KOMO News, a Seattle TV news station, reported Wednesday morning that Mayor Jenny Durkan issued an executive order for the “autonomous zone” in the Capitol Hill area to be cleared for good.
The lengthy executive order recounted the protest zone has witnessed a 525-percent jump in crime, including homicides, rapes, and assaults.
The six-block area was declared "autonomous" after protesters clashed with Seattle police, then watched them abandon their East Precinct in mid-June. With the police gone, businesses and residences were declared to be inside the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ, which was later renamed Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, or CHOP.
The so-called autonomous zone was hailed by The New York Times as an “experiment in life,” and NPR reported that the area where flash-bang grenades were being fired just a week earlier was now home to a free food co-op and street music.
On the one-week anniversary of CHAZ, OneNewsNow reported that a Seattle rapper (pictured below), Raz Simone, was filmed handing out firearms from the trunk of his car to beef up security. A teen was handed an AR-15 and told to guard the public street. Other footage from CHOP showed "security" interrogating a suspected thief and attacking a man accused of assault.
Trump vs Dem mayors
In a June 11 tweet, with his typical all-caps words and bad spelling, President Trump urged Mayor Durkan and Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee, to “take back your city NOW” or he would do so himself, likely a reference to military action.
Trump’s tweet was denounced by both Durkan and Inslee, who both mocked the President.
“Make us all safe. Go back to your bunker,” Durkan replied via Twitter.
“A man who is totally incapable of governing,” Inslee responded, “should stay out of Washington state’s business.”
President Trump is also urging Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, to take action after that city witnessed devastating violence: 18 murders in a 24-hour span, which The Chicago Sun-Times called “the most violent day in 60 years in Chicago.”
Trump sent a June 26 letter addressing the violence to Mayor Lightfoot and Gov. J.B. Pritzker, pointing out the accounts of violence and death in Chicago are harming mostly young African Americans.
Responding to Trump, Lightfoot told reporters Trump is “attacking and trying to undermine” Democrat mayors, especially women.
Nadri Enzi of Project 21 tells OneNewsNow the citizens of Chicago should be demanding change from their political leaders.
“Even if they don’t change parties,” he says, “they need to demand a much more aggressive representation from the people they elect, because what’s going on is not working.”
Lighfoot, who is serving her first term, oversees a city famous for corruption and for Democrats’ tight grip on power that dates back to the 1930s.
