July 3 2024 Farewell to the Seattle Autonomous Zone, Four Years Ago Today
This day as I return to my place of refuge, a cottage on a hill which I call Dollhouse Park, for our Fourth of July celebrations in honor of the founding of America as a free society of equals, a Revolution in which my direct ancestors Henry Lale and his wife Me Shekin Ta Withe (White Painted Dove) of the Shawnee both fought, these past days having made mischief for tyrants in Hong Kong and last year founded the Marseille Autonomous Zone and its networks of alliance in liberation struggle to reclaim the ideals of the French Revolution of 1790 as established by the heroic Robespierre, and of the French Resistance of the Second World War in which I claim membership through the Oath of the Resistance given to me by Jean Genet in Beirut 1982, I dream of the glorious Seattle Autonomous Zone, first of a global system of such frontiers of human being and imagination beyond all laws and all limits as a United Humankind.
Such are my hopes and dreams for our possibilities of becoming human. Though we face myriads of existential threats both to our species and to our civilization as democracy and the Rights of Man, we may yet emerge from the darkness of our history and the atavisms of instinct which bind us to the Wagnerian Ring of fear, power, and force as systems of addiction, tyranny, commodification, falsification, and dehumanization.
May we dream better futures than we have the past, whose legacies of unequal power we drag behind ourselves like an invisible reptilian tail.
To win such a future, we need not only our dreams as poetic vision, reimagination, and transformation; we must resist subjugation by carceral states of force and control where and whenever they may arise and in whatever forms.
I believe this capacity to refuse to submit lives within us all as a defining quality of being human, and as an inherent power which cannot be taken from us.
We may each of us say with Rachel Platten in her wonderful Fight Song; “I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me.”
“Like a small boat on the ocean
Sending big waves into motion
Like how a single word
Can make a heart open
I might only have one match
But I can make an explosion
And all those things I didn't say
Wrecking balls inside my brain
I will scream them loud tonight
Can you hear my voice?
This time this is my fight song
Take back my life song
Prove I'm alright song
My power's turned on
Starting right now I'll be strong
I'll play my fight song
And I don't really care
If nobody else believes
'Cause I've still got
A lot of fight left in me
Losing friends and I'm chasing sleep
Everybody's worried about me
In too deep they say I'm in too deep
And it's been two years
I miss my home
But there's a fire burning in my bones
I still believe, yeah I still believe
And all those things I didn't say
Wrecking balls inside my brain
I will scream them loud tonight
Can you hear my voice?
This time this is my fight song
Take back my life song
Prove I'm alright song
My power's turned on
Starting right now I'll be strong
I'll play my fight song
And I don't really care
If nobody else believes
'Cause I've still got
A lot of fight left in me
A lot of fight left In me
Like a small boat on the ocean
Sending big waves into motion
Like how a single word
Can make a heart open
I might only have one match
But I can make an explosion
This is my fight song
Take back my life song
Prove I'm alright song
My power's turned on
Starting right now I'll be strong
(I'll be strong)
I'll play my fight song
And I don't really care
If nobody else believes
'Cause I've still got
A lot of fight left in me
Now I've still got a lot of fight left in me”
As I wrote in my post of July 2 2020, Our Autonomous Zone is Now Everywhere; These were days of glory and of freedom, of luminous transgressions and the exaltation of the unconquerable human spirit, of truthtelling and revelation, of the performance of unauthorized identities as guerilla theatre and of communal celebrations of our diversity and the limitless possibilities of human being and meaning, of the ecstatic rapture and vision of living beyond all boundaries, in which nothing is Forbidden.
As the bureaucrats of official pomposity and obstruction return to City Hall and the minions of state terror with their sad weapons of fear and pain again set up shop in the Police Precinct, they do so chastened by the exposure of their wickedness and inhumanity and disempowered by our seizure of their domain. The people’s occupation of their citadels of power has been a magician’s trick which reveals the emptiness of their claims to own and control our lives, and like Dorothy’s exposure of the wizard as a humbug this authority cannot be reclaimed once it has been revealed as a lie.
Always pay attention to the man behind the curtain.
We have questioned, mocked, challenged, exposed, and deflated authority; we now abandon these useless and meaningless monuments of force and control in victory and in triumph, and venture forth into the world to tilt against its windmills that might be giants and liberate humankind.
Our Autonomous Zones are now everywhere.
Each of us who resists tyranny becomes a Living Autonomous Zone. The liberation of Seattle has served its purpose in demonstration of the principle of democracy as co-ownership of the state, and of its institutions as public spaces and instruments of our will, by the people. City Halls and Police Precincts are symbols of this power which we have lent the state, and that power may be reclaimed at any time they cease to represent and serve us.
When the state has lost its legitimacy through use of repressive and illegal force and control such as perpetrated against the protests for equality and racial justice, we the people must resist and reform our government as a free society of equals. In both America and throughout the world, this remains to be achieved.
Keep the dream of Liberty alive; Resist and be free.
Rachel Platten - Fight Song (Official Video)
Here are my journals of the Seattle Autonomous Zone:
June 8 2023 Anniversary of the Liberation of the Seattle Autonomous Zone and the Birth of a Global Autonomous Zones Movement
Three years ago today we launched the Seattle Autonomous Zone, among the greatest experiments in liberty the world has seen since the glorious utopias of our forbearers in history; the Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialist Party and American labor movements founded in the communes of the Seattle coast over a century ago, the Paris Commune, the First International of Bakunin, Proudhon, and Marx, and the French and American Revolutions which radically transformed the possibilities of becoming human as a free society of equals. We seized and held from those who would enslave us and their police forces of tyranny and state terror six blocks of Capitol Hill.
