The Deterioration and Continuation of CHOP

The Capitol Hill Occupation Protest: Day 15

Hindsight is always 2020. Looking back, I can now plot the points and clearly see the general progression that led to the deterioration of CHOP.

It’s hard though and a strain on my heart and spirit, but I need to get it out while it’s fresh. I’m still grieving in some ways. This was so fucking beautiful. What’s come out of it for me and the Decolonization Conversation Café may be something even more beautiful, but I’m still sitting in a place of sadness right now.

I remember the first three days. It was just raw, collaborative, co-creative community energy bustling from the seams. Just thinking back on that experience makes me miss it. Walking through CHOP was life reaffirming. There was a deep sense of aliveness and wholeness. Everyone was coming up and asking how they can help — looking to engage and offer their gifts to the community cause.

Even the evenings were deeply filled with connection and purpose as we intentionally focused on screening documentaries, elevating Black artists and musicians, sharing stories in circles, and gifting what we are and had to each other.

By the time the first weekend came, the powers to be did what they do best — create a counter narrative that doesn’t need to be true to exact its purpose. Its true intent is to simply change how people interact with the movement and view what we are doing.

The look in people’s eyes shifted from compassion and care to judgment and indifference. A day before, people were asking “how can I help and support you?” Now they simply came to compare reality to the fabricated expectations of walking through a war zone.

Those days were still beautiful though. Everyone was deeply interested in engaging with their neighbors and we watched some of the most amazing conversations in our Café come to life that first weekend.

But at night time, after almost three months of everyone being holed up with COVID-19, the space became more of a party. These neighbors hadn’t been around other humans in a context like this in what felt like forever, of course they wanted to let loose. (I think Keely and I may have been the only people who spent the entire two weeks in CHOP sober.)

Luckily, even with the partying, this topic of race, privilege, and this transformative, pivotal time in our lives, brought great conversations to life in our Café, oftentimes keeping it running into the wee hours of the night.

As the beginning of the next week came, things were kind of getting into a routine. I remember sharing that I think I’m just going to hate late Friday and Saturday nights here — too much of a party/festival vibe. I wasn’t alone there, and that became part of the mantra that so many of the Black community leaders had to continue to repeat. “THIS ISN’T A FESTIVAL!!”

The amount of energy that took alone was draining. The other thing that started to happen around this time is the evangelicals, the white supremacists, the Proud Boys, started to come through. Moment after moment of trying to deescalate an angry crowd fighting to preserve the safety of this space for our Black, Indigenous, POC, Trans, and Queer neighbors, sapped even more energy.

Beyond that, our neighbors experiencing homelessness, who are often times suffering from mental illness and drug addiction, flocked to the space. I even heard multiple rumors that police would pick up people like this in other areas of town only to drop them off intentionally right outside of CHOP.

CHOP probably had little chance of success with the problems of the greater Seattle area coming down on it as well.

The next big fracture manifested both physically and relationally.

Through an agreement with some of the Black leaders — but not with full consensus from the entire decentralized team — and as a concession to the local businesses and residents of the neighborhood, Seattle’s Public Utilities came in and put up barricades that split CHOP up and allowed cars to come through to gain access to a private alley.

There became a schism in what our community thought this space should be used as. Is it a bargaining chip to leverage into demands being met or a transformational community space that elevates Black voices and leadership? Is it a space for the gardens, the programming, and the conversations, or a space to be further fortified and disruptive from?

Shortly after the barricades came up the No Cop Co-Op broke down. Literally and figuratively.

White allyship really struggled in the space overall, and truly had moments where white allies co-opted the narratives and actions throughout the entire two weeks of CHOP’s glory.

I don’t want to get into other’s personal stories but in short, the leader of the Co-Op struggled giving away control and vision of the space and that rigidity and stress led to a small revolt from the staff. From there, this leader got into more arguments with another leader of CHOP and in the span of just one night, what was a highlight attraction of the space, devolved into nothing.

So throughout this first full week of CHOP, we were collectively taking punch after punch, but also had moments of our resilient grit show and come to life.

Black leadership started to connect with mentors and truly find their voice. I got to listen in on multiple stump speeches that were so beautiful to see in person. I still get the goosebumps thinking back as I am watching and seeing Black leaders come into their own and rally an entire crowd to a beautiful collective purpose of changing our world for the better.

