Multiple arrests made, Seattle Police declare Capitol Hill protest a riot
KOMO said:
A group of more than 1,000 protesters gathered on the campus of Seattle Central College in Capitol Hill around 1 p.m. Saturday in support of Portland protesters.[...]A demonstrator threw some sort of incendiary device into a window of a construction trailer at the youth jail on East Jefferson Street and 12th Avenue, causing the trailer to catch on fire.
Seattle Fire says a total of five trailers caught on fire. Police say they have received reports of groups breaking out windows at businesses along 12th avenue as well as windows of vehicles and a King County court facility.
Arson and looting. Not good for the future of Seattle. Would you want to start a business in a city where radicals routinely break windows of businesses just because they are upset about something or other?
Police needs to be arresting a lot more people, and even more importantly, prosecutors need to actually prosecute them instead of letting them go. Also, Seattle's ban on tear gas is hamstringing police ability for riot control.
Mayor Jenny is a weak mayor not willing to stand up to these left-wing bullies!
Considering the
Trump Crime Family's determination to incite and if necessary, initiate violence including property destruction, and the naked unevidenced assertion that it is "demonstrators" throwing incendiary devices, I strongly suspect that no such thing is occurring.
The link says: "The protests were largely peaceful for much of the day before
a group started hurling rocks and explosives".
So ... was "a group" arrested, or did "a group" somehow conveniently escape?
I'd sure like to see "a group" brought to account, and hear the whole story of why "a group" would set off a violent confrontation.
Here's a report from someone on the front lines of Trump's manufactured battle:
"I joined the wall of moms at the protests at the Portland justice center and the federal courthouse last night. I made sure to talk with some Black and brown organizers before I went, to check that they didn’t feel that us middle-aged, mostly-white ladies were taking away from the activists who have literally been there every night for 53 nights (many of whom are moms themselves, it’s worth noting). Everyone assured me there was nothing but love for the moms.
Except from law enforcement. The feds tear gassed us without warning, while they hid inside the comfort of their federal property. Once we got gassed and were trying to leave, they threw flash bangs, pepper balls, and tear gas cannisters at us (including expired ones- a friend kept the empty. In case you don’t know— I didn’t—expired tear gas can convert to cyanide). I could barely see the lines of unidentifiable men in camouflaged army fatigues approaching the crowd through a thick layer of smoke.
Each corner we tried to calmly exit by, there were more hazy goons throwing more tear gas, pepper spray and flash bangs. A friend I was with shouted, “I don’t like this way!” as we waded through a cloud of gas. But when we turned around, we saw every other way out only had more.
These are not your everyday cops in riot gear, holding a line, whose faces you can see and whose humanity you can at least imagine. I know that PPB has done all the same messed up shit and is working with the feds, but being attacked by nameless, faceless, camo-clad agents of war who only appear in a cloud of smoke and gas feels different.
They were not dispersing the crowd, they were punishing us.
I am proud to say that last night’s protest was one of the biggest since George Floyd’s murder. PPB and now federal agents try to quell the protests, to punish the protestors into submission. But the people only come back stronger, in larger groups.
Please don’t buy the media and right-wing hype trying to cast protestors in a negative light. The worst that protestors have done is vandalize some property— primarily property that represents systemic injustices against Black and brown folks. And please don’t buy into the good protestor/bad protestor trope, or throw your respectability politics at the activists who are in the struggle. When people are literally fighting for Black lives, don’t police how exactly they do it. They get enough of that from the police and now the feds. Those are the only people who are being violent; those are the only people who deserve your scorn.
Being a respectable middle-aged mom did not keep me from being tear-gassed. Being respectable does not save Black lives. In the words of Assata Shakur, “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.”
