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Title: In Defense of Autonomy Author: Michael Reagan Date: July 1, 2020 Language: en Topics: CHAZ, Seattle, black lives matter, autonomy, autonomous zones, TAZ, Black Rose Anarchist Federation Source: Retrieved on 6th August 2020 from https://blackrosefed.org/in-defense-of-autonomy-seattle-chop/
A friend of mine, a Trump supporter, recently sent me a social media
post from an anonymous Seattle police officer about the “organized
protest” zone, or autonomous zone, established by the Black Lives Matter
(BLM) movement in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. The officer
argues, in part, that “there is a part of our country that is no longer
under our control,” and that “we [the police] have been castrated.” The
post is mostly filed with misinformation, that the protest space has its
own currency, ID system, and that the former police precinct, abandoned
by the mayor and the city at the height of the protests, is being used
as a BLM headquarters – no doubt a kind of black witches coven in their
imagination. Indeed, in the language used in the post, “terrorists” and
“anarchists” are stock piling “ammo and chemical weapons,” and are
headed by a “warlord” who “drives a tesla and has been arrested for
drugs, guns, pimping and crimes against children.” The officer concludes
that “this is real,” and that “you can’t make this up.” These
developments they call “unthinkable.”
The police are not the only ones hysterical at the loss of their
station. Right wing media have also chimed in, exacerbating and stoking
the fears of the Right. Fox media personality, Tucker Carlson, for
example, bloviates on his nightly show that the founders of the Capitol
Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) are “just like the conquistadors” because
they’ve seized and occupied already established land and are extorting
local businesses. Not to be outdone, President Trump, searching for an
election year issue, called on the city of Seattle to attack and retake
the space. He tweeted angerly, “Take back your city NOW. If you don’t do
it, I will. This is not a game. These ugly Anarchists must be stopped
IMMEDIATELY.”
What is unthinkable, or was at the beginning of the month, is the power
of the Black Lives Matter movement in the streets. The emergence of the
autonomous zone is a pinnacle of that power, a significant victory. It
demonstrates the ability of popular power to win the impossible from
structures of white supremacy – the state and the propertied interests
they represent. That victory, and the subsequent diminution of state
violence, is a major step forward for community self-control and
autonomy. It shows that ending anti-Black violence is the first and most
basic step to honoring Black life.
But it is just the beginning. Honoring Black life means constructing a
society where Black autonomy and Black power are the cornerstones of
community, and one where Black freedom is the foundation for broader,
collective liberation. The advent of the movement’s autonomous zone was
a step in that direction. Taking the city’s east police precinct
demonstrates not only that our movements can win, but we can win
previously unimaginable victories for Black lives.
There is another legacy now that must be dealt with from the CHOP. Much
uglier, it is about the violence that took one life and left several in
critical condition in a series of recent shootings. The shootings and
the lack of direction for the space sadly demonstrate that our movements
are not yet mature enough to know what to do with victory. As I write,
the Seattle police are threatening to retake the building in the wake of
the violence.
The shootings happened as the movement languished. With no clear
direction, political, strategic, and tactical infighting broke out,
reminiscent of Occupy Wall Street’s failures. Questions emerged over
whether the encampment was for abolition or reform, taking the police
station or not, “autonomy” or remaking existing institutions, marching
or occupying, and others. This infighting was rooted in a lack of
decision-making process that made even the most basic agreements
impossible to gain collective consent.
In the autonomous zone, a diverse flowering of self-activity emerged, a
variegated patchwork of mutual aid projects, support, care, and action
that reflected the full diversity of the movement’s politics and people.
That beautiful moment must not be lost in its downfall, but now with
violence in the space, it must also be held within a more complex
picture of the movement’s failures as well.
Having the city abandon the precinct was a huge victory for the Black
freedom movement in Seattle. It came after weeks of fierce clashes with
police. The weekend after the murder of George Floyd saw confrontational
and angry downtown riots that burned police vehicles, broke store
windows, and looted merchandise. Quickly, a city curfew was imposed.
Instead of dying, the protests turned into even larger mobilizations
across the city and the region, even in small, mostly white bedroom
communities.
