Can I just go in? Thank you.
You are all part of this! We matter!
Black lives matter!
Hey everyone it's Erik with "The Crew".
We're here in Seattle.
we've been around the world to the Xinjiang autonomous region of China, to
Palestine, Kashmir-Jammu, up against the Chinese-Kazakh border, up against the
Russian border, in a lot of regions that are ambiguous in how they geographically
defined themselves and politically define themselves. Today we're gonna go
into our own hometown of Seattle and check out the Capitol Hill Autonomous
zone and see what that really does mean from a geopolitical standpoint as well
as a political and movement standpoint with black lives matter
I'm here with Kate Edwards who is our geopolitical advisor but you could tell
us more about that. Yes, so I've been working as a geographer
and cartographer in the IT field and in videogames for over 30 years now and
basically I study sovereignty I study the reason why people create countries
and why they are able to have a country and what gives them the right to declare
sovereignty and all those fun issues. I think it's an amazing
social experiment. What I think is going on is that people are uniting... Seattle is
different than any other city and I've ever been to
people are uniting on point that is telling everyone that people can unite
and not be divided by something. What it looks like from the outside would appear
as some media outlets have been reporting that this is like some kind of
autonomous state that's been formed within Washington State within the
United States of America. When in fact we don't really know what
this is. We're not succeeding from the United States, we're not claiming to be
separate. Uh, what we are, we are holding an area just to send a message and people
are listening. It's a combination of several movements in response to a lot
of the social injustice that has happened in recent times and I think it
reached a breaking point here in Seattle, which is not too unlike the kind of
insurgencies and freedom movements and independence movements that we've seen
all around the world throughout the centuries, including a lot that are
happening today. From time to time we have the factions but right now in this
place is not occupied by any organizations right now. This place is just the
people. I mean there was some intentionality behind it, like there was
some like collective desire that if we had the chance it would be great to
have our own country, or territory but usually the effort to
actually get it started is pretty accidental or serendipitous. I know it
says the Capitol Hill Autonomous Region and I know no..I don't know who came up with that.
No one's leaving the US but you are definitely trying to show it an example
of something different. Right, that's our biggest... that's our
biggest thing. We're autonomous in the fact that we aren't being governed by the
police. We're trying to show people that we can actually police ourselves.
Because with the SPD the all the NYP, all the police
departments is a little bit too much mentality coming on when they come in to
intervene and police our situations. What happens in the group thought that all of
a sudden they go with it rather than go home. Well typically there's some kind of
catalyst moment, you know whether there and it typically has to do with the use
of force or lack thereof. So like in this case you have the East
precinct the Seattle Police Department and the police on orders from the city
or councilor whoever basically decided to withdraw from the precinct in the
area and of course once the police withdrew you basically had a vacuum of
power. Then who can actually controls the zone and I think that was the moment
that was the catalyst moment when people seized on it and said in the emotion of
the moment and then that kind of fervent desire, especially the kind of anti-cop
sentiment that has been boiling over because of all the social, you know
injustice issues that have been highlighted recently, people felt like
this was the perfect moment to basically take the step.
We're gonna take you into the Capitol Hill autonomous zone and go through the
front entry gate. They've said that they've got this cordoned off and
you've got to have an entry but I don't think you do I think it's just keeping
the bad elements out. Thank you. So they're monitoring who comes in and who
is able to come in and out to a degree. It doesn't seem to be a need for like
any kind of pass or ID like people are saying. You see people with radios on
like behind me the guy with the radio that sort of thing.
They're probably communicating in case something bad happens. But, these are the
police barriers that were set up by the police and then left and abandoned.
Essentially they're borders here and this is the main forum in here of which
you're having all kinds of people talk from different indigenous groups and
Black Lives Matter...
I'm trying my hardest, I'm trying my damn hardest to get as many people, to get as many
organizations that I know of to come together and work on the same thing.
What we are doing with the Democratic socialists of America is showing up
and showing solidarity with the black and organizations that have been doing abolition work for a very long time.
Really put pressure on elected officials to respond to what
the people are requesting. It's really people reclaiming public space where you
know a space where they can feel safe where they can be in community and then
don't have to deal with the threat of state violence. I've never seen
a cop intervene and in a situation became better. You know I've been beat up by cops. I've had cops
pull guns out on me for driving my own car. A lot of people don't trust the
police anymore especially after our weeks of
conflict. So we've kind of taken it upon ourselves to make sure things aren't
getting too violent or too crazy. They started in the front right and there were
like Trump supporters whatever. Which hey look I don't agree with anything they
had to say it all I don't like them that much but hey life is life and as
Americans your like you're allowed to have an opinion. The problem is that their
opinion is insighting rioting. We have been seeing some far-right movement.
