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Title: Nothing Succeeds Like Secession
Author: Nicky Reid
Date: June 29, 2020
Language: en
Topics: CHAZ, secession
Source: Retrieved on 17th June 2021 from https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/06/29/nothing-succeeds-like-secession-suggested-demands-for-chop-from-a-friendly-panarchist-ally/

Nicky Reid

Nothing Succeeds Like Secession

I have always been fascinated by secessionist movements. It goes back to

my childhood love of maps, flags and geography. I use to spend hours

poring over atlases and fixating on the strange autonomous zones that

only existed inside fluid borders drawn in dotted lines. Strange places

no American ever spoke of, with exotic names like Transnistria, Gaza,

Nagorno-Karabakh, and Western Sahara. I would eventually grow into a

commie, Third World, war nerd who fastidiously followed and supported

these esoteric independence movements from afar.

Secession often gets a dirty name on the American left, thanks largely

to those slave driving frauds in the Confederacy who failed to get the

approval of the citizens they called property before calling it

splitsville. But globally speaking, secession has more often than not

been a practice which usually favors the colonized over the colonizers,

and one that could have given real teeth to the growing slave revolts of

the South had it been held to the standards of Thomas Paine.

All things considered, it’s really little wonder that after an

adolescent flirtation with Bolivarian Guevarism, I became a devoted

Panarchist, a school of anarchism that rejects globalism in favor of

militant localism, and dreams of a world of a million autonomous zones,

divided only by ideology and fluid dotted lines. So naturally I was

pretty fucking stoked when the goblins on my aging mother’s Fox News

programs began hyperventilating over CHAZ.

Born in the heat of urban social upheaval, the Capitol Hill Autonomous

Zone or CHAZ rose from the tear gas like a great anarchist kraken to

tantalize and toy with the posh gentrified towers of the purgatory the

tech industry has turned one of America’s fine outlaw cities into.

Finally, the freaks, faggots and crusty dreaded junkies had taken back a

six block piece of what had once been a thriving bohemian red light

district and transformed it into an outrageous post-apocalyptic utopia,

tattooed in graffiti and crawling with sketchy libertines who saunter

through the war torn avenues with exotically modified AR-15’s and

fluorescent colored dread-hawks. The only gas that fills these streets

now is the skunky fog emanating from flaming dumpsters and doobies the

size of dinosaur bones. A glorious cacophony of grindcore and lo-fi

Soundcloud rap bounces off the alleyways from a dozen feral

ghetto-blasters tapped into the city grid through hacked streetlamps, as

barely legal teen runaways go wild in the streets, shooting dark web

procured psychedelic tryptamines and eating each other’s taught assholes

beneath signs reading “You are now leaving the United States of

America.” Finally, the American left appears to have discovered the

magic of secession.

If only the vivid nightmares of Sean Hannity were a reality, the world

would be my wet dream. Those hysterical creatures who terrify the

elderly for a living always make the left look way cooler than it really

is. The somewhat disappointing reality is that the Capitol Hill

Autonomous Zone isn’t really an anarchist project. In fact, in its

latest capitulation to the melodramatic Karens of the straight world, it

isn’t even an autonomous zone anymore. CHAZ has become CHOP aka the

Capitol Hill Organized Protest, which may very well include a fair share

of anarchists among its contingency but is not in fact an anarchist

commune.

CHOP is a loose collaboration between Black Lives Matter and a number of

other Pacific Northwest protest movements, and aside from a recent

highly publicized spatter of the type of seemingly random acts of

violence inevitable in any new society, the whole thing has been almost

depressingly chill. That isn’t to say that CHOP ain’t worth defending.

As a Panarchist and a pan-secessionist, I try my damnedest to support

all indigenous alternatives to the state, and the first half of the CHOP

formerly known as CHAZ’s original list of demands is a spot on assault

on the local Seattle police state, calling for the wholesale abolition

of the pigs and their prison system, as well as degentrification and

increased autonomy for local anti-crime initiatives.

Sadly, the second half is bereft with the social-democratic gimme

culture of the Bernie buttfucked left. After rightfully calling out the

chattel style slavery of this nation’s school-to-prison system, CHOP

calls for blank checks to centralized education and healthcare systems

without properly addressing the totalitarian architecture of these

industries and their incestuous marriage to the injustice system CHOP

came to stomp out. CHOP also suffers from this generation’s dreadful

lack of imagination. As proven by their name change concession, the

partisans of CHOP underestimate the power of shocking the bourgeoisie.

