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Well, I never took part in any of the actual protests over the past two weeks, but I did spend about ten or fifteen minutes down at the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone" right after work yesterday. It's the most involved I've gotten in what's going on, at a physical level. I wore a mask, most people actually did a pretty good job of maintaining social distancing, and it makes a difference being outdoors as well, in terms of safety. It was no worse a risk for me than whenever I go grocery shopping, and being outside it was likely a fair amount less.

All the photos in today's DLU are from the twenty photos I took, half of which I shared to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I hope to get at least a few more soon; I really wanted a photo of the "LOVE ONLY" painted over "TURN ONLY" on 12th Avenue, but people were sitting on it.

Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington State, quote tweeted President Fuckwit's toothless threat, and my response to just one person's misguided reply is getting a lot of moronic attention, in short order making that one of my most-viewed tweets ever. (6,500 views is a shit ton compared to the average for me.) It's pretty amazing how grossly mischaracterized this thing has become in the national media.

It was actually pretty amazing and beautiful down there. I don't know how sustainable the whole thing is, or if maybe they will disperse once some real, systemic changes are put into place. I saw an online reference to the Occupy Wall Street movement of about ten years ago, when in Seattle a longtime encampment of tents at Seattle Central Community College had to be removed in the end (apparently) due to public health issues. As you can see in photo album, though, Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone comes complete with several first aid and medic booths in Cal Anderson Park.

I've responded to more than one stupid and unhinged person on Twitter—who invariably doesn't live here—that this so-called "disruption" pales in comparison to the disruption of excessive force by police for the past week and a half. Conservative media across the country is painting this as some kind of anarchy, and yet it's widely reported (among sensible people who have actually been over there) that it's "exceedingly chill." It's really just a bunch of activists and hippies, and that's the most realistically negative thing that can be said about it. And could that in all fairness even be considered "negative"?

I got a little emotional walking around it. I really wished Shobhit would have come with me. He would have gotten a Social Review point. He would have loved the discovery that every station of someone handing out food was doing it for free. (I had a mask on, already a deterrent from grabbing snacks; I also didn't feel like I had done anything to earn grabbing free food that would better go to people who need it more. The same could probably be said of most of the people there, particularly other middle-class white people like me, and I don't even judge them, really; I just didn't feel right taking anything at that moment.) But, he had a rare day off of work yesterday, had not yet taken a shower, and he wanted to veg out all day and not go anywhere. I don't really fault him for that. I was able to take it all in more effectively being down there by myself anyway.

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It should be noted that yesterday and today have been the first days since the end of May that I did not hear news about straight up protests in Seattle, and rather the news has centered around this "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone." It happened only because the police finally made the sensible decision to pull back. Honestly, they probably could have compromised and kept staffing the East Precinct with public access as usual, and still just allowed the demonstrations outside. Instead, they pulled out and boarded over all the windows. So, whatever. It will be interesting to see how long it goes on like this, but for the people actually here, it feels like a sharp turn in the right direction. The key difference? The absence of cops. Or at least the absence of aggressive cops. In large cities in particular though, is there any other kind anymore?

As I said, I was not down there a particularly long time. I came back, and Shobhit and I had some of the large pot of a dish with pakoras in it he made, and deep fried tortillas, that he had made while I was working. We then proceeded to watch three episodes in a row of the second season of Ozark. I thought he had been stalling on moving on to season two due to lack of interest; instead, he admitted last night it was because he knew he would be unable to stop watching once we started again.

Anyway. Once more, the full photo album of shots I took yesterday at the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone are on Flickr here. Click individual photos for more detail in captions.

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[posted 12:35 pm]