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Five years later: CHOP and the 2020 protests in Seattle

Five years ago this week, CHS began what would grow into months of day by day, night by night coverage of the 2020 protests in Seattle. It was a neighborhood story.

“Protests, vandalism, and police and rioter clashes flared again Saturday across downtown Seattle in a battle over police brutality after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis,” is how the CHS report the afternoon of May 30th, 2020 began.

July 1st, CHS reported on the end of CHOP:

24 days after clearing the building and evacuating the area following weeks of anti-police protests, the Seattle Police Department swept into the area around the East Precinct early Wednesday and cleared the protest zone that has formed in this core neighborhood of Capitol Hill…”

The story would continue for months of continued protests and clashes with police and years of investigations and lawsuits.

The country, the city, and the neighborhood are still sorting it all out. Police legitimacy was severely compromised. Officials have faced few consequences. There have been no apologies. Seattle revised its crowd control policies. Two young men died. There is a memorial planned for Cal Anderson Park. Last weekend, meanwhile, the Seattle Police Department showed not enough has changed when it comes to power and the outnumbered.

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Cal Park neighbor
4 months ago

Fuck CHOP. That was the stupidest moment in Seattle history. Seattle and Capitol Hill became a global embarrassment and still haven’t recovered. Why haven’t there been any arrests for the execution of a 16-yr-old and shooting of a 14-yr-old by CHOP security?

Nation of Inflation Gyration
4 months ago

You need help moving to another neighborhood to get out from under the ongoing calamity that started 5 years ago? I can toss in a sandwich from the Thomas St. corner store if that’d sweeten the pot for you.

Squire Parkour
4 months ago

I wouldn’t go that far – just toss CPn a roll of paper towels…

john
4 months ago

facts

poncho
4 months ago

But it was fun cosplay for the anarchist losers that crawled out of their parents basement for a week

Tom Y
4 months ago

100% this. Murders swept under the rug by the incompetent Mayor and City Council. Where were Sawant or Lorena Gonzales or Teresa Mosqueda after those boys were murdered? Why weren’t they calling for justice? One reason- because they were down there days before grandstanding on behalf of CHOP/CHAZ and they knew that they and the entire city leadership had royally f’ed up. Classic case of CYA.

Chi Chi
4 months ago

Annnnnd looks like Durkan and FBI were working together with lots of ops. The read in Real Change about this is eye opening. Cops were assholes!

Molo Johannes
4 months ago
Reply to  Chi Chi

I’ll always remember seeing tons of people marching up the hill to Cal Anderson for the protests. And they would pass doorway after doorway of homeless people laying there. Probably 3/4 were black. I wondered what they were thinking when they saw all these people caring signs saying that black lives mattered while walking right by them, a black person obviously in distress and in need of help.

poncho
4 months ago
Reply to  Chi Chi

Ooh Real Change, bias mouthpiece of the Homeless Industrial Complex, so it must be true LOL

Stumpy
4 months ago
Reply to  poncho

Yup. Chi Chi come through once again with same old same old.

Janos
4 months ago

ah, the summer that turned me from a card-carrying liberal into a right-wing savage

Squire Parkour
4 months ago
Reply to  Janos

Face facts – you were always the latter. You just needed something to justify being open about it.

Smoothtooperate
4 months ago
Reply to  Janos

right..cool story

Tiffany
4 months ago

I live just outside the “official” boundaries and it was an absolute disaster for this neighborhood. Getting ID’d by hooligans just to go get a coffee, and I’m not talking the police. Waking up to fire trucks and blast balls night after night with the black bloc losers coming in from the suburbs to LARP in our city and light dumpsters on fire.

The first couple days were fine, then it devolved into quite literally, a war zone, particularly after dark. If you just drove in to take some silly photos and drove back to the ‘burbs you have no idea what really went down when the turf wars started between Raz and others.

And don’t even get my started on the coward loser Jenny Durkan and her partner in the whole crime Carmen Best.

This part of the Hill is STILL seeing downstream effects from this debacle.

Cdresident
4 months ago
Reply to  Tiffany

My favorite part is how the riots and all the bullshit revolutionary cosplay ushered in the new 80s.

Stumpy
4 months ago
Reply to  Tiffany

Yes agree completely. But the far left progressives will be trouncing you soon.

Cdresident
4 months ago
Reply to  Stumpy

Lol

Below Broadway
4 months ago
Reply to  Stumpy

“trouncing you soon”

Don’t bet on it. Swing state purple America looks at CHAZ-CHOP as a cautionary tale of why they must keep voting for police-supporting candidates.