They lack the theatrical flourish of the Youth International Party, the

Black Liberation Army, or the Situationist International.

True revolutionaries are never going to win over the adults out their in

TV land. But you can win over their jaded children by spooking their

normie parents. The greatest blow ever delivered to White Supremacy was

the day a Dixiecrat congressman came home from voting for the latest

Clinton crime bill to find his lily-white teenage daughter in bed with

the undocumented housekeeper, scissoring to the latest NWA album

blasting from the family HiFi system. We need to shock and provoke. CHOP

needs to own the bad rep Fox has fortuitously bestowed upon them because

it might be their greatest weapon in a cultural war for the hearts and

minds of the terminally bored.

With all this in mind, I’ve decided to write up a few new demands for

CHOP to consider if they wish to remain lethal to the outside system

which may very well be sabotaging them from within as we speak. The Feds

weren’t above “random” gangland shootings during Cointelpro, and who is

Trump but the Satanic reincarnation of Dick Nixon. I remind all of you

dearest motherfuckers, especially those within CHOP, to take my

suggestions with a grain of salt or two. They are but the wild ramblings

of an agoraphobic, genderqueer, pale-faced, suburban armchair anarchist

from the other end of the country. Think of them as a few friendly

suggestions from a Panarchist ally. I only pray to Christ and Kali that

they reach you before Seattle steamrolls the whole damn thing. If not,

save them for next time, because their will always be a next time.

I, Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit, speaking as the biologically male

autonomous zone occupied by a genderflux coven of a dozen lesbian

femmes, hereby suggest the following demands for consideration by the

Capital Hill Organized Protest or however you may choose to

self-identify this week.

armed and unarmed peacekeepers, free of influence from the outside

police state, including but not limited to the defense of our citizens

and the investigation and subsequent mode of restorative justice we

choose to handle those who harm them. We will not be a party to the

mockery of justice that the outside police state uses to fight crime.

That fight is a fight against poor people and it will not be allowed to

be waged within this space.

militias promised to us by the United States Constitution, and we

reserve the right to stand our ground against all enemies, foreign or

domestic, whether they wear a badge or a bandana.

Seattle city limits, not just the metropolitan PD, but the Sheriffs

Department, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the DEA, the ATF, the IRS, ICE

and the Border Patrol. Seattle must become a demilitarized zone. We

recognize the police state as being a lethal injection table held up by

many legs and we aim to saw them all off and ride that deathbed like a

surfboard to liberty across the Puget Sound.

Durkin, perform an unplugged rendition of “All Apologies” on bended

knee, while wearing a pilgrim buckle hat. We don’t think this will do

much to heal any wounds. We just think it would be fucking funny. Fuck

her and all her empty platitudes to social justice.

free game for squatters to shelter in or on and transform into

additional autonomous zones of their own, if they so wish. This includes

the palatial vacation homes and pool houses of the tech magnates who

have made this city unlivable for poor people.

their armaments to the local homeless shelters, so that the most

desperate among us have the same means as the rich to defend themselves

from gentrification.

schools can’t stimulate their student’s attention, it isn’t the students

who should be penalized for their failings.

grade their teachers and that these grades have the same affect on the

faculties upward mobility as the grades they give do the student’s,

eliminating ageist class divisions and insuring equitable treatment.

provided with unions of their own and that all deals made with the

teacher’s unions be contingent upon the approval of said student unions,

so as to create equality inside the classroom and out.

be governed by autonomous democratic councils made up of patients and

healthcare providers, including representation for nurses and orderlies

that is proportional to their percentage of the workforce.

military industrial complex be permanently evicted from city limits

under threat of local prosecution in tandem with international law for

conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity.

of $10 million or more, since these citizens are undoubtedly the

recipients of federal corporate welfare. Consider it a tax on the

federal government that rob us all blind. If said individuals don’t like

it, they can leave and take they’re skyrocketing property values with

them. All other taxes within city limits shall be 100% voluntary.

autonomous administrative division, free from further federal regulation

and taxation, with the full right to govern itself however it’s

citizenry sees fit and with the full right to secede completely from the

Union if they see fit. A right once guaranteed in the Declaration of

Independence as a stopgap to the growth of the kind of tyranny that has

gone unchallenged in this country and made our existence a necessity for

self-defense. America chose to become an authoritarian regime. We the

people choose to opt out.

Submitted for your humble consideration, from one malcontent to another.