This epochal moment of liberation and triumph over systems of control and dehumanization is for myself shadowed today by the joy of the Indictment of Our Clown of Terror, Traitor Trump, for theft of state secrets exactly like Snowden and many others, not to expose its evils but for profit, secrets he intended to use as blackmail leverage against our nation and as self-aggrandizement props in his pathetic attempt to retain power as a king in exile, a Defining Moment of Reckoning which only just begins now, and the public celebrations of the death of Pat Robertson, fascist apologist who captured the Republican Party in 1980 and opened the door to the crimes against humanity of the Reagan era, the advent of the American Fourth Reich, and the Mayan Genocide perpetrated by his protégé Rios Montt in Guatemala as the most horrific and evil of the consequences of the capture of the state by Gideonite fundamentalist theocracy. Today my joy is made ambiguous by the death of George Winston, greatest pianist since Rachmaninoff and most innovative musician of the late twentieth century after Kitaro, whose songs speak to me of great sadness, loss, and loneliness, the terror of our nothingness and the pathology of our disconnectedness.
But here I wish to honor and balance the darkness with the beauty and transcendent joy of the birth of the Autonomous Zones in Seattle.
These were days of glory and of freedom, of luminous transgressions and the exaltation of the unconquerable human spirit, of truthtelling and revelation, of the performance of unauthorized identities as guerilla theatre and of communal celebrations of our diversity and the limitless possibilities of human being, meaning, and value, of the ecstatic rapture and vision of living beyond all boundaries, in which nothing is Forbidden.
Within a fleeting moment of joy Autonomous Zones sprang up in Washington DC encircling the White House, Portland, Minneapolis, Atlanta, New York, Austin, and throughout the fifty cities across America where the Black Lives Matter protests had taken control from the government through mass action, and then throughout the world as the powerless and the dispossessed, the silenced and the erased, all those whom Franz Fanon named the Wretched of the Earth arose in solidarity and for a glorious moment spoke to Authority with one voice, a voice that said; We refuse to submit, and we are free.
As I had printed at the time on the paper currency I distributed bearing the legend “Good for Nothing” on one side and “Good for Everything” on the reverse, with the following lines:
On the one side; “Good for Nothing; Tyranny.
Let us question, expose, mock, and challenge authority; let us incite, provoke, and disturb; let us run amok and be ungovernable.”
On the other side; “Good for Everything; Liberty.
Let us be bringers of chaos, joy, transformation, and revolution.”
So I wrote at the dawn of our Brave New World, which sought to liberate humankind from our addiction to power and our subjugation to authority and carceral states. Here I do not refer to the great novel by Aldous Huxley, dark mirror of this source, but to Miranda’s line in The Tempest; “O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in't!”
For it was a thing of beauty, for a time, until it was consumed by its reflected image, fear and force as is common to both criminals and carceral states as embodied violence, the great lie that in the absence of law and restraining force the most brutal and opportunistic becomes king. In Seattle the Autonomous Zone collapsed because it refused to seize power and misread the use of social force in revolutionary struggle as morally equivalent to the use of force in repression of dissent by those who would enslave us.
It’s a mistake Lenin could’ve warned us about, had anyone been listening, and it’s a mistake we won’t be making again. None of the other Autonomous Zones have ever been retaken by the state; the abolition of the use of social force and of formal authority as states remains our common goal, but this does not mean we surrender our universal human rights nor our solidarity and duty of care for others.
The first thing a successful revolution needs, once it has seized power and the tyrants have been cast down from their thrones, is a Committee of Public Safety like that of France in 1793 to defend the people and meet their material needs for food, medical care, and such. Second comes institutions and systems for preventing the centralization of authority as tyranny, for the leveling of unequal power as elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege, for ongoing struggle against social hierarchies and divisions and against fascisms of blood, faith, and soil. We can only abandon the social use of force to the degree we are free from its threat ourselves; this is an imposed condition of revolutionary struggle and not a moral dilemma.
Why did the Seattle Autonomous Zone, the first of many throughout the world, fall when others have not?
First because it was a seizure of territory and the police station and government buildings as symbols, which means ground that must be defended, rather than mobile and temporary zones which can be abandoned and reestablished anywhere at any time, by networks of people who are Living Autonomous Zones. As soon as you need a barricade, a checkpoint, a border of any kind, you are fighting the wrong kind of war.
And we had enemies who were immensely powerful and utterly ruthless, willing to commit any depravity to subjugate and re-enslave us through learned helplessness and terror.
Deniable assets of the Fourth Reich under the Triumvirate of Trump, Barr, and Wolf were sent against us both as infiltration agents, spies and provocateurs, and as elite counterinsurgency forces in raids and acts of random wickedness to sow confusion, mistrust, and terror, and to provoke the police, seize the narrative, and manufacture a casus belli for Occupation.
Looking back from the distance of three years, in which I and others have traveled the world establishing networks of Autonomous Zones, and being case zero of a global alliance of Autonomous Zones as a United Humankind which abandons the use of social force and a stateless successor to the United Nations and which offers a way of living together without nations or borders, without war or laws, without police or prisons, without unequal power as patriarchy or racism, without masters or slaves; as I contemplate all of this unfolding of world-historical forces and dialectical processes it occurs to me that the history of the Seattle Autonomous Zone and of the global Autonomous Zones merits being written, especially by those who lived it.
