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Everyone remembers 2020’s CHOP/CHAZ, right? Basically, a bunch of people created an “autonomous zone” and occupied a few city blocks of Seattle. Seattle authorities weren’t allowed. Violence was pretty common, and a self proclaimed warlord (Raz from Chaz) even distributed firearms (AR-15’s) freely to people that wanted them.
Now, what’s the point of this article? Well, turns out then mayor Jenny Durkan was going to hand over the police precinct located within CHAZ to the local BLM chapter and other activists (most of which were not actually affiliated with the local BLM group). The Seattle Times has obtained documents:
At the height of Seattle’s racial justice protests in 2020, then-Mayor Jenny Durkan’s administration drafted legislation to transfer the Police Department’s East Precinct building to a Black Lives Matter activist organization and researched relocating the station’s operations, newly released documents show.
That June, as cops lobbed tear gas from behind barricades, and protesters on the streets surrounding the precinct called for the Police Department to be defunded, Durkan’s office behind the scenes briefly contemplated handing over the multimillion dollar property that had become the focus of the demonstrations.
Calvin Goings, the director of the city’s Department of Finance and Administrative Services (FAS), emailed three memos and a draft resolution to Durkan on the afternoon of June 8, 2020 — at about the same time police were abandoning the East Precinct on Capitol Hill.
So, it’s interesting that Mayor Jenny Durkan, who was a member of Everytown’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, seems to be giving into the demands and endorsing the behavior of people who took over/occupied part of the city. And again, I guess the trunk of Raz’s car is “safe storage” lol.
If we learned anything from this, it’s that perhaps occupying parts of a city will force Everytown’s mayors to cede buildings to the occupiers. I mean, this was an approved “insurrection“ that had the backing of an Everytown mayor, right?