I'm also about that far away and walked through there last night. It felt more like a summer street fair festival. I also took a few pictures. https://photos.app.goo.gl/UN8RpwWS5TYAY5Nn7
I truly don't understand the problem here. Can you tell me what it is that makes these people dangerous and scary, but the similarly armed protestors who showed up at government buildings a month ago — or, frankly, the police — fine?
The police follow orders from their chain of command that goes up to an elected official. You can petition the elected official, occupy their building, grill them in the media, and vote them out if you convince the other citizens. For example the knee-to-the-neck move was a part of the "orders" in that it was part of standard procedure and it is now being revised and removed. Similarly the tear gas was part of the procedure and has now been suspended by the order of the mayor. This can only be done because of the chain of command.
The people with masks and weapons on the street report to no-one we know, it's either a loose anarchic group or some sort or they report to a warlord. Can you petition the warlord? Occupy their office? Vote them out? This is a regression to the medieval model of governance.
It's all fun and games when no one really disagrees about anything important, but things change for the worse when disagreements start happening. This is how communes fall - either they fail to disagree constructively or they get subjugated by a dictator who forces an agreement.
This is why we tolerate the police for a few hundred years now - on occasion they cause violence that's predictable and can be influenced. The alternative is the violence we cannot influence and that spiral out of control when the going gets tough.
> This is why we tolerate the police for a few hundred years now - on occasion they cause violence that's predictable and can be influenced.
The point of these protests is that the violence is not occasional. It is endemic, and attempts to stop it stretch back centuries. It has persisted across the country, under both progressive and conservative politicians, despite many, many attempts to eliminate it.
If the violent system we have has successfully resisted change and accountability for hundreds of years, how is this a regression?
> Has the level of police violence over the years gotten worse, gotten better, or stayed roughly the same?
I understand why some people’s initial instinct is to believe this is a new problem, but groups have been desperately trying to get people’s attention about police violence for decades.
Rodney King was nearly 30 years ago. And people were crying for help long before that.
I knew there was a problem before, but seeing things unfold the last week made it clear, this is a much more widespread and a significantly deeper issue than most people realized.
Even with all of that said, I think we would be silly to imply that abuse has to happen for a significant amount of time before it’s justifiable for someone to demand it stop.
A question – is the problem with police, or is the problem with US police specifically? Do we have the same problem with police in other countries? Canadian police? UK police? Police in EU countries?
If the US police have this problem and other (wealthy democratic) countries don't – or even if comparable countries have the problem too, just not quite as bad as the US has it – what makes US police different?
Racism and racial inequality. Yes, that's very real, but don't think for a moment other countries don't have that problem too – they do. But yes, historically speaking, the US was very much an outlier of extreme racism – few other countries ever had anything comparable to "Jim Crow laws", and the most obvious comparators (apartheid in South Africa and the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany) are not what the US really wants to be compared to. On the other hand, my personal impression is that contemporary Americans are (on average) actually much more highly committed to anti-racism than people in most other countries are.
Could there be other relevant factors causing problems unique to US police? I think, everyone is (quite rightly) focused on the racial inequality issue, but could there be other causes which might be less deeply entrenched and quicker to fix? Easy short-term wins?
(My thought: US has more independent law enforcement agencies than any other country on earth – force all the smaller ones to merge – bigger police forces tend to have a more professional culture, and a smaller number of big police forces is easier for the media/NGOs/etc to hold to account than a larger number of small ones.)
As regards the Canadian police (especially, but not limited to the RCMP) they are no angels. Especially if you are indigenous/autochthonous. And that's because they are fulfilling the function for which they were created: taking land and living away from some people. A quick google on the history of the RCMP, their recent shoot-to-kill policies at indigenous roadblocks, the colonial/imperial origins will put Justin Trudeau's hypocritical taking a knee into perspective.
If you really want to feel sick read-up on the Highway of Tears and the systematic brutalization of indigenous women by Canadian society.