Tens of thousands of people marched. On Wednesday, June 3^(rd), the
sixth day of protests, BLM and anti-criminalization organizers from
Block the Bunker, No New Youth Jail, and Decriminalize Seattle issued a
series of simple and direct demands to the mayor and marched with tens
of thousands to City Hall. They helped establish the goals of the
protests as 1) cutting the city police budget 50%, 2) refunding
community needs, and 3) releasing those arrested during protests. This
marked a huge advance for the movement; the protests now had clear,
ambitious demands.
The action at City Hall also put the crosshairs squarely on Mayor Jenny
Durkan, with increasing calls for her resignation. The demonstrations
continued throughout the week, high school students formed impromptu
marches that turned into street occupations. Actions of thousands popped
up in unexpected parts of the city, like the mostly white, and affluent
northern sector. In the Othello neighborhood, a poorer and Blacker part
of the city, organizers filled Othello park with thousands, fists in the
air, chanting “Black Lives Matter.”
Meanwhile, in Capitol Hill, nightly clashes with the police were
escalating. Every evening thousands gathered at police barricades
constructed to protect the east police precinct building. These actions
came on news that Minneapolis had burned to the ground one of their
police stations. Overwhelmed, outnumbered, and exhausted, police used
aggressive tactics, often charging into the crowd to push back the
throngs of protestors. One young woman was hospitalized, her heart
stopped after getting hit the chest with an exploding flash-bang
grenade. Tear gas stung the air until one or two in the morning. This
continued night after night.
Widely criticized for the aggressive approach the police took, in which
child protestors were maced by riot cops, and other protestors tackled
and beaten, the mayor was under intense scrutiny, and seeming to lose
control over the situation. On Friday, June 5^(th) Mayor Durkan promised
a 30-day moratorium on the use of tear gas. But the very next night the
police again gassed people in the streets protesting. City council
members announced calls for the mayor to resign, and began drafting
official statements. On Sunday, protestors continued to gain power, as
the situation further spiraled out of the mayor’s control. That evening,
a young man, and relative of a Seattle police officer, drove his car
into the protest, shot one man in the arm, before surrendering to police
lines. At the same time, President Trump was stoking the Right to shoot
“looters” in the streets.
Then the bombshell. In a surprise announcement on Monday, June 8^(th),
Chief Carmen Best said the police would vacate the precinct at the
center of the Capital Hill protests. On Twitter moving vans were seen
removing equipment from the station. The withdrawal was a huge victory
for the movement, and likely saved Durkan’s position as mayor, for a
time.
That night demonstrators again gathered at the station, this time coming
right up to the walls of the building. Uncertain what to do, and fearing
a trap, BLM demonstrators did not occupy the station. Rumors that armed
gangs of Proud Boys were ready to attack demonstrators, possibly
circulated by the police, led to people seeking to protect the area
around the east precinct. Late in the night on June 8^(th) demonstrators
declared the area a police-free autonomous zone. By the next day,
hundreds rushed into the space to establish an infrastructure of
occupation that allowed residents and protestors to stay, and kept the
violence of the police out.
Instantly the character of the neighborhood transformed. From a space
filled with nightly clashes punctuated by police violence, the Capitol
Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) as it was initially called, demonstrated a
flowering of art, mutual aid, music, direct democracy, and
self-sufficiency. Without the violence of the police, people organized
their lives and their neighborhood in ways that suited their interests
and priorities. These were all humane, focused on defending and honoring
Black life; many were quite beautiful.
The toppling of the east precinct was a huge victory. Not only because
it demonstrated that people had the power in the streets to oust the
mayor, and beat back police violence, but because it opened the horizon
as to what kind of neighborhood, city, and society we could create and
live in.
The victory of the CHAZ soon came to be undone by the lack of political
maturity of the movement to capitalize on victory. This is not about
unity, but maturity: the ability to navigate political difference and
move forward on shared interests for collective liberation. Indeed, as
soon became clear, there was little ability to discuss the pressing
strategic and logistical concerns in the space.
Instead, people just started doing – hundreds and thousands of people
working on hundreds of individual and collective projects. This included
a community garden for Black and Indigenous lives, nightly concerts and
political rallies, documentary film screenings, a veritable renaissance
of street art, a “decolonial” café, and more. For the movement, there
were nightly marches to other police precincts, and people used the
autonomous zone for meetings, political conversations, popular
education, and abolition work.