To such ends I will be sharing my journals of the time, and questioning its meaning, and I ask anyone who was there to do the same, to write of your lived experiences and share them with us all here in this public forum as a witness of history.
Memory, history, identity; are we not the stories we tell about ourselves, to ourselves and to others?
At the time of their origins on this day three years ago I was thinking of our Autonomous Zones as a globalized quest of the Merry Pranksters and others who formed the tribal elders of my childhood, especially as written in The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe’s novelization of the great trek on the bus Furthur in 1964 to enlighten humankind with Dionysian rituals of music and ecstasy through free love and LSD.
A dialectics of parallel and interdependent forces and themes is revealed in Ken Kesey’s documentary film of the iconic journey of 1964 which launched the psychedelic movement and catalyzed the whole counterculture that was to come, Magic Trip, and of the Autonomous Zones as well; the political and social mission to bring the Chaos, disrupt and destabilize order, perform change and mock authority for the purpose of delegitimation as a sacred calling in pursuit of truth, what Foucault called parrhesia in the lectures I attended in 1983 at the University of Berkeley, and the reimagination and transformation of human being, meaning, and value through poetic vision and ecstatic trance, an extension of Surrealism which appropriated its methods and iconography in the quest for transcendence through dreams and exaltation through transgression.
Here as living Autonomous Zones and bearers of visions of liberty as seeds of change we tilt at the windmills which might be giants to break the mould of man and become free and self created beings.
Magic Trip film: Ken Kesey’s documentary of the trip
Furthur: Images of the Magic Bus
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The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe
June 11 2023 Remembering the Glorious Seattle Autonomous Zone
Strange and unknown remains the Undiscovered Country, as Shakespeare called the future, for it is a thing of relative and ambiguous truths, ephemeral and in constant motion and processes of change, and limitless possibilities of becoming. “An undiscovered country whose bourne no travelers return—puzzles the will", as the line in Hamlet goes, in reference to death and what may lie beyond the limits of human being and knowing.
But it applies equally to the myriads of futures from which we must choose, shaped by our histories and systems of being human together as imposed conditions of revolutionary struggle and by our poetic vision in the reimagination and transformation of human being, meaning, and value.
The emergence of the Autonomous Zones as a spontaneous adaptation to universal conditions of unequal power and brutal repression by carceral states was in part an echo and reflection of the Occupy Movement which began in New York’s Zuccotti Park on September 17 2011; by October nearly a thousand cities in 82 nations and in 600 American communities has ongoing and sustained sister protests and Occupy movements. The Black Lives Matter movement began in July of 2013 in protest against the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, and in 2020 with the death of George Floyd ignited the Summer of Fire; some 26 million Americans joined protests in 200 cities, joined by sister protests in two thousand cities in sixty nations. The Autonomous Zones were a prodigy of the harmonic convergence of these two global movements of social justice, as shaped by influences of the #metoo antipatriarchal movement and Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future school strike and other global ecological movements.
In the Autonomous Zones global protest movements against white supremacist terror, patriarchal sexual terror, tyranny and state terror both as democracy movements and as the police abolition movement, recombined and integrated as an agenda of revolutionary struggle against systems of unequal power.
And as we brought a Reckoning for systemic evils, epigenetic trauma, and the legacies of our histories, we also sought to launch humankind on a total revisioning of our being, meaning, and value, and the reimagination and transformation of the limitless possibilities of becoming human.
Here is a journal entry of mine speaking as a witness of history to that time of revolutionary struggle and liberation; as I wrote in my post of June 11 2020, Utopia Now: Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone; Marvels and jubilation in the streets, a carnival of transgressions of the Forbidden and masquerades of possible identities and futures of becoming human, anarchy and chaos and joy, running amok and being ungovernable, and the frightening of the horses; come and dance with us, America. Come find your heart and be free.
Whosoever remains unconquered is free. For each of us who defies injustice and tyranny, who resists subjugation, dehumanization, and enslavement, who questions, mocks, and challenges authority, becomes an agent of Liberty who cannot be silenced, and who passes the torch of freedom as an uncontrollable catalyst of change to everyone with whom we interact, and thereby can never be truly defeated.
Each of us who in resistance becomes Unconquered and a bearer of Liberty are also become a Living Autonomous Zone, and this is the key to our inevitable victory. We ourselves are the power which state terror and tyranny cannot conquer.
The people of Seattle have answered brutal repression and police violence, an attempt to break the rebellion against racial injustice and hate crime enacted by the police throughout America and the world led by Trump and his white supremacist terrorists both within the police as a fifth column and operating in coordination with deniable forces like the gun-toting militias now visible everywhere, by storming the citadel of city government with waves of thousands of citizens demanding the right to life regardless of the color of our skin.
The people have seized control of six city blocks, including the police precinct and City Hall, and established the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, a name which rings with history and reflects the Paris Commune and the Italian Anarcho-Syndicalists of the 1920s, Rojava in Syria and Exarcheia in Athens, but was directly modeled on the ideals, methods, and instruments of the Occupy Movement founded in New York’s Wall Street.
Such beautiful resistance by those who will not go quietly to their deaths. To all those who tilt at windmills; I salute you.
