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nostalgebraist:
I live right by the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle. For those reading from further away – it’s important to keep in mind what the past week has been like in this area.
Every night, the cops would attack peaceful protestors after it got dark. The violence was apparently pointless, was often completely unprovoked and massively disproportionate when provoked, and seemed almost perversely dedicated to eroding any remaining public trust in the police.
Day after day of events like
- “tear gas is wafting into nearby people’s apartments, it made someone’s baby wake up foaming at the mouth,” or
- “you know how, after people were furious about the tear gas, the mayor and police chief declared the police would not use CS gas for 30 days? well, it’s been less than 48 hours, and they just used CS gas again”
- “out of nowhere, a guy drove madly into the cop/protestor standoff and shot someone, and the protestors did more to stop and apprehend him than the cops” (see also here, etc.)
Events of this kind became almost surreally predictable, not in their details, but in their shape: no matter how badly the police are behaving, they’re going to hit a new low tomorrow. If they seemed indefensible today, they’ll somehow make themselves into even more clear-cut villains tomorrow. (Example: the night after the “tear gas ban,” they used OC gas, whereas technically the ban was limited to CS gas – and the night after that, they abandoned all pretenses and used CS gas again.)
No one understood why the cops did what they did. In press conferences and the like, the mayor and police chief contradicted themselves from day to day and sometimes seemed to be unfamiliar with the basics of the previous night’s news. The city council was baffled, everyone was baffled – the cops even found an odd, tangential way to piss off the Seattle School District in the process of doing all this other stuff.
When the cops left the precinct two days ago, all of that stopped. I don’t mean to sound like the protest isn’t important anymore, or something like that, but “a continuous peaceful protest is happening in your area” is … well, a lot more compatible with ordinary life and work than than “you now live in a warzone where the city attacks its citizens every night.”
Right now it doesn’t feel like some new group has come in and “taken over.” Really, it’s the opposite. The very unwelcome group that “took over” last week – “took over” in terms of their new aggressive behavior if not in terms of literal physical presence – is finally gone.
nostalgebraist:
I live right by the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle. For those reading from further away – it’s important to keep in mind what the past week has been like in this area.
Every night, the cops would attack peaceful protestors after it got dark. The violence was apparently pointless, was often completely unprovoked and massively disproportionate when provoked, and seemed almost perversely dedicated to eroding any remaining public trust in the police.
Day after day of events like
- “tear gas is wafting into nearby people’s apartments, it made someone’s baby wake up foaming at the mouth,” or
- “you know how, after people were furious about the tear gas, the mayor and police chief declared the police would not use CS gas for 30 days? well, it’s been less than 48 hours, and they just used CS gas again”
- “out of nowhere, a guy drove madly into the cop/protestor standoff and shot someone, and the protestors did more to stop and apprehend him than the cops” (see also here, etc.)
Events of this kind became almost surreally predictable, not in their details, but in their shape: no matter how badly the police are behaving, they’re going to hit a new low tomorrow. If they seemed indefensible today, they’ll somehow make themselves into even more clear-cut villains tomorrow. (Example: the night after the “tear gas ban,” they used OC gas, whereas technically the ban was limited to CS gas – and the night after that, they abandoned all pretenses and used CS gas again.)
No one understood why the cops did what they did. In press conferences and the like, the mayor and police chief contradicted themselves from day to day and sometimes seemed to be unfamiliar with the basics of the previous night’s news. The city council was baffled, everyone was baffled – the cops even found an odd, tangential way to piss off the Seattle School District in the process of doing all this other stuff.
When the cops left the precinct two days ago, all of that stopped. I don’t mean to sound like the protest isn’t important anymore, or something like that, but “a continuous peaceful protest is happening in your area” is … well, a lot more compatible with ordinary life and work than than “you now live in a warzone where the city attacks its citizens every night.”
Right now it doesn’t feel like some new group has come in and “taken over.” Really, it’s the opposite. The very unwelcome group that “took over” last week – “took over” in terms of their new aggressive behavior if not in terms of literal physical presence – is finally gone.