Even in the early days of the zone however, there were problems evident.
The biggest was that there was no space to have collective decision
making to shape agreed upon priorities. A general assembly did emerge,
but it was very difficult to get things done. It became more of a
speak-out, with people voicing impassioned testimonials against the
police, but not able to raise political or strategic questions with each
other. This was partially because few had experience facilitating large
meetings, forming agendas, setting short time limits for debate, and
having the discipline to silence or remove those who were off topic and
disruptive. This was exacerbated by police infiltrators who acted to
divert, distract, and make focused conversation more difficult.
In addition, there were significant political differences difficult to
overcome. Changing the name from CHAZ to CHOP – Capitol Hill Organized
Protest – was reflective of this. Very early, there were voices raised
that the autonomous zone was a distraction, that it took away from the
movement for Black lives, that the focus became holding space, rather
than stopping police violence, and that it was dominated by white
activists. There are merits to these claims. Still other voices, many of
them Black, questioned the focus on “autonomy,” arguing that as African
Americans they sought not autonomy from the institutions of the country,
but integration, respect, and a dignified existence within. Again, with
merit.
There were differences between Black voices, and for white ally politics
this posed a quandary – whose voices to prioritize? Some Black and POC
organizers were talking with the police, making suggestions to lead
marches away from the zone, or to make other concessions with the cops
including allowing street traffic access or in other ways limiting and
restricting the autonomous zone. While other Black voices were more
militant, defended the notion of an autonomous zone, and challenged the
more conservative Black organizers. Others were frustrated by the whole
debate over the name and looked for a clearer strategic orientation for
what to do with the precinct, the autonomous zone, and what could be won
from the police. Part of this confusion was also because most of the
established radical Black leadership was organizing elsewhere, putting
their efforts into other mobilizations in the city.
Then people started shooting. On Juneteenth one man died after a fight
in the CHOP. The next night there was another. And a few days later, yet
another still. Several people were sent to the hospital in critical
condition. While one victim said his assailants were white supremacists
who were lurking near the space, most of the shootings stemmed from
internal personal conflicts that spiraled into violence.
In the most recent days, Mayor Durkan and Chief Best have done their
darndest to capitalize on the situation, calling for the occupants to
voluntarily leave, marshalling conservative Black leadership for
support, and waiting for people to disperse enough to get the precinct
back. These are tense and troubling moments. Meanwhile, people in the
zone cannot agree on strategy at this critical juncture. Some are
arguing in favor of leaving, others, for holding the space at all costs.
The fact that the police express feeling “castrated” with the victory of
the movements for Black lives, underscores the synthesis of racism,
patriarchy, violence, and state power. The police, the president, and
the Far Right loath the loss of the precinct and the creation of the
organized protest space because it is a significant defeat of their
power, their values, their way of life. In the words of one Seattle
police officer, they’ve lost control of their own country.
Their defeat is our victory.
The emergence of the autonomous zone shows that the limits of what mass
movements can accomplish are shaped only by the limits of our power in
the streets, and the limits of our imaginations for what is possible.
The collective and humane values expressed in the zone are cause for
celebration, a source of beauty. Black life can be honored when the
institutions of white supremacy, like the police, are not reformed, but
removed. In their absence we can create a space where Black voices are
honored, where Black life truly matters.
But the legacy of the organized protest zone is more complicated than a
simple and straightforward celebration. The emergence of violence in the
space is a gift to the Right. They can argue that policing is necessary
and that the excesses of movements must be checked.
For us, the failures demonstrate that basic meeting facilitation, lack
of ability to engage with complication and complexity, and allowing for
difference while working on projects of shared interest are very serious
shortcomings that require quick resolution. Further, it reveals that
politics are important. The ideas and visions we have in our heads are
what enable us to set future horizons of freedom.
Thankfully, there is much more movement in front of us, and whatever
happens to the autonomous zone, the movement for Black lives can push
forward in a multitude of directions. We’ve already seen it here in
Seattle. In the last week the police union has been ousted from the
labor council. Armed police have been forbidden from schools. Police
budgets will be cut and their use of an array of weapons banned. We must
act to create sites free of police violence in the other institutions
and zones of the city. We can build from one autonomous zone, to many.
Even if the CHOP dies, autonomy continues to grow.