As an entire community, People’s Assemblies started to happen semi-regularly and began to embody deeper principles of co-creation, self-organization, and belonging as a unifying and empowering force.

Friday during the day was beautiful. The Café was in full force and engaging hundreds of neighbors in transformative ways and beautiful moments. There was an energy that we were righting a ship and that we can make this work.

Then the weekend came. And with it, the final straw that broke the camel’s back.

Shortly after I posted my last writing, I heard the news of the shootings of the night before. A teenage boy was killed. That just broke my heart in so many ways.

On Saturday night, seeing his family grieving around the pop-up memorial where he was shot is a tragic sight I won’t ever forget.

This not only led to the public sentiment throughout Seattle taking a 180, but internally within the community, the leadership and different work teams spiraled down into nothing.

How could we keep moving forward when the mother of another murdered black boy blamed the space, its medics, its security, its community that pushed police away, and its general existence, for the death of her son?

With what had already been viewed as a detracting festival and a white co-opted space, now became something no one wanted to touch with a ten-foot pole.

Somehow the Café still had amazing conversations through it all. It and the garden seemed to be the last two strongholds of CHOP preserving something beautiful.

Without any leadership or community engagement, it became a less desirable place to be, especially in the evenings, which became downright dangerous for some.

When news came out Monday afternoon that Mayor Jenny Durkan declared that police were retaking the precinct shortly, the space turned into a chaotic “last stand” or “last ditch” effort.

We ended up packing up all the supplies from the Café and then just sticking around to see what was going to happen. By the time we left around 10pm, arms were linked around the precinct and I had the impression the police were just going to wait it out until all the steam had left the space for their final takeover.

I heard that that night was another dangerous one. It hurts to see how this space has devolved as the constant barrage of assaults from the city and national media forced the leadership to move on.

It’s near impossible to learn by fire in today’s world. If only we had another few days of relative stability to bring it all together.

I think about the lessons the community leaders needed to know to succeed, and how I wish they could have started this whole process over with where they are today. Young Black leadership in Seattle found each other and learned together — that is beautiful and gives me so much faith in the leaders they are today and will be tomorrow.

It makes me think of how much we as a society have failed these young leaders. We have not set them up to succeed in a time when they were called to. They had the gifts, the moment, and the support, just didn’t have the mentorship and tools to lead a decentralized movement like this effectively.

This is an extremely hard space to navigate and most people naturally hate it.

I love it.

In this ambiguous, complex community space, I feel right at home. Burning Man meets a social movement protest meets metamodern community development. Creating belonging in community chaos is my love language.

It’s taken a lot of work and evolution for me to live and embody emergent strategy as a lifestyle and approach to leadership. That is what allowed the Café to emerge through this CHOP experience.

Without the other contributors and leaders having grown in similar ways, the mental frameworks and socialized baggage that came into the space from the default world exasperated these challenging moments and probably doomed this to fail from the beginning.

If we don’t do the inner work to break through the conditioning our patriarchal, white supremacist, colonist culture has done to us, any movements and work to build the world we need will fail.

And now, on Day 15, I get to take my first chill day after two weeks of spending 12 hours a day in that CHOP. I can’t really describe what the past two weeks have been like.

I haven’t ever lived through something like it, and what’s coming out of it is beautiful.

I don’t know all that will stay standing from CHOP moving forward (I sure hope the garden and the movement it inspired keeps progressing forward) but one thing I do know, is that the Decolonization Conversation Café has turned into something amazing.

Myself, Keely, and now a couple more co-conspirators, are taking our transformative relationship-building conversations beyond CHOP!!

We have launched a website (www.decolonizeseattle.com), social channels (@decolonizeseattle), and are creating a community network to keep the conversations alive between gatherings. Beyond that, we are hosting our first virtual conversation circles on Friday and our first in-person gathering and potluck outside of CHOP on Saturday.

This is the most needed work of our time.

It’s easy to think of the biggest systemic changes needed and the policy shifts that need to happen, but the real transformation to build a city that works for everyone, a city that makes everyone feel like they belong, is about us opening up and building relationships around the sharing of our stories.

CHOP is gone, but what it has led to is something much more. I can’t wait to see where our Café goes from here.

We’re going to change lives. And maybe change our city and world in the process.