^{Wealth & Poverty Review} The End of Chaz

Early this morning, a phalanx of Seattle police officers, armed with long batons and semiautomatic rifles, cleared out the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), also known as the Capitol Hill Occupation Protest (CHOP). Unless Antifa militants stage an unexpected counterattack, this marks the end of the 24-day occupation of the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Seattle can now begin to reckon with the damage.

The CHAZ saga began on June 8, under the premise that capitalism, police brutality, and the “fascist regime” of Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan were upholding a social order that systemically oppressed African-Americans. Black Lives Matter and Antifa-affiliated activists hoped to create a new regime based on familiar social-justice principles of recent years: they established a social order based on a “reverse hierarchy of oppression,” implemented race-based segregation in public spaces, and maintained a “police-free zone” that they believed would protect “people of color” from the depredations of the state.