Comments

1

Charles, you are a true Hero of the Soviet Union.

2

Do the impossible - Murray Bookchin.

Great article Charles and thank you. We will go on and how Mayor Durkan will scream because we are unstoppable. Black Lives Matter!!!!!

4

Oh, come on. I know you are trying to be hip and all, but hyperbole does not become you.

First of all, some cities have graffiti, some don't. In Buenos Aires it is just accepted. Even in the most bourgeois parts of town, there is graffiti. There are people wearing multi-thousand dollar Italian suits, eating $50 appetizers surrounded by graffiti. It is just the norm. In this country, it comes and goes. San Fransisco is no less a city than it used to be -- nor is Oakland -- despite the lack of it.

As for Durkan, give me a break. She has nothing in common with those white pricks. She is simply out of her league -- like so many mayors in recent memory. She is trying to manage things in her city, and it just got out of control. She was smart enough -- after initially fucking up -- to pick a decent head of police, and figured that was that. But then the police fucked up -- big time -- and now there is a mess. It has taken her a very long to realize that the anger in the streets is real, not limited to a handful of hooligans (as Mayor Rice said, back in the day). The cause is bigger than her, and bigger than any mayor: lack of progress in a progressive city. Except for gay rights (something the mayor is quite familiar with) the nation hasn't progressed much since the 1980s. A recession, a pandemic, and the same old shit we've endured since the '70s eventually pisses people off, and next thing you know, we have riots (or what passes for such things in a city like Seattle). It took her a while, but Durkan finally realized that you need to handle things carefully, slowly, with great deference. Eventually, like the WTA riots, it will all be forgotten, or at the very most, become a meaningless memory. What matters is well beyond the cozy little borders of our tiny burg, let alone CHOP. Real change happens in the other Washington, and the only thing we (the people) can do is push them to make it. Vote, then demand that those people we voted for actually make significant changes. (People always seem to forget that second part. They protest when Trump is President, not Obama. It makes no sense if you have any understanding of history.)

6

Graffiti is the public urine of non attachment to property.

7

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dare
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools" said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows

Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"

But my words like silent raindrops fell

And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made

And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming

And the sign said, "The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"

And whisper'd in the sounds of silence... .

--Paul Simon

8

keep the Grafitti
the touristas're
gonna Love it.

9

Graffiti is a fine artistic expression. Why do people have to leave trash everywhere though?

10

The trash is a symbol of ownership.

11

Oh Charles, you didn't even mention the human fecal droppings you had to dodge while walking those enlightened Seattle streets. How come? Doesn't that also help to make it a real city for you?

12

@8: Perhaps a few, but tourist attractions typically don't showcase what tourists already have back home.

13

read the Room rainy
our Chase was on
the BBC today.

14

& how 'Bout that Paul Simon!
You even got (@7)
a Mention.

17

@Cheesewhiz -- what?

18

Toward the end, CHOP made Seattle look like a favela.

20

Is there a reason you have “weeks of violence," "shootings," and "deaths of two teenagers" in quote marks as if those things didn’t actually happen, or are some figment if Durkin’s imagination? Do you really believe that it was reasonable for the mayor of the city to allow this thing to continue after a 14-year-old kid got shot, on the heels of multiple other shootings and assaults? It just wasn’t tenable anymore. The CHOP became a magnet for violent conduct. We who supported it need to recognize and deal with that reality, not wax poetic about the graffiti or attack the mayor for doing what she was left no choice but to do.

23

This was sarcasm, right, because that's exactly how it reads

25

Another self-righteous, overweening article by C. Mudede, poseur.

26

Reading comments nowadays makes me feel like I am on a different planet. Happy Fourth!

28

All those little brats whose parents never made them sit down and shut up are now throwing tantrums in public. People in their 20s acting like stroppy 3-year olds, throwing their toys out of their prams until they get what they want. Yet they won't vote, they don't respect others, won't sit down and shut up. Its time for a flood to wash the streets clean. Come on, God, let us have it. We're done here.

30

You mention property in your essay and I would remind you that Ernest Renan, the 19th century French philosopher, correctly wrote that the main characteristic of a nation was: “The willingness of the citizens to live together”. Implicit in the idea of a functioning nation is that a social contract exists with two important elements: a) solidarity among the citizens, and b) a state to help organize the defense of life, freedom and property. I often use that definition when I seek to define “nation” as distinct from a multicultural/multi-ethnic democracy. The protection of property was one of the hallmarks of the Founder’s objectives so it should be of no surprise that many American’s still believe that to be a valid objective.

Progressives in the twentieth century have in large part aimed at turning the American people away from their traditional attachment to property rights. Progressives have tended both to acknowledge that the Founders attached great significance to property rights and to denigrate them precisely for this attachment. A reading of the important founding documents, however, shows clearly that the Founders held property rights to be as important as other human rights. In fact, at times they insisted that the right to acquire and possess private property was in some ways the most important of individual rights.