In the US it is believed the opposite - more local power structures are easier to influence through local elections. It may not be a huge problem on the scale of Portugal, but as countries get larger things get worse. Imagine the entire EU having one police force - how do you go about changing anything? In the US you can run for mayor or City Council, much more direct connection.
Police are safer than cars, by an order of magnitude.
The only violence I’ve seen from police that doesn’t seem like an anomaly is violence that protestors incited by starting a conflict with the police.
So, empirically, it seems like the violence is occasional except when you go asking for it and the protestors just have a problem with authority and society at large.
It’s why their complaints are big on individual sob stories but lacking statistics to back them up.
For whom and per...what? Encounter? Mile traveled with them?
> The only violence I’ve seen from police that doesn’t seem like an anomaly is violence that protestors incited by starting a conflict with the police.
That suggests to me that either your perception of provocation or of anomaly is skewed (or that “anomaly” is used in the software sense of “behavior out of line with spec” rather than the more general sense of “behavior out of line with what is normal”.)
> So, empirically,
You just recounted what is, by the terms used, your subjective impression, and termed your conclusion built on that (which go far beyond what is justified even if that impression was undisputed fact) “empirical”.
I believe the issue today is that the police are causing violence against the people with little power in our political system. To those people the distinction you are making is without a difference.
I feel like you're taking my reply out of context. Specifically I was addressing this questions:
> Can you tell me what it is that makes these people dangerous and scary, but the similarly armed protestors who showed up at government buildings a month ago — or, frankly, the police — fine?
and explaining why replacing police with warlords is not progress.
Are some classes of people unable to influence the system? I readily agree with that. Are we making our society better by replacing police with warlords or anarchists? I argue not.
It’s bizarrely contradictory to use democracy to decrease the accountability of elected officials, because no matter how bad the supposedly democratic government is, you can always just say it’s the public’s fault for not voting good enough or hard enough.
On the contrary, I think if a government claims to be democratic, then they are accountable for aligning their policies and outcomes with what the public wants. A democratic government should be actually accountable to the public.
People aren't just scared of the idea of armed police, they're afraid of police departments who have a history of getting away with murder. John Brown Gun Club and Redneck Revolt don't have that history.
There were also rumours of proud boys and other far-right groups attacking CHAZ. It's understandable that people would be more comfortable with vocally anti-fascist gun clubs defending them than the police, who often treat the far-right as friends.
It’s possible you were downvoted without being answered because it’s trivial to Google “Proud Boys”. Here, I’ve just done it for you and here’s the first link: the Wikipedia page on the group —- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Boys
What makes these people dangerous and scary is that they're carrying dangerous and scary weapons. The flak jackets and face masks aren't making it any less scary either.
Personally, I'm not afraid of the police, of protesters, of armed militias, etc. I'm afraid of people with guns. Why does anyone carry a gun, unless they intend to use it, once some set of conditions obtain? I don't want to be around people like that, and I really don't want to live in places where they go around on public streets like this.
I think of it like nuclear weapons: it'd be great if they didn't exist at all, but if they do exist and are stockpiled by people who want to hurt us, then the only responsible action is to arm ourselves in self-defense.
In other words:
> An unarmed people are slaves or are subject to slavery at any given moment.
That's MAD, right? Mutually Assured Destruction. Well, that is the logic of a species that has gone kookoo bonkers bannanas bongos mad and thinks that "let's all threaten each other with total anihilation" is "rational". Why is it so hard to agree to not destroy each other needlessly instead?
Again, I don't think that we should threaten each other with total annihilation, but if someone is threatening you and ignoring your requests that they stop threatening violence what other avenues do you have? Fight or flight.
If given the option to run away, you should absolutely do so -- but that shouldn't stop you from learning self-defense in case the 'flight' option isn't available.
We shouldn't have guns, but I don't think that we should disarm ourselves unless everyone else agrees to disarm themselves as well.
