With cops away, it’s like Capitol Hill is slipping back to the Pinkerton’s era

They prefer private entrepreneurs rent seeking, rather than a representative government doing it?

Police were prevalent, just setting up speed traps and shaking down tourists.

So I guess, very similar to central america

The biggest trouble with this model is the lack of long-term predictability. Sure, you can pay your protection money and operate your business today, but the next day your "supervisor" gets on bad terms with his superiors and gets replaced. Their successor may simply not like you (or have their own protege to take your place) and then you're basically screwed. Your business gets raided, your family is taken hostage, you will be happy if you're left alive after basically donating your share to somebody who had better connections.

As a result, nobody wants to do long-term investments. Business that cannot be promptly liquidated is not not worth the hassle. Assets that cannot be transferred outside of Russian jurisdiction in case shit hits the fan are liabilities. So the economy boils down to extremely corrupt oil/gas companies owned by people from Vladimir Putin's personal network, and rather rare mom-and-pop shops that sort of fly under the radar until they don't.

I hope this model isn't coming to the West, since it's simply incompatible with economic prosperity.

On the way out, several cars had had their windshields smashed: punishment for the non-payers.

Whenever anyone talks about how bad things are here, I invite them to Honduras, especially if they make claims like “nowhere is as bad as the US”.

FTFY.

First off, while I was there, it was an overall friendly, bustling atmosphere. There were no armed security forces, no armed thugs demanding protection money from businesses, etc... It felt more like the Folklife festival; there were parents with their kids, people doing street art, and stalls selling food. While most people were wearing masks, there was also a distinct lack of social distancing. My first impression was that this was a plausible excuse for people to be outside and in a large, social situation. It was a beautiful sunny day, of course people want to be outside.

There was a central event area where there were some kind of organized speeches/events. While I was there, a speaker was talking about the unjust seizure of land in the Seattle area from an indigenous people group, and after that there was a musical performance from members of that indigenous group. All around the area there were solicitors urging the passers by to sign petitions and vote on various issues. The craziest things I saw were people digging up Cal Anderson park lawn spaces to create vegetable patches. There was an incredible amount of graffiti all over the place, a high percentage of it anti-cop. There were stalls with free granola bars/water/other snackish things and a few pieces of first aid equipment, all labeled as "supplies for protesters".

What follows are my opinions and interpretations:

I do not believe the CHAZ/CHOP had any real impact on the political discourse of Seattle. There was heavy protesting and rioting beforehand in the Capitol Hill area up to the retreat of the Police from that precinct (for those unfamiliar with Seattle political geography, Cap Hill is an epicenter of progressive/liberal culture) and the retreat of the police was a very good move from the government's standpoint. By giving a very small area of land over to "the protesters" (whatever group may take that mantle upon themselves) the city government did two things: it successfully redirected attention away from the police and the issue at hand, and it allowed the protest movement to collapse under its own weight.

I was struck by the lack of focus of the protest movement; while the police were pushing back against the protests, there was a very clear message being sent through social media, the traditional media, and in the channels of political discourse: The current level of police violence is unacceptable. However just a few days after the CHAZ/CHOP was born, a large number of tangentially-related concerns bubbled to the surface. While I was there, I was approached by solicitors that wanted to pass better environmental regulations, pass legislation to protect trans teens, and institute new taxes on large corporations (e.g. Amazon). All three were motivated in some way ("POC communities are usually the first to suffer in environmental disasters, to protect these communities we must protect the environment", or "how will we pay for new social programs? Tax Amazon!") but it was very clear to me that without keeping a strong focus on changing policies to suppress police violence, outsiders of this movement would be enabled to glance into the cauldron of demands and simply state "the socialists are yelling again".

With regards to the shootings, I can say that while I nor anyone I know who went to the zone personally saw firearms, I know they were there at some point, and there were people with more firepower than sense taking advantage of the lack of cops to do whatever they wanted. I can see the tone of the area changing drastically between 3pm and 3am (which is when some of the shootings occured) and while I am certain the lack of police presence did not help matters, Seattle does have shootings every now and then. It's not immediately clear to me how much of the shootings is or is not due to lack of police.

I have not been to capitol hill since the police moved back in; from what I have heard from other people who have been there, things are more or less "normal" now, just with more graffiti and street art. I don't know what's going to happen to the vegetable gardens. ;)

Proof: https://imgur.com/a/7hKqmUe

Authoritative Sources of information:

- https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/

- https://twitter.com/Omarisal

To kick things off:

- Local business hired a PMC/Local Armed Security group (don't remember the name) to provide real security after Car Tender was attacked. On the night that happened, they had a dude with an AR15. What happened was some junkie/non protester jumped a fence, started a fire, took some cash, and keys to vehicles. The owners (dude with a gun) detained him, but protesters started mobbing and forced them to release the dude who broke in. Some stuff was recovered by the mob.

- There was at least two armed groups of volunteer security. One organized one (the gun club mentioned and the now well known picture of the dude with the ar15, vest, and green bandana- this dude: https://libertyunyielding.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/arm...) was part of it. From what I've been told, they were organized and mostly on the roof providing overwatch and sniper support in case something happened. The other group was possible gang bangers- these are the people who shot the white jeep and most likely executed one person. Then there is "Raz." I am unware of his involvement other then breaking multiple state and federal firearms laws.

- Towards the end, a majority of the population was a mixture of homeless, gang members, and non-local people who came to support the vision of CHAZ. There was protesters, but their numbers deminished

The area proper on 29 was generally enjoyable to be around. Observed lots of drifter types, no visible violence, some good musical performances, nice community gardens, free food tent. Saw very little public drinking, some weed, lots of tobacco (mainly self-rolling, which I thought was interesting). A few circles of older folks smoking weed in circles out front their tents and hammocks on the outskirts of the habitation.

The protests at the police line were very disheartening. The militarization of police was of course frightening (not for my own life so much as the state of the nation). The protesters themselves had a fair amount of infighting, some of them seemed unstable (these ones were often the ones with guns).

Overall I found the CHOP area pleasant to be around, however the fact that CHOP armed guards killed more black teens in that ~2 week period than SPD in the past 6 months made me question if it was possible to logically consistently support both CHOP and BLM -- it's concerning there hasn't been more coverage of the disconnect there.

Honestly, it's weird that an article criticizing the CHOP security debacle would decide to leave out pertinent details that help bolster the critique.

As a side note, there is both/r/seattle and /r/seattlewa. Both of them are seeing heavy traffic from out-of-towners right now, but the general divide is /r/seattle is the left-leaning one and /r/seattlewa is the right-leaning one (at least within the context of Seattle).