This tour highlights five sites which were prominent features of CHOP in June 2020. Please follow the grey arrows to be directed to each site. As you enter the tour, a grey arrow will guide you to site 1 – The East Precinct. From there, you will need to drag the cursor until you see another arrow. Clicking this arrow will take you to site 2 – The Conversation Café. A third arrow by the playing fields will take you to the Community Gardens, site 3. After this site, you will be taken back to the center of CHOP. From here, you will be able to engage with the final two sites (you can find the content to the left of the playing fields). Site 4 is the No-Cop Co-op. Then turning further left (anti-clockwise) the grey arrow will allow you to see the BLACK LIVES MATTER mural in more detail, this is site 5.
In the tour window below:
In the summer of 2020, there was a resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in response to multiple accounts of police brutality against Black folx in the USA, and the overt structural inequalities along racial lines, exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. In Seattle, protesters took to the streets and were met with police using tear gas, flashbangs and pepper spray to disperse the crowds (Savransky, 2020). Protesters marched from Downtown, east towards Capitol Hill on June 1st (Scruggs, 2020). They found their way blocked by barricades around Seattle Police Department’s (SPD) East Precinct. The crowd became so large that the police declared a riot, and a tense seven-day stand-off ensued with protesters who returned daily (ibid). On June 8, 2020, when the police vacated the East Precinct, a six block police-free zone was declared the ‘Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone’ or ‘CHAZ’. It was primarily a site of protest and resistance; it marked a distinct change from the violence over the preceding 4 days.
On June 13th, CHAZ became the Capitol Hill Organised Protest (CHOP) in an effort to rebrand and remind everyone that this was a protest not a party.
As you learn about the Capitol Hill Organized Protest please remember the organizers’ demands and consider donating to Black Lives Matter Seattle and/or King County Equity Now to acknowledge the work the organizers’ continue to do to achieve anti-racism in Seattle. I also encourage you to engage with the resources listed below to hear other facets of the Capitol Hill Organized Protest which are not captured by this tour and to get a more thorough introduction to Black Geographies.
Black Rose Anarchist Foundation (2020) CHOP Analysis – Glimmers of Hope, Failures of the Left, The Anarchist Library [online] Available via: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/black-rose-rosa-negra-seattle-chop-analysis
Bush, E. (2020) Welcome to the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, where Seattle protesters gather without police, The Seattle Times [online] Available via: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/welcome-to-the-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone-where-seattle-protesters-gather-without-police/
Carlton, J. and Wernau, J. (2020) Seattle Police Dismantle ‘Police-Free Zone’, The Wall Street Journal [online] Available via: https://www.wsj.com/articles/seattle-police-dismantle-police-free-zone-11593616694.
Converge Media (2020) Black is Beautiful: Femme Event, YouTube, Available via: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0r7Fy1B2QU
Guarente, G. (2020) What It’s Like to Eat Inside Seattle’s Much-Discussed Protest Space, Seattle Eater [online] Available via: https://seattle.eater.com/2020/6/18/21293916/seattle-protest-zone-chop-chaz-capitol-hill-food-eating.
Gyimah-Brempong, A. and Radke, B. (2020) From the Black Panthers to the No-Cop Co-op, the long history of American mutual aid, KUOW [online] Available via: https://www.kuow.org/stories/from-the-black-panthers-to-the-no-cop-co-op-the-long-history-of-american-mutual-aid.
Keimig, J. (2020) What Will Happen to CHOP’s Garden?, The Stranger [online] Available via: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/08/06/44237551/what-will-happen-to-the-art-and-garden-from-chop.
Reagan, M. (2020) In Defense of Autonomy – Seattle’s CHOP Advanced of the Movement for Black Lives, The Anarchist Library [online] Available via: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/michael-reagan-in-defense-of-autonomy.
Savransky, B. (2020) How Chaz became CHOP: Seattle’s police-free zone explained, Seattle PI [online] Available via: https://www.seattlepi.com/seattlenews/article/What-is-CHOP-the-zone-in-Seattle-formed-by-15341281.php.
Scruggs, G. (2020) Activists take over a Seattle neighborhood, banishing the police, The Washington Post [online] Available via: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/activists-take-over-a-seattle-neighborhood-banishing-the-police/2020/06/11/7172e1e6-ac24-11ea-a9d9-a81c1a491c52_story.html.
Weinberger, H. (2020) In Seattle’s CHAZ, a community garden takes root, Crosscut [online] Available via: https://crosscut.com/environment/2020/06/seattles-chaz-community-garden-takes-root.
Bledsoe, A. and Wright, W.J. (2018) The Pluralities of Black Geographies, Antipode, 51(2): 419-437.
Gilmore, R. (2017) “Abolition Geographies and the Problem of Innocence” in Johnson, G. T. and Lubin, A. (Eds) Futures of Black Radicalism, Verso Books: New York City, USA.
Hawthorne, C. (2019) Black Matters are Spatial Matters: Black Geographies for the Twenty-First Century, Geography Compass: 1-13.
McKittrick, K. (2006) Demonic Grounds: black women and the cartographies of struggle, University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, USA.
Ramirez, M.M. (2015) The Elusive Inclusive: Black Food Geographies and Racialized Food Spaces, Antipode, 47(3): 748-769.
The reading lists on the Black Geographies Specialty Group website
The Politics, Groups, and Identities #BlackLivesMatter Micro-Syllabus
The Places ‘Black Geographies Reading List’
Tour creator: Ellie Cleasby. Photos by: Stephanie May. Tour guide: TBA