Or burning down a police precinct. Or literally fire bombing federal buildings for MONTHS with virtually no consequences. And all the while politicians and media egg it on.

The duplicity on the violence issue is both stunning and terrifying.

They accomplished the goal of getting people to maybe think about police violence. It’s clear that lighter protests didn’t get any action or attention. If violence is so intolerable, I would like to see some calls for justice from those who seem more concerned about the protection of buildings than people’s lives.

Stop pretending the violence came from nothing. I have friends with burns on their legs from getting hit by stun grenades while actually peacefully protesting. You won’t believe that, but you can find video after video of police actively attacking peaceful protestors.

I do believe that. Certainly violence begets more violence and the police are certainly not blameless.

All of that said, lets be careful not to boil this down to property damage so we can justify it. 19 people died in those summer riots. The property destruction affected mostly poor areas and minority business owners.

The duplicity is stunning and terrifying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_dur....

Not claiming its only property damage, sorry if I seemed to imply. I'm sorry you're afraid of what has happened and how its been covered. I think the protests themselves will ultimately lead us to a better place - though of course any violence is not helpful to get to that better place.

I hope that you are right, and despite my pessimistic demeanor, I do believe ultimately good and necessary change will happen. Perhaps we can learn from the negative along the way. Thank you for your positive responses.

I dunno, I tend to regard property damage and murder to be different things. I have been surprised to see how many people disagree, and I'm still trying to understand that perspective.

It depends on the scale of property damage - lives aren’t worth infinite amounts after all. I would say damage in the millions is automatically equivalent to murder. But it doesn’t even have to go that far. Destroying someone’s small business (as an example) is also tantamount to murder - if a person pours years of their life, taking time away from their family, experiencing great stress, taking risks, and surviving via sheer grit, and then sees all of that destroyed by rioting black bloc hooligans in one short night, they would be utterly devastated. That’s a human cost and it is comparable to murder because someone poured their life into building that business.

Then there’s collateral damage. Much of the rioting in the last year was criminality in service of a political goal. That is the literal definition of terrorism. These actions create fear in political opponents and aim to achieve political goals outside our legal process. That has a human cost.

But if I had to simplify it, life is a period of time. And time is used by people to acquire or create property. Therefore when that property is stolen or destroyed, it is taking away life.

A more comprehensive opinion: https://fee.org/articles/vandalism-is-violence-destructive-r...

Insurance policies can't bring people back to life, though.

In Portland protestors have clubbed police on the head with bats (and famously a wrench), tried to set the courthouse on fire, and tried to set the mayor's occupied apartment building on fire.

Attempted murder, and arson of occupied structures. Far worse than the capitol riot.

Also, who the violence was directed at. In DC most of the rioters were unarmed and fought with police. In Portland and LA many protestors were armed and fought passing citizens, attacked drivers, etc. Police don't "deserve" to be hit, but they sign up knowing that the job can get rough. Random old ladies protesting the vandalism of their building shouldn't be hit but the justice mobs feel free to hurt anyone.

Cursory googling:

CHAZ/CHOP: 2 deaths Capital Hill Riot: 5 deaths

Except if you went to chaz, it was actually fine and the news blatantly exaggerated reality for advertising $$

I'm sure it was mostly fine, in the same way if you stuck to certain places in the capital riots the majority of the people congregated were peaceful. The Chaz also usurped local businesses, there were plenty of firearms and at least five shootings. This is indisputable. Now you will say those are just bad apples, but you wouldn't give the same leniency to the capital riots would you. Also the leaders of the Chaz bare some responsibility for the deaths that happened in them do they not? But of course no one really cares about that, whereas assinine tweets by unpopular politicians mean they are traitors who orchestrated an attempted coup. To me the framing of similar events is very different based on political allegiance.. hence why I'm worried about these biased reporters gaining more power to determine who does and does not have a voice in society.

There were more deaths and more crime than what is just officially attributed to CHAZ. CHAZ also left behind a massive tent encampment that took over Cal Anderson park (adjacent to CHAZ), which at one point was used for riot staging. Police found a weapons cache hidden inside a tent that appeared to be for the homeless but wasn’t (https://thepostmillennial.com/revealed-antifa-stored-weapons...). The sprawling homeless camp became its own controversy, with black bloc/antifa affiliated activists trying to set up a new autonomous zone following something similar in Portland (https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/12/18/296959-n296959). All this chaos and the park being taken over as an illegal homeless encampment provided cover for a homicide-suicide (https://thepostmillennial.com/homicide-suspect-in-seattle-sl...). The person committing the homicide was Travis Berge, a repeat offender who was featured in the documentary “Seattle is Dying” as a prime example of permissive restorative justice policies don’t work (https://komonews.com/news/local/travis-berge-repeat-offender...). He killed a woman that was allegedly his “girlfriend” before killing himself.

Call me biased but I happen to think that being at a “protest” that results in the storming of the Capitol during the tallying of electoral votes for our country’s leader is not equivalent to the occupation of a public park after a man was suffocated by a police officer. I happen to think that storming the seat of government is worse.. Chaz was two (maybe three square) blocks, and the news was acting like it was a country. Also absolutely nothing was stopping the police from doing their job, they literally abandoned a precinct which made zero sense at the time. I acknowledge there were shootings, but yeah like I said, I went there on multiple occasions and didn’t see a single firearm, but the news (both CNN and Fox) described checkpoints and anarchy when all I saw with my own eyes were art booths and a stage with speakers giving lectures.

I watched the mainstream news and I walked down the street. The vast majority of news coverage was very favorable to chaz/chop. It was extremely unsafe after sundown, made that way by the residents of chaz/chop.

Source: I lived 2 blocks away

Same, I lived 6 blocks away and when my lease expired during the turmoil, I left.

People here who say chaz wasn't dangerous should really look at how they propped up their own militia/security force and executed minorities.

I lived about 4 blocks north and I can give you videos of cal anderson and the general capitol hill area being dangerous after sun down throughout the past 4-5 years if you'd like. Seattle is overall not a nice place to live unless you're in the suburbs or only exist indoors.

One night right outside my window, I witnessed a homeless man with a gun to his head, right out in the open, screaming "KILL ME MOTHERF***" to the guy screaming "GIVE ME MY MONEY". I've seen knife fights by both QFC's.

Everyone just normalizes it and like, finds an equilibrium when you live there.

All the live footage I've seen from people who have actually gone suggests that it was as bad as people suggest.

Things I've seen video of includes guys handing out guns to (what appear to be) minors, fights breaking out, and people getting assaulted for recording what is happening there.

Can you link to any of that? I lived nearby and it felt more like a street festival the times I went by. I know this stuff happened, but I genuinely never saw what it was like.

It seems most of the video was taken down like this one - https://www.facebook.com/163203180698293/posts/1165808300437...

Some things are still available though - https://www.bitchute.com/video/1Jr0ILcX9hY/

Social media seems to be doing a pretty good job of trying to pretend these things didn't exist.

Yeah, pretty much. I remember a Twitch streamer who'd broadcast from there even abused the DMCA to take down a video that Seattle's police department posted to try and identify the CHAZ-affiliated people who were caught on stream shooting and killing a black teenager. As far as I know Twitch didn't have any problem with that, because "Black Lives Matter" doesn't actually mean black lives matter...

I remember peacefully eating Subway about 2 blocks away from CHAZ watching bunnies hop around in the grass. I was there for photojournalistic purposes. I had to walk past a Starbucks with broken windows however. Actually being there and experiencing it, media most definitely blew it out of the water for outrage advertising $$. You're very right.

The initial few days of george floyd protests were tense, but almost every large city around the country also was.