FWIW, I live down the street from where that zone was. It was indeed a large-scale sit-in-like protest, and cropped up in short term response due to SPD's insane tactics of tear-gassing the surrounding neighborhood before pulling out due to pissing everyone off.
I find that everyone who comments about this zone on here is not actually from Seattle, and just firing off the same talking points.
Not even trying to play, if the Capitol shit was actually a sit-in a la #OccupyTheCapitol then I would be here defending their right to protest.