Mudede, C. (2020, July 01). CHOP Made Seattle Look Like a Real City. Slog - The Stranger.

Retrieved
from https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/07/01/44014547/chop-made-seattle-look-like-a-real-city

CHOP/CHAZ < H T T P S :/ / WW W. T H ES T R A N G E R . C O M / A R C H IV E/ C H A Z>

CHOP Made Seattle Look

Like a Real City
by Charles Mudede <https://www.thestranger.com/authors/237/charles-mudede> • Jul 1, 2020
at 5:39 pm
 Memories of Utopia... CHARLES MUDEDE

At around 4:00 p.m. on June 28, here I am walking down the stretch of 13th
Avenue between Pike and Pine. My destination is around the corner. My
thoughts are completely disconnected from my surroundings. I'm thinking
about Hannah Arendt. About how she blamed the rise of totalitarianism
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/17/how-
in Germany and Soviet Union on the failure of
hannah-arendts-classic-work/>
European social democracy to become as global as capitalism. I read Arendt
that morning because of the Seattle Democratic Socialists of America
demonstration that occurred at Magnuson Park <https://www.kiro7.com
/news/local/protesters-march-seattle-mayors-
home/32TRIWMTHFGUZLXDLFL7CJRISI/> the day before. The event climaxed
outside of Mayor Jenny Durkan's home. She was not there. But her gate was
defaced.

As I walk down 13th, I'm trying to figure out what in Arendt's idea works and
what doesn't. Suddenly, something pulls my thoughts out of the self inside of
me and throws them onto the street around me. I stop. Hannah Arendt and
social democracy dissolve. The street says: I have been here before, but not here
in Seattle. It's another city that I visited either in a dream or in the real world.

It takes a moment or two for me to realize it's Berlin.

I was there in 2014 for two weeks, and I stayed in a hotel in the Mitte, Hotel
Motel One. The breakfast was cold boiled eggs and cold cuts and cold tomatoes.
But that's not what transports me to the capital of Germany. It's instead all of
the graffiti on the walls next to me. There is almost nothing like it in most of
Seattle; but many of the streets in Berlin are covered almost completely with
graffiti. Before it was cleaned up and gentrified, New York City was once like
this. The same goes for London. Berlin, however, never cleaned up, never
became respectable. It kept alive what makes a city feel like a city. The
democracy of its surfaces.
 "We be in the city! <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuUIoPVRpmk>" CHARLES MUDEDE

Why was this street in Seattle so much like walking down a street in Kreuzberg?
Because of CHOP/CHAZ.

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This section of 13 Avenue, which suddenly sunk me in time (6 years) on June

28, is on the outskirts of an autonomous zone that came into existence the day
after the Seattle Police Department abandoned the East Precinct on June 8,
2020. It captured the nation's attention for almost a month. And during this
time, it was densely covered with brilliant and bad graffiti—on the sidewalk, the
street, the boards, the brick walls, the mailboxes. The street art emanated from
this core, between 11th and 12th on Pine, in the way the light from a star
diminishes as it spreads further into the night of empty space.

What made Seattle a real city for a moment is now being returned to what
makes it not a city. Clean, privatized surfaces and middle-class respect of
property. And indeed we can say that this is what really triggered the downfall
of CHOP, Durkan's strong middle-class attachment to property, particularly her
own.

If one looks at the timeline of events that occurred after her gate was defaced on
June 28, they will see Durkan ordering action against the Kshama Sawant, who
participated in the DSA demonstration. In fact, her letter demanding that the
Seattle City Council investigate the POC socialist is filled with a white-hot
outrage that, even for her, is exceptional. Then on the morning of July 1, it's
down to business. Durkan, who visited CHAZ/CHOP only two weeks before and
had nice things to say about it and Marcus's garden <https://twitter.com
/mayorjenny/status/1271653002982469632>, issues a red-hot executive order
<https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/07/01/44011766/slog-am-weinstein-
settlement-arrests-in-hong-kong-chop-cleared-after-early-morning-executive-order>
to vacate the area. The "weeks of violence," the "shootings," the "deaths of two
teenagers"—enough is enough. The police marches into the autonomous zone
and removes its park people, tents, and art. In no time, they reclaim their
station. Before it's 10 am, CHAZ/CHOP becomes a thing of the past.
 Charles Mudede
@mudede

Was this beginning of the end for CHOP?

Mayor Durkan Calls for Investigation of Kshama Sawant

Durkan alleges Sawant led followers to her private residence.
thestranger.com

6:08 PM · Jul 1, 2020

10 See Charles Mudede’s other Tweets

And now Trump is claiming to be the inspiration for the CHOP crackdown
<https://twitter.com/search?q=CHOP%20trump&src=typed_query>, which makes
sense because, despite all of the lefty things she claims to stand for, she is at
root all about property, about its protection, and its sanctity. When we examine
her response to the defacement of her gate by a bunch of socialists, we can see it
has a connection with that gun-toting couple in St. Louis <https://twitter.com
/search?q=CHOP%20trump&src=typed_query>.
 BBC News (World)
@BBCWorld

Couple filmed pointing guns at protesters in St Louis,

Missouri bbc.in/31sZNNi

2:17 PM · Jun 29, 2020

5.7K 4.2K people are Tweeting about this

The St. Louis couple responded to what they perceived as a direct threat to their
property with a silver pistol and a military-grade assault rifle. Durkan, on the
other hand, responded with a department of men and women armed to the
teeth. She did the same as the St. Louis couple, but at a scale so grand that even
Trump is trying to put his name on it.
 Charles Mudede
Charles Tonderai Mudede, The Stranger’s film editor, is a
Zimbabwean-born cultural critic, urbanist, filmmaker, college lecturer,
and writer. Mudede collaborated with the director Robinson Devor on
three films, two of which, Police Beat and Zoo, premiered at
Sundance, and one of which, Zoo, screened at Cannes. He has also
written for the New York Times, Cinema Scope, Tank Magazine,
e-flux, LA Weekly, and C Theory.

 FOLLOW <HTTPS://WWW.TWITTER.COM/ MUDEDE>  EMAIL <MAILTO:CHARLES@THESTRANGER.COM

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