zlacker

>>obilgi+(OP)
Seattle police vacated the east precinct, fully expecting protesters to burn it down. Instead, the protesters set up an open zone, compiled a set of demands, and from all accounts set up something cool and unique.

Here's hoping it sustains itself for a while.

>>Pfhrea+B5
No, not even remotely "by all accounts". There are plenty of accounts that isn't "cool and unique" but is just another place ruled by violent thugs: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/h077uv/raz_simone_...

I'm not passing judgment yet since the days are young and the political bias on the ground is thick in both directions. But it is definitely not "by all accounts".

But my personal bias on the table is that yeah, trading police that were imperfectly constrained by the system for new police utterly and entirely unconstrained by the system is probably not going to go well. The real "fun" will start when Raz's faction pisses off enough people to form a violent counterfaction and you get a gang war, so give it a bit. It takes time for these things to develop. Let the honeymoon wear off and have this place showing a functioning system for, oh, say, at least a month before declaring victory. Not that you declared victory, I'm just saying, I recommend against getting too invested in this.

It's not as if "a place that has no police" is some shocking new experiment that has never been run before; you've got plenty of places you can look out in the world to see what happens next. It's not a difficult-to-predict progression.

>>jerf+p6
A handful of incidents like these are being distorted and blown up by media that treats cop lies uncritically. In comparison, just a few nights ago, cops were beating people and filling the area with tear gas (banned under geneva convention) and it was seeping into residential homes so badly that even nextdoor is anti-police in that area now.

>>0x262d+Qz1
I find it hard to take comments seriously when they make statements that just don't accord with reality.

The media treats cops according to what's best for the story. Lately, that involves being extremely critical of them. In other times when we aren't in the midst of a pandemic, mass unemployment and then nationwide protests, and the story is that the cops shot a criminal suspect, they use euphemisms like "officer-involved shooting." The media narrative today is extremely hostile to police.

So when I see "only a handful of incidents," I feel there might be a bit of an agenda behind that. Knocking down the World Trade Center twin towers and a side of the Pentagon were only a "handful of incidents," too. Not to mention the number of unarmed black people shot by police last year (nine total). All of those are a disgrace, but the sheer number of atrocities that happen are irrelevant to how unjust or outrageous the atrocities might be.