Let us take back our government from our betrayers, and our democracy from the fascist tyranny of blood, faith, and soil which has attempted to steal our liberty and enslave us with divisions of exclusionary otherness.
When the people have reclaimed the government of which they are co-owners and this new phase of protest, a movement to occupy City Hall in defiance of tyranny, has seized every seat of power in the nation and restored democracy to America, we can begin the reforging of our society on the foundation of equality and racial justice, and of our universal human rights.
Let us join together in solidarity and restore America as a free society of equals, and liberate all the nations of the world now held captive by the Fourth Reich.
There can be but one reply to fascism and state terror; Never Again.
As written by Kate Yoder in Salon; “The year 2020 seems to be drawn straight from the plot of some discarded dystopian novel — a book that never got published because it sounded too far-fetched. Not only is there a pandemic to contend with, unemployment nearing levels last seen in the Great Depression, and nationwide protests against police brutality, but it's all happening in the same year Americans are supposed to elect a president.
Amid the chaos and tear gas, some people see a chance to scrap everything and start over, a first step toward turning their visions for a better world into reality. In Seattle, protesters in one six-block stretch of Capitol Hill, a neighborhood near downtown, have created a community-run, police-free zone, recently renamed the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, CHOP. It's a scene of masked crowds, vibrant signs and street art, a "no cop co-op" giving away food and supplies, and newly planted community gardens. In Minneapolis, volunteers turned a former Sheraton hotel into a "sanctuary" offering free food and hotel rooms — until they got evicted.
"We're seeing a new resurgence of utopianism," said Heather Alberro, an associate lecturer of politics at Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom who studies radical environmentalists and utopian thought.
Problems like climate change, the widening gap between the rich and everybody else, and racial inequality gives many the sense that they're living through one giant unprecedented crisis. And these combined disasters create "the exact conditions that give rise to all sorts of expressions" of utopian thinking, Alberro said. From broad ideas like the Green New Deal — the climate-jobs-justice package popularized by New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — to Seattle's "autonomous zone," people are offering up new plans for how the world could operate. Whether they came from literature or real-life experiments, these idealistic efforts can spur wider cultural and political change, even if they falter.
Based on President Donald Trump's tweets about Seattle's CHOP (or Fox News websites' photoshopped coverage of the protest) you'd picture pure chaos, with buildings afire and protesters running amok. The reality was more like people sitting around in a park, screening movies like "13th," and making art. It's a serious protest too, with crowds gathered for talks about racism and police brutality in front of an abandoned police precinct. The protesters' demands include abolishing the Seattle Police Department, removing cops from schools, abolishing juvenile detention, and giving reparations to victims of police violence.
"The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone #CHAZ is not a lawless wasteland of anarchist insurrection — it is a peaceful expression of our community's collective grief and their desire to build a better world," Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan tweeted last week.
The protest zone goes by many names: Originally called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ, it was later rebranded as CHOP. The barricaded area, which spans from Cal Anderson Park into nearby streets, is part campground, part block party. Tourists wander through, snapping photos of the street art.
A week earlier, protests in Cal Anderson Park, sparked by the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others, were met by police officers spraying rubber bullets, mace, and tear gas. Then, last week, the police abandoned the area, and the protesters declared it their own, turning the "Seattle Police Department" into the "Seattle People Department" with a bit of spraypaint.
The CHAZ follows a long history of anti-capitalist experiments that reimagined the way the world was run. In 1871, the people of Paris, sick of oppression, rose up to take control of their city for a two-month stint. The Paris Commune canceled debt, suspended rent, and abolished the police, filling the streets with festivals. The French government soon quashed their experiment, massacring tens of thousands of Parisians in "The Bloody Week." Even though it was short-lived, the Paris Commune inspired revolutionary movements for the next 150 years.
In 2011, Occupy Wall Street protestors took over New York City's Zuccotti Park for two months to highlight the problems of income inequality. Their encampment offered free food, lectures, books, and wide-ranging discussions. The radical movement ended up changing the way Americans talked, giving them a new vocabulary — the "99 percent" and "1 percent" — and its concerns about income inequality went on to mold the priorities of the Democratic Party.
Alberro compared Seattle's CHOP to a community of 300 environmental activists in western France who set up camp at a site earmarked for a controversial new airport starting in 2008. One of many ZADs (zones à défendre) that have sprung up in France, the community ended up being not just a place to protest the airport, but to take a stand against what protesters saw as the underlying problems — capitalism, inequality, and environmental destruction. (The government ended up shelving plans for the airport in 2018). "The point of these autonomous zones is not only to create these micro exemplars of better worlds," Alberro said, "but also to physically halt present forces of destruction" — whether that's an airport or, in the case of Capitol Hill, how police treat black people.
Seattle has a lengthy history of occupations and political demonstrations tracing back to the Seattle General Strike in the early 1900s. The Civil Rights era brought sit-ins and marches. Indigenous protesters occupied an old military fort in 1970 and negotiated with the city to get 20 acres of Discovery Park. Two years later, activists occupied an abandoned elementary school in Beacon Hill, demanding that it be turned into a community center (now El Centro de la Raza).
And it might not be a coincidence that the new protest zone appeared on the West Coast, often portrayed in literature as an "ideal place" to set up utopian communities, Alberro said. For instance, the book "Ecotopia," published in 1975 by Ernest Callenbach, depicted a green society — complete with high-speed magnetic-levitation trains! — formed when northern California, Oregon, and Washington seceded from the United States. The book went on to become a cult novel, influencing the environmental movement's focus on local food, public transportation, and renewable energy.