Everyone's welcome as long as they're welcome with us. We are keeping an eye on
the situation they have open carry guns on them so they're coming mostly to
intimidate us. We do have a group with us that is a gun club. They're not open
carrying like you'd see on the police they have concealed firearms. But they
only have those in case of someone decides to open fire on us.
Everyone around them. They're gonna maul the Right types. If someone trying to tackle
from the back. That's when I was like forget that. I'm gonna get in front of them.
And, I got in the middle everybody. I don't know no one. And I just say it like, I
said let them let them be the idiots that came in here being and let them
walk out the idiots they are. You give them attention that's the problem. I'm not a
leader you know what I'm saying here. I'm just a guy that shares a common idea
with everybody else. We still have law and order. If the people can be this
peaceful with each other imagine if it was organized. Okay, there's no
organization organizing any of this stuff and we just turn it into a
positive community man, where we where we can give people jobs and give children hope.
I see this as an opportunity for us to come together as a community and provide a safe place for folks
the spend the night or stay the day. People are just you know they're living and you
know occupying the space for as long as they can sustain the infrastructure.
You see the extent to the gardening that they've been doing. The idea of us being here and
occupying this space is to physically show that we
can take care of each other and that we are a caring community.
that can provide food and shelter and care for one another.
I think the garden is a perfect example of that. I mean four days ago it was just these three plots
and they were just kind of like mounds of dirt on the ground and now it's grown into a whole community.
I hope that like there isn't a divide between what's going on in front of the precinct and what's going on over here.
I see these two areas as a cohesive unit as one unified protest.
You go from the central stage, the main street the blocks that are blocked off
into this tent and garden area and then you move out here into the field which
is now beginning to be occupied itself and it's just moving and expanding. So we
don't have one solid leader. We just have a group of volunteers working together and communicating.
...still waiting for like strong leadership.
No one leads anything. The people if they do lead anything
they're not saying I'm a leader. I would like to one day see this be a permanent
installation with some proper barricades and just have this as a general Street
festival area. Our goal is to be here until our demands are met. This is a
long-term fight. It's been a long time coming and we want to you know show up
with our people our resources the most we can to support black leadership in
this moment. If we can organize quicker than it foils then it should last for a long
time, for a very long time
We've just left CHAZ the Capitol Hill autonomous region. We actually went in
here to find out what does it mean to them to have this bordered blocked-off
area and call it an autonomous region. It's been a pretty interesting
discovery. It's been really eye-opening I mean because whereas a lot of the
outside media portraying this is like some kind of you know political
insurgency or domestic terrorist or whatever it might be you know there's
always going to be flavors of you know people taking control of space and then
having to control the space and then do what they want inside that space. So you
know there's a lot of different ways that can be painted. They can be painted
as terrorism or insurgency or anything but what we're hearing this is these are
just people who want to have peace in a certain zone and basically like we
discovered is show the world an example of what it can be like without being you
know militarized by excess police and so on. Yeah and I think what's happening and
why there's the perception of it being starting to become an enclave or a
sovereign area, one they probably chose poorly on the name and I believe even
some of the people we interviewed said the name was not the best decision. But,
also whenever you cordon off an area behind a movement or multiple movements
you're gonna have to start doing things like policing the borders or what
they're doing is just making sure bad elements aren't coming in. You're gonna
have to provide infrastructure, food dispensary, medicine dispensary,
porta-potties. In a space like this you do have to create some structure to keep
it together and therefore they're kind of accidentally following into creating
of the sovereign space. Exactly, because ultimately I mean when you control space
especially with people in it you have to have all the infrastructure that you
need to support in life. As one of the people we talked
to said you know they will think about what they do next after their demands
are met. Well in order to have demands met typically when you're dealing with
like a territorial dispute you have an authoritative body within the
zone of dispute in negotiating with the authority outside the zone to basically
come to some peace agreement or treaty or something and so that I think in it
and of itself to get your demands met you have to leave it you have to
realize that you there must be some form of authority. Even if it's not authority
in the way that you know they might view it but there has to be somebody who
decides that we agree the demands have been met. Make sure and subscribe and
share and check out the other autonomous regions in places geographical places of
interest that we've been to on the YouTube channel. Thanks for watching and
thanks Kate for being here. Thank you. Cheers guys!