-Whose city hall? !
-Our city hall!
-Whose city hall? !
-Our city hall!
-This is what Seattle's autonomous zone
looked like as protests
against police brutality gripped the city.
Autonomous zones are temporary protest camps,
each with its own set of specific goals.
The protest site sprawled six blocks in a city park
located in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
-You know, initially, it was very, like, education-based
and there was free food and art.
-It was just community.
I mean, it's mentioning there weren't a bunch of restrictions.
It was between the orgs setting up and being like,
"Hey, this is what we can provide today,"
or how many days they provided it.
-CHOP, the Capitol Hill Organized Protest,
was an occupation that followed a week of high tensions
between Black Lives Matter protestors
and the Seattle Police Department.
In an effort to de-escalate the situation,
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan
ordered police to abandon the East Precinct.
-There was a conflict with police,
and they basically flooded that area with tear gas
and then they ceded the precinct to protestors.
And then it was just this organic thing
that kind of sprung up.
It was a pretty leaderless, organic occurrence.
-Black lives matter! -Black lives matter!
-The creation of this police-free zone
was heavily criticized by Republicans and President Trump,
who threatened to take it back from protestors.
-And you have a governor that doesn't do a damn thing about it
and you have a mayor that doesn't know she's alive.
She's talking about it's gonna be a love fest this summer.
Now, if they don't do the job, I'll do the job.
-The mostly peaceful occupation became a flash point
in the national debate over police brutality
and the funding of police departments.
Autonomous zones have been used
as a protest tactic throughout history.
More than a century ago, in 1871,
the Paris Commune took place in protest
of Napoleon's unpopular leadership in France.
The people of Free Derry in Northern Ireland
also used this method in 1969, when they banded together
with demands of ending discrimination
against the Irish Catholic community.
And in a definitive recent example,
Occupy Wall Street took over the Financial District
of New York City in 2011,
with protestors demanding economic equality.
-I think if you look throughout the history
of the labor movement
and also other movements like civil-rights
and immigrant-rights movements, you can see that occupations
as a tactic play an important role
in developing a larger movement.
I wouldn't say that occupation by itself will be enough,
and I think a lot of people understand
through their own experience of building occupations
like the Capitol Hill Organized Protest
or the Occupy movement in 2011
that the occupation is a very bold and courageous tactic
and it really is a dramatic way in which to inspire people.
-Black lives matter! -Whose lives matter?
-Black lives matter! -Mayor Durkan is proposing
that $200 million of taxpayer money should be spent
on constructing a new police precinct in northern Seattle.
The CHOP protestors demanded a 50%
defunding of the police department,
along with the redistribution of funds to community services
and reparations to victims of police violence.
The group also had goals for the actual area they were occupying.
They aim to create a safe haven for black, brown,
and homeless communities during unrest
and set out to educate people joining the movement
on how to better organize and develop concrete
demands to present to government.
-There was a bunch of resources that were collected
just from community orgs,
and so people were able to get some healthcare, food,
resources without having to go, you know, jump through hoops,
and it was a consistent place.
I think CHOP was very much something about community,
and it was continuing to be about community.
The people who were unhoused who were there,
the people I've spoken with, have demonstrated, you know,
"Hey, there was a place where we could get free resources."
And there's some accountability communities when --
Like, people suffering from mental illness --
like, they literally just need a safe space to be.
-Overly aggressive, zealous, egotistical greed and --
-My favorite part about CHOP was all the community teachings.
I think the younger -- like, Millennials,
Gen Z maybe sometimes overlook,
but when political education was being emphasized at CHOP,
it was something that we found very valuable.
A lot of people don't know the ins and outs and power mapping
and who are the stakeholders, who are the gatekeepers
making these decisions, teaching people that --
Yeah, I think targeting the mayor,
targeting the police chief is a good thing,
but do you know who controls the budget in the city?
-Please allow us to get fire into the area
to provide the need.
-But on June 20th,
12 days after police left the East Precinct,
law enforcement returned after a shooting inside the protest site
killed 19-year-old Horace Lorenzo Anderson.
The incident sparked a debate about whether protestors
could manage public safety.
The mayor declared a public emergency
and ordered police to dismantle the zone on July 1st.
-Look, this is also a reminder that,
while occupations are an important tactic,
we also cannot hope to create a utopia after CHOP.
It's also showing that, by itself,
it will not be able to accomplish much
unless it also politicizes itself
to winning further demands.
And that's not to imply they are not already doing that.
The movement is already doing that,
but that's the part of the process,
figuring that out, that we have to go beyond that.
-The people behind CHOP inspired others
around the country to follow suit.
Cities like Portland, Asheville, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.
C.
, have seen protestors attempting
to create autonomous zones in their neighborhoods,
but they have been short-lived.
As for Seattle, protestors are still sticking
to their list of demands.
-We believe that even though CHOP
is maybe not physically there anymore,
we're not gonna stop until the demands are met.