Protesters entrenched in a Seattle neighborhood brace themselves for a police attack they believe is imminent, demonstrating the lack of common leadership and agenda that has plagued the enterprise from the onset
SEATTLE (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd June, 2020) Protesters entrenched in a Seattle neighborhood brace themselves for a police attack they believe is imminent, demonstrating the lack of common leadership and agenda that has plagued the enterprise from the onset.
After the city mayor, Jenny Durkan, in an abrupt turnaround announced she would reclaim the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) area with an abandoned police precinct in the middle, an uncontested rumor spread among the activists that police are coming tonight with full force.
After heated debates on further tactics some were seen peacefully leaving the grounds, others marched away with an apparent intention to block highways, those who opted to stay practice forming a human chain around the precinct and reinforce barricades.
"We are making history here. If they come, we mobilize as one," an African American man with two guns in holsters convinced a crowd of white leftists and black human rights activists, some already in helmets and gas masks. "We will act like they act to us, but please no violence."
The rest of the speakers advised "go home before it gets too hot," "sit in peacefully," or "people need to march."
Several women tried to tear down placards and paintings from the walls of the precinct in an apparent gesture of compliance with the authorities, others interfered and reinstated memorable decorations.
A veteran of protests hastily lectured white teenagers sitting on a pavement nearby how to behave in case of a police detention and made the audience write a lawyer's phone number on their arms. Many stay in tents set up along the edge of the baseball field and in an adjacent public park, also parts of the CHOP territory.
"Just to clarify those who left on the march to create more disruption in the city will return here to the precinct to protect it.
"I do agree there is a lack of consensus. That's a funny thing about all revolutions- it looks different in everyone's eyes. But one thing that everyone can agree with is that justice for black peoples America is something that is worth putting our lives on the line," a protest leader David Lewis tells Sputnik.
His personal recommendation is abandon the precinct and "continue disruptions in other ways to force the change."
"It's simply a place," he says. "That said there is quite a large amount of people who believe that this precinct is a symbol and they are willing to put their lives on the line to protect it. Because of that I will stand with them."
Lewis appears to be unaware of mayor's explanations that she would prefer a negotiated solution to a stand-off and will try to reach out to the CHOP.
"We don't have a specific date by which I can promise you it's all going to be resolved, but we will continue to work with our community-based partners and the community black-led organizations to let them first make sure they can get in and talk to the people who are there... and call upon them to exercise their protests in a different way and in a different place," Durkan said at a press briefing earlier.
The Seattle police chief, Carmen Best, said that they would seek greater authorities to use force constrained by local court's order. A crackdown on CHOP was announced after after two shootings in the area or its immediate vicinity over the weekend which left one dead and two wounded.
"The shootings, which are all very murky, have essentially choked up the movement. People were shot outside the territory, but if everything is piled up, it allows fake news that all here are villains who play the guitar during the day and chase passers-by at night to prevail - with the support of the municipality," Russian-speaking immigrant Mariana Markova tells Sputnik.
She says it is her seventh visit to CHOP. "What was happening so far was a unique experiment that I supported with all my heart.
A leaderless movement with young people protesting but doing it in most unusual ways, I really liked it," Markova said.
"Half of these people are operatives," somebody from the crowd shouts.
Fear makes activists suspicious and they start demanding that journalists and bloggers stop filming and making photos. "Police use them to hunt us down," explains a young demonstrator after making a reporter delete several pictures.
As hours pass and police never turns up, tensions visibly subside and a makeshift band starts playing in front of the barricades. Music stops abruptly when an activist punches in the face and knocks to the ground another protester for apparently trying to set ablaze an umbrella. "No violence," the attacker shouts as volunteer medics treat the injured.
