By Dave Workman | Editor-in-Chief
Sixteen days after they seized six blocks of uptown Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, but less than a week after three shootings including one homicide, the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest Solidarity Committee announced their occupation has “formally closed” and their “comrades” should vote for Democrat Joe Biden for president and help re-elect Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.
The controversial “CHOP” project initially started as a protest against police use of force. It quickly morphed into an attempted socialist Utopia effort in which police were not welcome, and local businesses lost revenue, while residents were reportedly afraid to be out after dark.
The “Solidarity Committee also threw its support to Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, claiming she has “shown the leadership that will help us heal.”
What about the neighborhood this group occupied for 16 days? How will the businesses “heal?” Legal action has already been taken as a class action lawsuit has been filed against the city for failing to provide services, including police protection. The East Precinct office was abandoned more than two weeks ago.
According to Fox News, plaintiffs in the lawsuit include “an auto repair shop, a tattoo parlor and a property management company.” The story also says “workers and residents also joined the lawsuit,” alleging Durkan and Police Chief Carmen Best “and other city leaders” turned the neighborhood over to “anarchists.”
The Seattle P-I.com and KOMO reported that more than a dozen businesses are involved in the class-action lawsuit. While insisting they support free speech rights, the plaintiffs are sticking up for the rights of their employees and local residents. KOMO said the complaint spans 56 pages.
The lawsuit complains of graffiti on private buildings, barriers, streets and sidewalks. The suit alleges, “Graffiti that is painted over almost immediately returns, and property owners have been told by CHOP participants that if they dare to paint over graffiti, their buildings will be more severely vandalized or even burned to the ground.”
This suggests that news coverage of the occupation was not all fun and games for residents and business people.
One unidentified volunteer security guard told a KING News reporter, “We don’t want violence. We don’t want people coming in there thinking they’ve got immunity. We don’t want no sexual assaults, we don’t want nobody raped and hurting, killing, no gunshots; people come down there and they push the envelope. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used my mace.”
A far left activist group calling itself Seattle Indivisible issued a communique declaring that Mayor Durkan’s reported plan to lop 5 percent of the police department’s budget is not enough to satisfy their expectations.
“This business-as-usual proposal is thoroughly tone deaf in the midst of a national movement against racially motivated police violence, and is hardly a good-faith offer when Black Lives Matter and other Seattle-area activists are calling for 25-50% cuts to SPD’s budget,” Seattle Indivisible says.
The group wants its followers to flood Durkan’s office with telephone calls and emails, providing both the telephone number and email address.
The CHOP Zone began deteriorating following three shootings over the weekend of June 20-21, one of them fatal. Seattle police could not enter the zone to reach the victim because they were blocked by protesters. Volunteer “medics” transported the fatally-wounded teen to Harborview Medical Center, but he died. Two other shootings within 48 hours left two other people wounded.
Socialist Seattle Councilwoman Kshama Sawant, who has led the charge to defund the police, issued a statement, “Our movement should also demand and insist that the Seattle Police fully investigate this attack and be held accountable to bring the killer(s) to justice,” in the wake of the killing.
Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat observed, “(T)he CHOP has ended up demonstrating the reverse of its no-cop Utopian goal. It turns out we still need those homicide detectives and the CSI and probably much of whatever else was going on in that boarded-up East Precinct.”