Ecotopia isn't exactly an ideal parallel for the current wave of protests, as its utopia was white. Callenbach envisioned a segregated society where black people opted to live in the less affluent "Soul City." Still, it's apparent that some of its other messages live on. Alberro has talked to many "radical" environmental protesters for her research, and most of them haven't read any of the green utopian books she asks about. But they repeat some of the ideas and phrases from that literature nearly "word for word" when describing the changes they want to see in the world.
Though Seattle's protest zone is focused on racial oppression, not environmental destruction, Alberro sees a similar impulse behind all these projects. "Many activists would argue that it's all part of the same struggle," she said, arguing that people can't successfully take on environmental issues without addressing racism and other socioeconomic problems. "There seems to be a cultural atmosphere that molds these different movements, even though they often don't come into contact with one another."
And in the words of those who lived it as interviewed and written by Shane Burley in ROAR and republished by Black Rose Anarchist Federation; “Over the past few weeks we have witnessed one of the largest uprisings in recent US history. The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, brought millions of people in the US and around the world out into the streets in aggressive demonstrations. In cities across the country, police precincts were set on fire, corporate stores looted, and as the police turned their sights on the protests, the numbers only grew.
In Seattle, Washington, confrontations with protesters in a gentrified part of the city known as Capitol Hill led to law enforcement’s retreat from their office. Organizers and community members advanced on the area and transformed this eight-block segment of the neighborhood into a collective space, which they soon called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ).
The CHAZ has become the focus of right-wing rage, from the media to the president, as they intimate that this is a terrorist operation controlled by brutal anarchist cells. Photos, videos, testimonies from the inside the CHAZ paint a very different picture, communicating something closer to other occupations (Occupy movement?) where people moved from simple protests to experimenting in living differently.
Hundreds of people are putting in the labor to keep things like a medical clinic, a café, concerts and speakers, a community garden, and other resources into a stable infrastructure of mutual aid. They have done so with the support of local organizations and even businesses. Now the CHAZ is hitting a point where they are building for the future, discussing differences in direction and priorities, and how they are going to navigate the negotiation between immediate reforms and more revolutionary aims.
I spoke with two organizers of the CHAZ about what drew them there, how it has been working, and where they hope to go with the project. Both are using pseudonyms, one going by Officer CHAZ (OCHAZ) and the other going by Frank Ascaso (FA), who also organizes with the Black Rose / Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation. These organizers were interviewed separately from one another and were combined here into one conversation.
We’re in one of the largest rebellions in the last fifty years. How did you get involved in the demonstrations and the autonomous project that became the CHAZ?
OCHAZ: It’s been a long road to the breaking point. George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s deaths really pushed us over the edge this time. I knew I could no longer live with myself if I remained silent and complacent. I became infused with a burning desire to take action, so I rushed to the front lines of the protest marches in Seattle at the earliest opportunity. It was the least I could do, but quite literally a step in the right direction. Everybody’s got a unique story to tell about their journey to Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), but for me, it was the ecstasy of finally taking a firm stand against systemic oppression. That feeling became such an intense high, that I never wanted to come down. I am addicted to justice, and it’s one drug that I will never give up.
FA: Networks of activists and organizers here in Seattle had been having discussions as Minneapolis and other cities had ignited in protests and riots. There’s a long history of anti-police organizing here with movements to block the expansion of a youth detention center and a so-called “police bunker,” an expansion to a police facility in the northern part of the city. So in those networks people started talking about what we could do here in solidarity with Minneapolis. So people started planning protests for that weekend. And a whole bunch of various groups, from anarchists to church and pacifist groups to the anti-police coalitions, started planning their own thing. The first weekend of protest there were a half dozen different calls to action, and that’s when the riots started here as well. So that’s when I showed up, in those early days.
How does the CHAZ coordinate with the rest of the city’s protest movement?
FA: I would say they are a piece of it, but I would not call it the center [of the movement]. This moment around Black lives is incredible and every group is taking pretty dramatic action. And I would say that is continuing. There are non-profit groups leading marches, there are church groups leading marches, there’s the anti-prison and abolition groups leading marches, and a lot of those are happening outside the space. They were happening before and they were using their own infrastructure and resources to make them happen, and that is still happening.
For example, there was recently a march of 60,000 people between two of the largest parks in Seattle, which, from what I could tell, had little connection to the CHAZ. There was also a children’s march, which seemed to have little connection to the CHAZ. That said, there are things being planned in the autonomous space. So, for example, last night (June 14) I participated in a protest that marched out of the autonomous zone, a Black Lives Matter march, to challenge the police and occupy streets elsewhere. People are planning things from the autonomous space too, but this moment is so dramatic and diverse that lots of things are happening outside of it too.
What was the process by which the zone was first opened up and established? What were the protests like before its formation?
OCHAZ: As with any social movement, it’s difficult to pinpoint an exact origin. The events leading up to the formation of CHAZ have been so surreal and chaotic at times that I’m not sure whether I’ll ever fully understand what happened to get us here. But I want it to be clear that the “Regime” [CHAZ-lingo for the Seattle Police Department] struck first. They’ve been killing us for decades. For as long as we can remember, the people of Capitol Hill have begged the City Council to clean up their mess, but they never listen. They’re too busy sucking Jeff Bezos’s dick to even glance at us. Our so-called political “leaders” will never miss a wink of sleep over the dead bodies of marginalized folks piling up in the streets, so now we’re going to give them something to really lose sleep over.
