So, the West Coast version of the Trump administration?
And I’ve been told by people who actually live in or around the area that the police and/or media are exaggerating or lying with those claims, so take it as you will.
My daughters have been going every day. It’s pretty much a big picnic, lots of families, old people, etc. The graffiti is being turned into murals.
You can pull up SnapChat and look for the map of Seattle. Pull up Cal Anderson Park realtime video postings.
The only time weapons were involved was when rumors were spread that right-wingers were coming with assault weapons. That ended awhile ago.
Lots of misinformation out there - here’s a correction in the Seattle Times today:
Note that Andy Ngo, currently of the Post Millennial, where this report was put forth, is a discredited right-wing agitator well known for faked videos.
I expect Trump to decant a few vat-grown ninjas to take care of things. Leave it to him to declare a thumb war.
For what it’s worth, a local station that spent 6 hours inside the zone saw no checkpoints or weapons. And note the officer making the accusations refused to answer any questions.
The Seattle Police Department is now walking back its extortion allegations. From the Seattle Times’ protest coverage blog:
^^ Pssst - see post #24…
This is a photo of what seems to be an armed checkpoint, something which I believe is against the law. The left needs to stop making excuses for this stuff. There are a lot of armed people in the US, all over the political spectrum. If even a tiny fraction starts taking the law into their own hands there will be chaos. What happens for example if anti-abortion extremists create an “autonomous zone” around an abortion clinic?
Excuses for what, a law-abiding gun owner exercising his 2nd Amendment rights? An American Citizen using his rights to protect his property and neighbors from government tyranny?
If you don’t like the idea of Americans putting on body armor and walking the streets with semi-automatic rifles, I could support laws to prevent that from happening.
There are very fine people on both sides, OK? LIBERATE CAPITAL HILL!
You can walk around with a gun in an open carry state. You can’t set up an armed checkpoint.
I’m sorry, I thought the 2nd A was intended as a check for government tyranny rather than the right to decorate yourself during your oppression.
Good to know.
So if that’s true, why not just let them be? You’ll be proven right for once.
I’m willing to run that experiment. Are you?
And that’s a good lesson about real “fake news”. Bullshit tends to fall apart when you look at it.
What in that photo constitutes a “checkpoint”? It’s a photo of a guy holding a rifle. He’s not questioning anyone, checking papers, or any such things. The people around him all seem to be just chilling out. There’s no barriers or fences, nothing that you’d use at an actual checkpoint. It’s just some guy standing in the street.
Correction: it shows a guy with a rifle leaning on a car. We don’t know what he’s doing or what it means.
Anyway, I don’t recall all this hand-wringing when actual mobs of open-carry nuts protested the COVID lockdown on the steps of actual capitol buildings.
IF we believe the reports from the Seattle autonomous zone, no businesses are being disrupted or impeded. Residents are only occupying their own property, people are free to come and go. Life is going on as normal, except the community is policing itself. This may change at some point, but it seems fine for now.
Flip the narrative on its head and think about it… if a certain zone of people is eligible for city/state police coverage, but has expressed that they don’t want it, and they never call 911 for crime assistance, what business do the police have there?
It seems like some people are mainly disturbed by the fact that the police are not free to go where they want and do whatever they want. That’s very telling.
The caption says he is working security at an entrance and the picture is certainly consistent with that. There are actually anecdotal reports of businesses being harassed for money; the police have only said that there are no “formal reports”. It’s hard to see how it is even possible to file formal reports given that the police are not allowed in.
These are public streets. Of course the police should be free to go there.
I don’t know what you mean by the “community” policing itself. There are a bunch of armed people doing the policing. How do you know they represent the community?
People are free to leave the area and go to any other police station in the city to file a formal complaint.
Ask yourself the same question of the other bunch of armed people who were “representing the community” so well that the people they were policing threatened to burn down their base of operations and posted armed guards to keep them away.
We’ve posted twice articles that no business owner could be found that made these claims, and if anything many of them are backing the protest. If you don’t want to accept accounts of people actually in the zone, what will you accept.
Again do you have any evidence that those who threatened to burn down the station represent the “people”. Let me give you some basic truths about life which you perhaps are not yet aware of. Just because a group call itself “antifa” doesn’t make it anti-fascist. Just because a bunch of armed thugs say they represent the people doesn’t mean they do. Just because a country calls itself the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea doesn’t mean it’s democratic.
BTW here is the Seattle police chief:
So apparently there are crimes being committed which the police has not been able to respond to.
I don’t know what should be done, but ideally it should happen after Sean Hannity’s aneurysm.