Tag: protest

City Council, Opinion, Uncategorized

“Arrest Those Individuals”: Councilmember Demands Police Response to Protests Outside Locked Council Chambers

By Erica C. Barnett

New Councilmember Cathy Moore demonstrated an alarming intolerance for Seattle’s long tradition of noisy protest by demanding that police arrest a group of demonstrators for being too loud and making her “feel threatened” at a council meeting Tuesday afternoon.

The demonstrators showed up to demand that the council cut police department spending to pay for housing for immigrants and refugees living in Tukwila, where the need for shelter and housing has been (literally) overwhelming.

Council president Sara Nelson started the meeting on a sour note by suggesting that the demonstrators were “exploiting vulnerable people for their own political ends”—suggesting, in so many words, that they were only pretending to care about homeless refugees because it helped them advance an unrelated anti-police, anti-sweeps agenda. (Those who were allowed to speak noted that in their view, these issues are all related). Compounding the insult, Nelson limited public comment to 20 minutes, telling the group they ought to be taking their grievances to King County and the state, which play a more direct role in responding to the refugee crisis.

Council rules limit public comment to topics on the agenda and issues within the purview of a council committee, so Nelson was technically within her right to cut off comments. In recent years, however, the council has generally not enforced this rule, tacitly acknowledging that it’s better to let people say what they have to say than shut down speech.

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Nelson’s unforced error set the tone for the rest of the afternoon. After pulling the council into recess twice, she had security clear the room; when  six people refused to leave, police arrested them for trespassing and booked them into the downtown jail. Legal? Almost certainly. Ill-advised? 100 percent. Seattle has a history of protest and civil disobedience that stretches back decades; if an elected official’s first reaction when people shout and disrupt a meeting is to kick them out and call the police, that says a lot about what they think of that culture and history.

“It is not appropriate” for protesters to be disruptive, Moore, a former King County Superior Court judge, continued. “We need to make sure that this does not happen going forward. We are shutting down the operations of a democracy because of a mob action. It is not to be tolerated.”

Which brings us back to Moore.

With the chamber emptied, the council reconvened to discuss a resolution honoring the state’s first Black senator, George Fleming. From outside the locked council chambers, demonstrators continued to yell, and several banged on the glass chamber walls, prompting Moore to interrupt the proceedings to say she felt “physically threatened” by the protesters outside.

Invoking the image of a “mob” storming the room and physically attacking the council, Moore said, “Our physical safety is being threatened by the actions of the demonstrators outside, banging on the windows, which could easily get broken and we will have a mob scene. I’m asking for police presence to arrest those individuals.”

When Nelson, belatedly trying to deescalate the situation, pointed out that arresting people for protesting would require “several steps”—”I appreciate that it’s very loud”—Moore interrupted, insisting, “It’s more than loud. It is a physical threat to the safety of each of us on this council and it is a threat to the operation of the civic institution.”

“It is not appropriate” for protesters to be disruptive, Moore, a former King County Superior Court judge, continued. “We need to make sure that this does not happen going forward. We are shutting down the operations of a democracy because of a mob action. It is not to be tolerated.”

This is a misunderstanding of how the city council operates. Unlike a court hearing, a council meeting is a place for comment and dissent, up to and including protests that may interfere with scheduled business. The best approach is generally to let people speak their mind, and to listen to what they’re saying—not to declare disruptions “intolerable” or refer to demonstrators as a violent “mob.” If council members aren’t willing to tolerate noisy dissent, they probably should have looked more closely at the job description before applying.

Featured, hate speech, LGBT, Mayor Durkan, race

Durkan Seizes on Graffitied “Homophobic Slurs” as Another Reason to Close CHOP

During a press conference earlier this week, Mayor Jenny Durkan, who is gay, said that small businesses within the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) zone had been vandalized with anti-LGBTQ graffiti by people inside the protest area. “I have talked to many small business owners that literally have just been holding on. It was their week to reopen, and their businesses are sanctuaries for many people, including the LGBT community,” Durkan said.

“They’re not only closed, but there’s graffiti with homophobic slurs written on their buildings. That’s not who we are in Seattle and we’re going to do everything we can to change that dynamic.”

Two days after Durkan’s comments, I spent a couple of hours in the CHOP searching for homophobic graffiti on buildings in the area. I didn’t see any (on this or any prior walk through the CHOP), although I could have missed it or it might have been scrubbed away. There were, however, many signs and spray-painted messages supporting the black trans community, which one of the groups most targeted by hate crimes and police violence in the United States.

In fact, the only “slurs” I could find were the spray-painted message “Fags against cops,” painted on a rainbow crosswalk across from Cal Anderson Park, two that read “Dykes 4 BLM,” and one that read “Dykes 4 Anarchy.”

When I sent a couple of photos of these messages to the mayor’s office to find out if this was what Durkan was referring to, a spokeswoman said, “She met with [business] owners including some LGBTQ biz owners who had mentioned the tag of the f-word on/near their business. Not sure the specific location of the photos referenced below. But that specific word in graffiti is what she was referencing.”

Louise Chernin, the head of the Greater Seattle Business Association (the city’s LGBTQ+ business group), said she had not seen any homophobic graffiti herself, but added that “more than one person told me they saw homophobic graffiti around the neighborhood.”

Reclaiming words meant as slurs, of course, is a long and proud tradition among oppressed groups of all kinds. (“Queer,” the Q in LGBTQ+, is a great example of a term for identity that began its life as a slur.) Bottom line: Calling the “f-word” homophobic in every context is like saying it’s misogynistic for women to start a magazine called Bitch.

Durkan has repeatedly implied that the ongoing presence of protesters, barricades and graffiti in the six-block CHOP area is harming the LGBTQ+ community on Capitol Hill, a “historic sanctuary” for LGBTQ+ people. What is clear from even a brief walk through the neighborhood, however, is that the majority of the signs, graffiti, and even pro-protest posters hung up by businesses themselves, are overwhelmingly pro-queer—and that a lot of it is explicitly anti-Durkan.

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