But even when we protested “the right way,” by peacefully marching, did they listen then? No. They sent their Seattle Police Department (SPD) goon squad after us, treated us like we were criminals—worse than criminals, because at least criminals get a trial. We were more like animals to them. During the march, I watched as dozens of my comrades were brutalized by riot police, simply for demanding reform and racial equity. We tried safe civil disobedience, but the “good ol’ boys” at the SPD never let us down when it comes to the level of violence we’ve come to expect from them.
FA: There had been a week and a half of steady confrontations in that space. Every day from maybe six or seven o’clock in the evening to midnight or one in the morning, pretty regular confrontations. People were pretty exhausted, actually, by the time the police withdrew from that space. Definitely, lots of people showed up that night, but a lot of folks went home early. So when the declaration of the autonomous zone came out after midnight, a lot of people were not there for the evening — I wasn’t there either.
How did the crowd take the space?
OCHAZ: There wasn’t any particular tactic or method, we just… took it. It was ours anyway, as far as we were concerned. Putting up those barriers just felt like the most natural thing we could ever do to protect ourselves. When shit hit the fan at the protest, we switched to auto-pilot, no thought required, just the pure energy of the crowd directing our concentrated motion. We moved as a unit, as if we all shared the same body and mind in the heat of that moment.
The last thing I remember was facing off against the cops down on Pine Street. Recalling the black bloc tactic, we used our bodies to create a wall, but I never expected one of them to run around and sucker-punch my good pal, Dikembe, who was standing off to the side. “Big D” wasn’t even part of our bloc, just an innocent bystander, and that was the last straw for me. I snapped. I knew the bloc needed me, but D was in trouble. I couldn’t desert him even if it meant putting my own safety at risk. I basically blacked out in rage at that point, and when I came to, I was waking up in CHAZ.
All I know is that our group had rushed the line and eventually took the East Precinct. The cops got pushed back, and our barriers went up. My boy Dikembe was injured pretty bad, but that didn’t stop him from spraying the first of many tags at the border crossing in bright bold letters for the whole world to see: “CHAZ.” To the cops, that tag was a threat to back off. To us, it meant freedom.
FA: That whole day was so weird. There had been clashes with the police every night. The mayor promised not to use tear gas, but the very next night the police used tear gas anyway. The day after that, someone got shot, and the following day the police withdrew. They made this dramatic announcement in the afternoon with the police chief saying they were going to withdraw from the East Precinct.
I think there was a lot of anxiety and confusion about what to do. There was some kind of speculation that the police were withdrawing as a set-up to have people attack the precinct and break windows or burn it down so the police would have an excuse to say how bad the protesters were. This was a rumor. That evening when people got to the space, they got right up to the building and there was hesitation about doing anything. People weren’t sure, “what should we do? Do we attack it? Do we just keep the protest in the space?” And those conversations were going on throughout that day and into the night.
Then there were rumors that Proud Boys were in the area, also totally unconfirmed and probably untrue. So then people were thinking about maybe defending the space. What if other fascists come to attack the space? And my understanding is that out of those conversations came to declare an autonomous zone.
What is the idea behind the CHAZ? What is an “autonomous zone?”
FA: Autonomous zones have a long history, likely going back to the Paris Commune in which the French government refused to defend the city against a Prussian siege, a foreign siege. The people of Paris just kind of took over the mechanisms of the city and thought “we can run this better in our own interests. It turns out we don’t need you protecting us, we can take care of ourselves perfectly fine.” And they sort of restructured the city on a radically new democratic principle, a much more directly democratic form of organization.
And since then there have been a whole series of similar popular democratic actions to reclaim space and infrastructure. To run it in the interests of people instead of the police, business or military. So I see this as part of that tradition and a part of that lineage. And one of the things that is most beautiful about this space is that it is such a clear message in this moment when police can literally not stop killing people in the streets.
This past weekend there was just another Black person killed by the police in Atlanta. The autonomous zone is saying “Hey, it turns out we actually don’t need you. We can run our neighborhoods safely without policing. We can run them in much more humane interests without policing.” That political message is pretty clear and pretty strong out of this particular occupation.
OCHAZ: CHAZ is living proof that a world without police is possible. When we say, “Defund the police,” we mean exactly what that sounds like. Cops only create more problems than they try to solve. Especially for undocumented immigrants, BIPOC, WOC, trans, queer and other marginalized communities who simply do not have the privilege of being protected when they call the police for help (or when the police are called on them by some tone-deaf “Karen,” you know the type).
For us marginalized folks, any minor interaction with the police can be a death sentence. CHAZ is the antidote to all that. Our emphasis on restoration over retribution is a major part of the guiding ethos and driving force behind CHAZ. “Autonomous” to us means autonomy from the SPD’s boot on our collective neck. We don’t need the police, because we look out for each other instead. Call it what you want: a collective, a cooperative, a commune. Above of all, CHAZ is a family.
What is day-to-day life like there right now? Is it just a protest space, or are you rebuilding everyday community structures?
