View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sayed Alamy (@guyeatsoctopus)

By Hannah Saunders

This summer will mark two years since Cal Anderson Park was raided by police and cleared as part of the removal of the CHOP occupied protest. In the time since, community efforts boosted by the city have continued with hopes of helping to continually improve the park while addressing issues and public safety concerns. Many of the issues raised at a recent community meeting dedicated to the park trace back through the park’s history and involve smaller issues like varmints and off-leash dogs while mental health and addiction issues and the city’s homelessness crisis continues.

Safety in Cal Anderson Park was the primary topic of discussion at a Cal Anderson Park Alliance “Community Advisory Network” meeting, held online last Wednesday night. The goal of the conversation, organizers said, was to place safety of people as a priority, rather than the safety of property as a priority.

Initially, attendees hesitated when asked to speak up about how they feel about safety in the park, but after the co-chair of CAPA’s community advisory network, Erin Fried, shared her concerns about Cal Anderson being “a very ratty park,” other attendees soon chimed in.

“I feel perfectly safe. I mean, we’re a city. It’s a city environment, and I’m really excited to see people acting in the park,” said Bambi Chavez.

Chavez described how there was an absence of park activity during the pandemic, but that she enjoys seeing the increase in movement.

It has already been a long time since a letter from area businesses and community groups warned Seattle City Hall of a “spiraling public health and public safety crisis” in Cal Anderson in October, 2020 during the depths of the pandemic in the months following CHOP and the protests and unrest that centered on the area near the park. Early discussions of efforts to “memorialize CHOP” and boost community mutual aid efforts have mostly gone quiet. But with cleanup and much needed repairs, the park remains a center of daily life on the Hill. And it continues to grow with new features and art added as part of the AIDS Memorial Pathway — another connection to the park’s namesake, Cal Anderson, Washington’s first openly gay legislator, born on May 2nd, 1948, who died from AIDS in 1995 at the age of 47.

Last Wednesday’s meeting on Cal Anderson Park comes as the city is setting out a path for its next six years of spending on its parks with focuses on improving access and maintenance while addressing concerns around public safety including simpler problems like trash and clean-ups but also much more complex issues around addiction and homelessness.

Meeting attendees tried to come to a consensus on how activation, mobility, visibility, and transparency contribute to feelings of safety in Cal Anderson Park.

During the meeting, a group of prioritized issues was created so that attendees could drop their ideas and thoughts about park safety. The topic of off-leashed dogs was posted on the Jamboard.

“I feel like the dogs are an interesting one because I feel like people don’t feel safe,” said Don Blakeney, who serves on CAPA’s board.

Several attendees mentioned how there are masses of off-leash dogs nearby, frequently running past the playground area where their children spend time, which can create safety concerns for the children if a negative interaction occurs with an off-leash dog.

Kyle Capizzi described how he has a nervous dog he’s been training with hopes of boosting the pup’s confidence levels.

“The number of dogs that rush up is pretty problematic, particularly in training,” said Capizzi. “It’s pretty much guaranteed that there will be off-leash dogs there, so it’s problematic.”

A year ago, CHS reported on word from the city that off-leash enforcement in the park was about to increase but any efforts appear to have been pushed aside by the need for space to run and play for the neighborhood’s thousands of dogs.

But larger issues did rise.

Derrick McDonald, who moved to Seattle about one year ago, said that, “People who have access to violence and are legitimized in their act of violence,” create feelings of unsafety in Cal Anderson Park. He explained how people in positions of power who come in to the park and enforce what should and should not happen in the park create further opportunities for unsafe situations to occur.

“It’s when we have these people who arbitrarily can decide whether or not violence is the way they want to communicate in that moment,” said McDonald. “I think we begin to have a conflict about whose safety is being prioritized.”

Blakeney, who also works at U District Partnership, expanded on how the organization is looking into alternatives to past police presence in the University District neighborhood.

“In the past, there’s been volunteer groups that have patrolled the neighborhood,” said Blakeney, who emphasized the importance of having a high visibility security presence.

The city is also tuning into the conversations as it continues to sort out the repercussions around the protests that overtook Cal Anderson in 2020.

Miroslava Meza, who is from the Office of Inspector General, attended the meeting because OIP is conducting a review of activities in Cal Anderson Park, and the events that led up to CHOP.

PLEASE HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE!
Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.