In Federalist 54, James Madison stated tersely: “Government is instituted no less for the protection of the property than of the persons of individuals.” As Madison later elaborated, property rights are as important as personal rights because the two are intimately connected. The right to labor and acquire property is itself an important personal right and entitled to government protection; and the property acquired through the exercise of this personal right is entitled, by derivation, to an equal protection.

31

"clean, privatized surfaces and middle-class respect of property". I'm not seeing the problem here. You're such a troll, Charles. You don't even believe this shit. You just say it for a reaction.

I'm glad Jenny clean the vermin (and by that I mean the white LARPers with guns) out of Capitol Hill. They managed to shoot how many black kids in the span of how many weeks? A 14-year-old a 16-year-old died just two days ago... How old was the first victim? I'm not even counting the ones who were wounded. Aren't we glad they're were no police. They might have accidentally shot someone!

Congratulations. Idiots like yourself got the victim's parents calling for the national guard. What a fucking shit show. Idiots like you will get Trump re-elected. Do they pay you or are you just this fucking stupid on accident?

32

Shave your palms, Charles.

33

"I'm thinking about Hannah Arendt." No you're not. Your little clown car of a brain was thinking about how crosswalk buttons are racist.

36

Marxists gonna Marx, eh Chuck?

38

Hey, Charles, how about making a list of all the places you consider "real" cities so I can avoid them. Thanking you in advance...

41

First of all, the left today is anarcho-syndicalist, not large-C "Communist". Large-C Communism no longer exists as a part of the actual Left.

The CHOP was not the cause of the shootings and having the cops in the precinct wouldn't have prevented the shootings. It wasn't people on the Left doing the shootings, either.

There is no longer any possibility, if there ever was, of Durkan doing anything progressive at all as mayor. You can't crush protest and then still be capable of making any positive changes.

The spirit of CHOP-which brought Capital Hill to life for the first time in years, will live on and something better will come of it.

And it's fair to ask why neither the SPD NOR the merchants ever offered to negotiate with the people in the encampment. They could have worked something out, they could have had actual dialogue.

44

@37: Actually, they are. There is no good reason why we should have a political and economic system where owning property essentially gives those who own it a veto over what can and can't be done. As the current president constantly reminds us-whether he wishes to or not- owning property is not a mark of intrinsic superiority.

45

@41

"The CHOP was not the cause of the shootings..."

So an armed CHOP occupier didn't shot and kill Antonio Mays, Jr., and send a 14 year old to the hospital, on Monday morning? Because the video I saw shows different. If you have proof of who did do the shootings Monday morning, please, share it with us. Because I find it hard to fathom that CHOP would have allowed a Proud Boy/alt-righter or member of SPD to just randomly hang out in the occupied zone with a gun for kicks; just waiting for a chance to kill someone.

47

Charles, thank you for a beautiful way to think about our new wealth of graffiti. I have shared your article with friends inside Seattle, and in far flung places!!!

49

Ah yes, because real cities always have crowds of homeless drug addicts and a bunch of larping marxist college students with guns manning the barricades looking for stray black teenagers to gun down at 3am. Have you been out of seattle in the last decades even once, Chuckles?

50

From what I could tell, CHOP was all for open carry gun rights and shrinking big government. Ya'll are never satisfied. Sheesh. Where's Ammon Bundy when you need him?

60

59

What do you do when you break a law? It must be crazy wierd inside your head. Do you attempt suicide or flog yourself or what? Or just shitpost on comment threads? Your therapist should write a book.

61

If you're non-sympathetic to CHOP but you walk around other people without wearing a covid-19 mask, I don't think you have a right to judge CHOP and how safe or unsafe it is. You're someone who goes around putting other people's very lives and health at risk, and making a public statement that you don't care about anyone but yourself.

63

Lay off the weed.

64

@62: All the "CHOP was evil" comments here have been based on denial. It wouldn't have made any difference if the cops were still there. If that mattered, people wouldn't be murdered all over Seattle and all over every other large city in neighborhoods with a precinct house.

66

Did they release the number of 'BIDEN 2020' signs they cleared out of there? Probably several dumpsters full at least.

67

Seattle - America’s Toilet

72

Correction: "CHOP Made Seattle Look Like a Real Messed Up City"

FTFY free of charge, Charles.

73

@4 "But then the police fucked up -- big time -- and now there is a mess."

Durkan and Best were voted in, in part, to clean up some major problems in the SPD. Problems which predate their entry into office by quite a long time. Many decades, in fact. And even if they manage to restart the process to exit official federal oversight, SPD* will be on double secret probation for years to come. This isn't just about the current George Floyd/BLM protests, CHAZ and CHOP. In fact, we have probably had more problems here, since the protesters may have taken advantage of the police department being forced back on it's heels by past behaviors and the resulting penalties and conditions imposed.

*And surrounding communities police departments. Can't have Seattle transfer their bad cops to the suburbs.

78

Left wing pablum.

79

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