In 2020, in Seattle, Washington, “anarchists” took over a section of the Capitol Hill district and set up their own ersatz government, first called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) and then, confusingly, Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP). At the crime scene, which went on for weeks during what Seattle’s mayor called “The Summer of Love,” the anarchistic element was always a bit hard to figure, but the Black Lives Matter (BLM) presence stuck in memory.
Now it’s routinely considered a BLM event.
What it accomplished was a lot of violence and property loss. So Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream, a shop in the center of the 10-block CHAZ/CHOP territory, is suing.
Not Black Lives Matter.
Which the owner, Molly Moon Neitzel, takes pains to say she still supports: “At Molly Moon’s we hold race equity at the top of our list of our priorities for how we want to make the world better. Black Lives Matter. The lawsuit filed on Wednesday, June 7 is not meant to undermine that important message,” Ms. Neitzel explained.
She’s also not suing the individuals who organized and engaged in the insurrection/conquest, especially the 30 or so “protesters” eventually arrested.
The target? The City of Seattle.
Molly Moon demands compensation for revenue losses, of course, and the “team morale impacts we experienced during and for many months after CHOP caused by the City of Seattle’s decision to affirmatively create and assist the CHOP occupation of Capitol Hill, to abandon the police precinct and to stop responding to public safety needs in our beloved Capitol Hill community.”
In short: Blame the government for not protecting you from the criminals you support!
One might laugh were it not for all the violence that this very attitude excuses.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with PicFinder and DALL-E2
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
3 replies on “After Anarchy, Sue!”
In-so-far as the courts have held, for about seventy years now, that the state actually has no legal duty to protect us from criminality, I don’t expect Ms Neitzel to prevail in the court-of-law.
On the other hand,I can easily imagine the Seattle City Council and Mayor declaring that, indeed, assistance ought to be given to those injured when “some people did something”, and that a surtax or somesuch should be imposed on the capitalists to fund that assistance.
I know you are correct on your first point and fear you are also correct on the second.
The rest of the country should avoid Seattle. No organized boycotts. . Just spend your travel dollars elsewhere.