The Accidental Occupation of Seattle
A police-free “autonomous zone” in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood started with a demand to reform law enforcement. But some protesters want bigger changes.
Protesters gather at the Seattle Police Department's West Precinct after marching from the police-free zone known as the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) on June 15, 2020 in Seattle, Washington.
Photographer: David Ryder/Getty Images North America
On its first weekend, the six-block police-free zone in downtown Seattle — known first as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), and more recently as the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) — looked and felt mostly like a street festival.
On a makeshift stage in the middle of 12th and Pine on Sunday, vocalist Shaina Shepherd belted out “Lift Every Voice and Sing” as an audience thronged the intersection. Behind the crowd, a white teepee erected by the Indigenous collective Protectors of the Salish Sea stretched nearly to the height of a blinking red traffic light. Halfway down the block, street artist Brian Culpepper hung illustrations of his signature Japanese manga-meets-graffiti aesthetic in an impromptu outdoor gallery pinned to the plywood that covered the windows of a shuttered sports bar. Prayer candles and flowers lined the pavement; rainbow crosswalks cradled a multicolored mural spelling out “Black Lives Matter” on the asphalt. Hungry onlookers helped themselves to donated granola bars, candy, and bread from a van advertising itself as the People’s Community Clinic. In the evening, a Native drum circle attracted a crowd of dozens who danced under the streetlights, their feet stomping on the fresh paint, while a spirited game of pick-up basketball played out on a side street.