue to reflect on what this movement means to us and our mission and theology of radical welcome and the Cathedral as commons.," wrote senior warden Scott Smallwood in a statement on the decision.

His full statement is here.

The church had been considering ways to support the Occupy movement following the ban on camping that forced its Seattle encampment to leave the Seattle Central campus at Broadway and Pine.

The Occupy Seattle effort has shifted to meeting for its general assembly at the Washington Convention Center. In Tuesday night's session, a long debate ended in the group rejecting a motion to "commit to using methods of non-violent civil disobedience at all of our demonstrations and define violence as unprovoked physical aggression," according to minutes published at occupyseattle.org.

"Society is an act of unprovoked violence," one speaker is quoted as saying in opposition to the proposal. "Revolutionary violence we're seeing across the world would be considered nonviolence. We're hung up on the word. To invoke the letter from Cairo: wish not to use violence, but wish not to lose."

Meanwhile, there has been an increase in squatting in empty buildings around central Seattle. In one case, a group of anarchists, Occupiers, etc. squatting in a Central District duplex have been summoned to appear in court and face eviction.

We also reported on another spur of the long, winding Occupy Seattle trail last week as this group mounted a small but spirited and kind of amusing protest against gentrification on Capitol Hill.