When Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan sent city crews in to reclaim the six blocks seized by anarchists following the death of George Floyd in May, she no doubt was expecting compliance. After all, she had given in to some of their demands, including cutting some funding to the Seattle Police Department. She also offered social services to them in order to “encourage those living overnight in Cal Anderson [Park] to begin leaving the area or, if experiencing homelessness, to take [advantage of] an offer for shelter,” all at taxpayers’ expense.
But alas, as The New American reported, when crews started staging heavy equipment early Friday morning to begin dismantling the barriers, they were met with protestors, some of whom lay down in front of the equipment, forcing the crews to leave shortly thereafter.
At a Friday evening meeting with some of the protestors, she assented to a $20 million cut to the city’s $400 million police budget. The leaders had demanded a $200 million cut, with the funds redirected to various social services.
By allowing the protestors to gain legitimacy through acquiescence, Durkan has allowed her problems to escalate and multiply. Rather than ordering the police initially to go in and arrest the protestors for trespassing and disrupting businesses and intimidating residents, she instead allowed them a seat at the table to “discuss” their demands and negotiate a settlement of some kind.
Seattle Police Officers Guild President Mike Solan seemed to be the only voice of common sense over the occupation. In an interview on Cavuto LIVE with host Neil Cavuto on Saturday, Solan said the problem was the socialist ideology adopted by the mayor:
When are we going to get leadership to help solve the problem? We want to come to the table and be stakeholders in this … but what’s sadly happening is that there’s a socialist movement that has now infected City Hall politics. That … has got everybody in our city held captive by this ideology.
As a result, the city is now facing not one but two lawsuits, one of them claiming the Durkan “did allow, aid, abet, and actively facilitate, the exclusive physical occupation takeover and control … of publicly owned real property … by an un-elected, unauthorized, and violent group … promoting a political special interest group.”
Durkan said, following Friday night’s meeting, that crews would return to the site on Sunday morning to remove the barriers and begin to reclaim the area from the protestors.
But now a new, more militant, and more demanding group has assumed command of the commune: the Black Collective Voice (BCV).
Naudia “Nas” Miller, the self-proclaimed head of the BCV, said that further negotiations with the mayor were off the table: “Let it be clear: We will not be bought off. We are here to dismantle systemic racism.”
Her group has published a long list of non-negotiable demands, starting off with the Seattle Police Department. To students of violent revolutionary communism they will be familiar:
The Seattle Police Department and attached court system are beyond reform. We do not request reform, we demand abolition. We demand that the Seattle Council and the Mayor defund and abolish the Seattle Police Department and the attached Criminal Justice Apparatus. This means 100% of funding, including existing pensions for Seattle Police. At an equal level of priority we also demand that the city disallow the operations of ICE in the city of Seattle.
In the transitionary period between now and the dismantlement of the Seattle Police Department, we demand that the use of armed force be banned entirely. No guns, no batons, no riot shields, no chemical weapons, especially against those exercising their First Amendment right as Americans to protest.
It has been a primary plank in communist revolutionary rhetoric to remove local police, with their vital supportive links to the local community, and replace them with forces controlled by those revolutionaries.
The list of demands from the BCV is several pages long. Whether the mayor will accede to those demands or instead grows a backbone, reject her socialist ideology, and end the occupation using legitimate local police power remains to be seen.
The crews are arriving Sunday in a second attempt to regain control of the area taken over by the revolutionaries.
Image: screenshot from YouTube video
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American, writing primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
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