FA: It’s pretty interesting because the first day after the autonomous zone was declared there was almost no infrastructure in place yet. I think the call surprised a lot of people. In the next couple of days, hundreds of people came to start and set those up. Now the space feels like a sort of city within the city. It’s got a medical station. It’s got a pretty sophisticated and abundant food distribution. It has community check-ins around disputes and disturbances. It’s got a discussion space; a café space called “the decolonial café.” A community garden, informational tents, and informational sessions with free literature, nightly film screenings and a band stand with nightly performances from different bands.
So there is a ton of activity going on there, and the space itself feels very vibrant and exciting. It does feel like a festival of resistance. And people can plug into movement spaces and have organizing conversations and plan the next action. Or they can think about how to design the garden and the purpose of a community garden, things like that. To me it’s pretty incredible.
In the first few days there was no structure, by the end of the first week people initiated a general assembly model in the middle of the afternoon. The first one was more like a “speak-out,” people talking about their experiences and processing a lot of stuff. A lot of trauma from the police violence of the previous weeks. Black voices were highlighted in their day-to-day struggles with the police. After that the general assembly turned into a “working group” model with report-backs, breaking away to work on things like logistics and then coming back to the space.
I don’t know if they have been able to make any collective decisions and I don’t know if they really have a process for that, whether it is voting, majority voting, or consensus. But it is definitely a space for the whole zone to talk to each other.
OCHAZ: Well it’s certainly nothing like the way it’s portrayed on right-wing propaganda channels like Fox News. We don’t have guarded “checkpoints,” or any of that rubbish. Our borders are open to anyone who stands in solidarity with Black lives, and anyone who seeks safety and refuge from police harassment. Some people drive into CHAZ from out of state to lend a helping hand, while others live and work completely within the boundary. Everyone who comes here with an open mind sees a flourishing environment filled with boundless love.
It feels like walking through a lucid dream 24 hours a day. We use the park to host recreational activities, such as free movie nights, stand-up comedy shows and dance parties. We have local farmers growing crops, artists painting murals to raise social awareness and wholesome activities for kids and families. There are friendly faces everywhere, like our resident 63-year-old street musician, “Papa Jacoby,” who teaches authentic West African djembe music with a focus on cultural sensitivity.
Everybody is having a lot of fun in CHAZ, but we also can’t forget why we are here and who we are fighting for. That’s why we make sure to hold regular classes on the history of racism, strategies for decolonization and the destructive legacy of whiteness. We’re working hard to unlearn systems of racism, and create a place in CHAZ where for once in the history of America, white folks take a back seat to make room for the unheard voices of Black, Brown, and Indigenous Peoples.
Everywhere you look in CHAZ, you will find a vibrant, thriving community where every citizen understands that Black Lives Matter, and they mean it with all their hearts. I’ve never seen something so beautiful that it actually makes me cry, but that pretty much sums up CHAZ for you.
How are mutual aid projects supporting the Zone to continue?
OCHAZ: Robust mutual aid programs are key to CHAZ’s success, as well as harm reduction methodologies wherever possible. The people organize themselves around community needs. Our “No-cop co-op” doesn’t accept any cash — anything a citizen of CHAZ needs is provided free of charge from the co-op, because we believe in people over profits. Our kitchen distributes food to the homeless night and day, and we’re not just talking cans of cold beans here. In CHAZ, anyone who is hungry can receive a full, nutritious and locally-sourced hot meal, and we’ll even top it off with a scoop of ice cream and some of those little Keebler mint cookies for dessert.
Around the corner, we have a free childcare center to take some of the stress off working women of color, along with a “no questions asked” medical care facility to anyone in need. Undocumented immigrants in particular, who live outside the CHAZ, are often afraid to see a doctor because revealing their personal information could bring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to their doorstep. CHAZ ensures that our immigrant comrades have nothing to fear when they go in for a check-up, by providing a viable alternative to Big Pharma and other western imperialist medical institutions.
Another pride and joy of the Autonomous Zone is our cooperative agricultural program. All citizens are welcome to grow and share crops in our garden area, but of course we have designated the most fertile plot of land to Indigenous peoples, so they can take ownership over what is rightfully theirs without intrusion. To those who would have never believed the people of America could break away from capitalism and say goodbye to the oligarchy: think again — the CHAZ works, and we’re expanding it with even more socially-minded programs every day.
FA: So the mutual aid group in Seattle that formed just as the pandemic hit has been very involved organizing the autonomous zone space. Setting up the food and some of the other distribution resources they used for Covid they have been able to use in this space. So that’s been really great. Then I just think the idea of mutual aid and supporting each other in the space is also a big part of this. So the “No cop co-op,” where people are just providing whatever they have and distributing it freely to people who need it. And the kind of food donations that are coming in are all part of that notion.
Some people are putting in tremendous amounts of work, way more than I am. The medical team is incredible. They have been battling the police for weeks and treating people who have been injured by the police very, very seriously. Their ability to get medical supplies and distribute them to people in need is really incredible.
What do you think about the portrayal in right-wing media? Is it really different from your own experience?
FA: The CHAZ really does feel like a festive and joyous space. There have been lots of efforts to discredit the space from the Seattle Police Department or right-wing media, even just mainstream media.
Are the police or right-wing vigilantes trying to get into the zone?
FA: The police have re-entered the space. The precinct was left completely upended. It was open, unlocked and completely accessible. In the first couple of days, no one went in. There was still that hesitancy about getting into the East Precinct. People were still unsure of what to do. And after the first couple of days the police came in and locked it and fenced it off.