Nandor
4 months ago

The same idiots are still at it… they think they are doing some sort of heroic good works, but all they are doing is giving the crazy right wingers exactly what they want – someone else to focus all the attention on, someone to make them look reasonable to outsiders, a reason for the media to come in here and convince the rest of the world that we actually do live in a dystopian hell hole, someone to justify their filing lawsuits, someone to help them recruit more converts.

Those church people come here absolutely salivating over prospect of having masked black-bloc dummies throw water bottles at them and punch cops so that they could get featured on Fox News and cry to the FBI about how discriminated against they are and surprise, surprise, guess who obliged and gave them everything they could have wished for. Great job. Way to stick it to them by handing them everything they wanted on a silver platter…

Stumpy
4 months ago
Reply to  Nandor

Unfortunately true. And everyone sayin’ oh just water bottles. Or water balloons. But urine filled balloons? Not a lawyer but throwing bodily fluids at people…
Is that assault? Detest these so-called Christians but could you dumbasses have given them a better photo-op? Get smarter, please. Lawyers? Can you weigh in?

Nandor
4 months ago
Reply to  Stumpy

I believe throwing much of anything at someone would be considered to be an assault… unless maybe it were something that truly couldn’t be taken seriously as a weapon – maybe nerf balls….

Urine filled balloon, definitely. People have been charged for less – like squirting a neighbor with a garden hose.

Smoothtooperate
4 months ago
Reply to  Nandor

I think they changed the law because the boomers voted for it…Hosing down the neighbors? Now legal. Argument that won? They are to old to swing a broom.

Nandor
4 months ago

No… no one changed any laws. Throwing things, hitting someone, punching, slapping… even if not a serious threat to life and limb is still assault… even just threatening to do it, as long as the threat is credible, is assault.

Smoothtooperate
4 months ago
Reply to  Nandor

you got stick so far up you can’t laugh at an actually obvious joke?

Have you ever read my previous posts for the last year++

Comedy gold

Smoothtooperate
4 months ago
Reply to  Stumpy

I can’t claim to be a lawyer. But I know butt loads because I did go to school at Marblemount University of Skagit county. Very prestigious institution.

What I can tell you is this. Um yes, illegal…Illegal real bad. Way bad if it’s at cops. Black blockheads are 100% aware. It’s a feature.

Therefore? If you are peeing peed on? You have a visceral reaction to it. Either red or run. Some cringe in place or have a fit there.

The cops? They MUST do one thing. Protect the public. When you pull that lever? It’s on. Betty bar the doors. They went STRAIGHT after the people peeing on them and it was not pretty.

HOWEVER! They did not, I repeat, did not break any laws. The cops were surgical in that way period full stop. If some bystanders got into it as collateral? Momma taught me not to go where you have ANY chance of dying. Walk on the sidewalks. Not behind the strip mall where the loading docks and locked doors are and nobody but you. Common sense stuff we all know well.

KNOWING Black Blockheads are there? Time to go. Leave them there with the cops and step WAY BACK DUMMIES! Do not get in their way. let them huck the pee pee. And watch the show. DO NOT argue with them. Say leave. They won’t. Scream “PINAPLLE JUICE “and the whole crowd immediately moves back 10 yards. How do we be so fucking organised w/o a safe word? Details.

But yes. They get a blank check. It’s WA. If you wanna go? Ain’t nobody gonna stop you. Because in this state that is legal. When it’s the cops? Do the math…lol

They did not gas anyone. The pepper spray is not an accurate defence. It’s mass defense. Again…10 yards.

The issue is everyone wants to argue the point beyond being smart. We have all seen and heard those exceptional learners.

Again, anyone says different don’t understand fully. They simply do not. This was not a G. Floyd moment or even civil rights etc. They peed on the cops…lmao! *poof* vaporised.

Smoothtooperate
4 months ago
Reply to  Nandor

extremists on both sides want war. No surprise there. People are always caught in the middle.

Nandor
4 months ago

The only thing that is a surprise is how stupidly adamant the black bloc-ers are that they are doing something good….. they are being totally played and they just cannot/will not recognize it. They have given the god-botherers so much free press it’s not even funny and will happily repeat it all over again the next time. I’ll bet that preacher is laughing all the way to the bank with all the donations he’s raked in by posting his woeful urine soaked parishioners on facebook and instagram…
They really need to learn that you put out this kind of fire by starving it of oxygen, not by throwing gasoline on it.

Smoothtooperate
4 months ago
Reply to  Nandor

That’s not it man.

The surprise? Is that the people not involved can’t evolve and adapt? We block roads to prevent people running over people. Mostly if you live here and not a Confederate state. Which is the big one. The other side will never stop clambering for war so the white hats ride in. Theoretically.

All that other stuff is 100% predictable. It’s the permit that lit the fuse.