For some people it feels dangerous and scary because they're on the other side
For other people it feels dangerous and scary because rhetoric about "abandoned by the authorities" and "siezed by anarchists" alongside an unofficial militia sounds like the state's monopoly on violence being usurped.
I spent a lot of time in combat zones with the Army, where everybody is required to carry a loaded weapon at all times, and actually, in terms of petty crime, squabbles and victimization, I’ve never felt safer. If there’s only a few people with guns, however, signs of emotional instability make me very nervous.
Because these people have claimed territory and held themselves out as challenging the sovereignty of the United States. So the implication is pretty clear, that the guns are there as a show of that sovereignty. Are they serious about using them? Who knows.
Challenging the authority of the police department is not anywhere close to "challenging the sovereignty of the United States". No new state is being proposed, no old state is being dissolved. The people (in whom the power of sovereignty resides in the United States) are merely promoting policy change. Do you think if the U.S. Army marched on the CHAZ that these people would fight them? Do you think there's any chance that they could win? Where is the challenge?
So to recap, these people know that if the US national guard (not the army) marched on them they’d lose, so then what is the purpose of the guns? Shoot civilians? Shoot protestors? Who is getting shot by these weapons? If nobody then why are they there? What law(s) give them the right to enforce the law on their own?
"There are no armed guards", "It felt more like a summer street fair festival" picture of armed guards with semi-automatic rifles "Why do you think this is notable?"
I expect that someone with an assault weapon and what looks like a bullet proof vest is scary for quite a lot of people. And that's notable in the sense that is goes against the idea of "a peaceful event similar to a music festival" (paraphrasing).
That's just a plate carrier, with no plates in it. It won't stop a bullet, definitely not a rifle round. Maybe he has some soft armor jammed in there but doubtful based on the rest of his "I bought this from the local gunstore 3 days ago setup."
Yes, you're correct and it's a good clarification. Thanks. The rifle in this photo is definitely purchased and would've been subject to the waiting period you mention.
I was being a being a bit sarcastic about his gear being brand new and forgot about the relatively new laws as part of my joke. :)
This is the point of the Second Amendment: for when people feel safer with random dudes in bulletproof vests and AR-15s providing security than they do with the police.
Especially the "free spech"-debates and their "diversity" of opinion. I just imagine how it must feel living there for years and not being 100%-OK with your neighbourhood becoming a "summer street fair".
This section of town is normally the busiest part of the Seattle nightlife. They didn't just turn some random residential block into Coachella.
It's right by where the Capitol Hill block party is run, legally and with the city's blessing, every year. That's a major corporate event with _significantly_ more powerful sound systems.
I was referring to the "block party" feeling of European "autonomous zones", i.e. in variaous European cities like Hamburg, Berlin, Kopenhagen, Barcelona, …, where Antifa/Anarchists/Far-Left "took over" an area/building, with city-officials telling the police to back-off, which created "never ending block-parties".
Growing up there, seeing that it was always the same no matter which city or country, was the best vaccine against their school of thought.
This is going to come to either an immediate or tragic end when someone inside this zone needs the police to come save them. Either the police will tear down the fences and fight whoever they must to rescue this person, or the mayor will order them to stand down and an American is left to fend for himself so that a politician's agenda can be advanced.
There aren't any fences, and the police are currently operating in the CHAS like normal.
From https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/06/11/43892640/busines...:
"And get this—the police are still in the neighborhood, doing routine police stuff. Last night I watched two cops deal with a person who had passed out on Broadway. They prodded her and asked “you wanna go to detox?” until medical professionals arrived. (Obviously, we should be funding social workers to take care of these kinds of problems instead of cops!)"
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaQyClgU4AEJnWf?format=jpg&name=...
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaQyCmMUEAEn_1o?format=jpg&name=...
I've not before seen a summer street festival where armed militias wearing bulletproof vests patrol the streets.