From what I know, that is the only time the police have come into that space and other than that other city services are responding to the area. The mayor has directed the Fire Department, the Department of Transportation and the Parks Department to be the ones who come to that area. So I haven’t seen any police there since they came in the one time.
OCHAZ: The fascists are always on our ass, predictable as usual. Unfortunately, it’s just something we have to expect and figure out how to deal with the best we can. The cops have left us alone for the most part, running scared ever since we exiled them from the Zone. But there is definitely a looming cloud of right-wing assholes threatening to swoop in and destroy what we’ve created here. What those assholes don’t realize, is that we are watching them like a hawk. We’ll never just lie down and take it, or let them hurt even a single hair on our people’s bodies. Sure, we’ve received threats from cops, “patriots,” biker gangs, you name it. But CHAZ has a message to all you bootlickers out there: we’ve got your number. Fuck around and find out.
How are you thinking about the CHAZ in the long term? Are you thinking of this extending into weeks and months?
OCHAZ: I’m trying my best to not get blinded by optimism. We still have a long way to go to achieve racial equity. There’s a lot of work to do to expand our reach, secure our infrastructure, and build up the kind of community that works for everybody, not just whites and white-passing POC. Those among us who come from a place of privilege are still struggling to avoid centering themselves, because dismantling the effects of racism and colorism isn’t just a one-time gig — it’s a full time job.
That’s why we are putting up daily reminders, so that the very roads we walk on will declare loud and clear what we all stand for. Little by little, we’re covering every building in sight with tributes to George Floyd, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown and others. We are de-gentrifying the city, renaming streets that were previously named after colonizers and diligently taking down any and all lingering remnants of our country’s racist past, so we can move on to a better future. We are setting our sights high, toward full self-sustainability, so that we no longer rely on donations from the outside to keep us going. The next thing on my list is to get a greenhouse going, to cultivate crops that will provide a wider range of vegan options for the kitchen.
FA: That’s a great question. When I was there yesterday, it seemed entrenched to me. People have uprooted part of the park and planted community gardens there. There’s a tent city, protesters kind of reminiscent of Occupy. All the mutual aid projects I was mentioning, the medics and the food distribution and things like that, are really well set up. The infrastructure they have is impressive. So it looks like it has staying power, to me.
What will come of that, I am unsure. There are several groups that have issued demands, some of which are aligned and some of which are a little different. We don’t know yet what they will be able to leverage from the city and what the end goal is, and I think a lot of those conversations are still emerging in the general assembly sessions that are happening and conversations in the space. But at this point it has staying power and I don’t imagine it going away anywhere anytime soon.
How have you worked with Indigenous tribes in the area?
OCHAZ: Every decision made in CHAZ comes to fruition with the full acknowledgement and understanding that this land belongs to Indigenous peoples first, full stop. Tribal needs remain a top priority in CHAZ to ensure that they get the representation they deserve, which had previously been stripped away from them by the old regime. We always take special care and consideration to work beneath local tribal leaders for approval. One of the first things we did when we established CHAZ was consult with a Duwamish Chief and his spiritual advisor. We wouldn’t dream of doing anything without their blessing.
Why are you personally so passionate about it?
FA: One, is just being concerned for Black lives, which is part of where it came from and where it started. I think where it has to end is the recognition of Black humanity, Black integrity and Black dignity. Also, at the moment we can try to rethink and radically reimagine what our cities can look like. This is one of those moments. Our budgets, at a local level, so favor militarism and violence. And that’s true at a national level too. This points to the idea that when we organize ourselves to meet human needs what emerges is beautiful constructions of art, new forms of music, new forms of literature, new political ideas, new infrastructures to provide medical care and food for each other. Those are the priorities that we should be emphasizing, and the autonomous zone states that really clearly.
OCHAZ: Simply put, Capitol Hill is my home. Our people are sick to death of being pushed around by the regime on a daily basis. I can’t sit back and watch my people be tormented by the “thin blue line” anymore. We have our own “line” up on Cap Hill: the rainbow line. And our line isn’t thin — it’s thick as fuck, and you better not cross it.”
https://blackrosefed.org/interview-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone-chaz-chop/
https://blackrosefed.org/chop-analysis-glimmers-hope-failures-left/
https://blackrosefed.org/in-defense-of-autonomy-seattle-chop/
https://kuow.org/stories/dispatches-from-seattle-s-new-autonomous-zone-known-as-chaz
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/15/us/seattle-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone-monday/index.html
https://mashable.com/article/chaz-autonomous-zone-seattle
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/seattles-cop-free-autonomous-zone-chaz/
The Complete Ecotopia, by Ernest Callenbach, Malcolm Margolin (Foreword)
The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50998056-the-ministry-for-the-future
Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire, by David Graeber
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/978934.Possibilities
Revolutions in Reverse: Essays on Politics, Violence, Art, and Imagination,
by David Graeber
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13048162-revolutions-in-reverse
A History of Autonomous Zones: Occupy Wall Street, a reading list
Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street
by Todd Gitlin
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13622877-occupy-nation
Occupying Wall Street: The Inside Story of an Action that Changed America
by Various
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13409642-occupying-wall-street
Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street
by Mark Bray
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18267429-translating-anarchy
Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse
by Nathan Schneider
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17718836-thank-you-anarchy
And the Great Book of Occupy Wall Street, The Gift by Barbara Browning
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31945101-the-gift?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=jEtxo7O76X&rank=1