June 16, 2020. Seattle.

My husband Bruce and I spent yesterday afternoon on Capitol Hill at CHOP (Capitol Hill Organized Protest) or CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) - they don’t agree which. This is the theme of yesterday. They don’t agree!

As we arrived we were told by a person on a front stoop that men with large guns had just passed by - she implored us to make sure people at the protest know! We also passed by men heading in wearing Make America Great hats carrying Trump banners, as well as men with huge American flags. None of these were “friends of protesters.” While we stood listening to a speaker with a large crowd (SO MANY THOUSANDS), we happened to be standing by an organization tent with first aid and security. I identified the security personnel by his walkie talkie, not his rainbow dreads. I told him what the woman on the front stoop had told us, and he said we already know about that. We have people out in neighborhoods blocks away watching for things like that, in addition to people at each entrance. He told me about his overnight “watching” when he said he does get frightened of things like cars coming through the barricades, and there are not enough protesters around to help with security. There are people all throughout the area with walkie-talkies which are in almost constant use. 

We walk up and down all the streets, through Cal Anderson Park, see camping and gardens, and every entrance. See the breathtaking block-long painting of BLACK LIVES MATTER with each letter painted by a different artist.

There are booths and supplies and signs and organization. Areas with furniture for sitting and talking about justice. There’s free kale salad and a line longer than I can see to purchase $6 hotdogs that smelled incredible. 

As we wandered back to the main stage area, meandering back toward our car, we encountered three street preachers with a huge banner, a speaker, and a bible. Their shirts were covered with a million words about Christianity, and their baseball caps read “Jesus is Lord.” A crowd of loosely-organized protesters or inhabitants of CHOP (we could not tell which) were trying to get them to leave. They were screaming about Jesus and heaven.

One of the three was DETERMINED to get back up the street to the stage, and kept laying down on the ground, seemingly delusional, grabbing at the legs of people he could get ahold of, wrestling his way up the street. The young protesters were trying to block him and talk him out of the neighborhood. He mostly went slack as resistance, crawling along the pavement trying to get back to the stage to interrupt speakers. We found out that they had been there for HOURS. Protesters had talked to them, provided a tent where they could preach to anyone who would listen. They only wanted to impede the protest. 

The way the guy kept laying down and crawling made him seem either completely under the influence of something or seriously mentally ill. The protesters had their version of security, first aid, doctors, and a psychiatrist all trying to resolve the situation. It was not clear he was in control of what he was doing. They got him to a set of stairs, with people stopping him from going back up the street and people trying to talk to him in ways that seemed to be mental health help in action. A protester tried reading bible verses to him. No matter what was happening, he kept crawling along on the ground to get back up the street. He was trapped on the stairs by people trying to help, and wrestled his way up against the edge, past the railing, up against a fence. Every moment he had any way to move, it was up the fence behind the railing, trying to get to the street above. He eventually got past the stairs, and again wrestling along a fence with desperate “security” trying to keep him from getting up the street. 

At the same time, his two friends went back and forth between arguing with anyone who talked to them about anything, incanting Jesus. One of them (carrying a rolled up six foot tall banner) seemed to just want a platform for preaching, and this scenario was working for him. One seemed to have had enough (he was carrying a speaker and a bible), and occasionally tried to talk the other two guys into leaving. If someone argued with him, he argued back, but also tried to talk both of his friends into leaving. 

Meanwhile, all of the CHOP people were mostly of about 100 different opinions about what to do about this. It was arguing and bossing. People yelling demands, people arguing positions, Every person talking to them inciting another round of evangelizing. There were people filming, and people demanding the filming stop, both positions being argued. There was one protester with a speaker and he kept playing INSANELY loud music in the middle of this scene, in an attempt to force filming to stop by ruining the audio portion. Sometimes people trying to make progress with the insane Christian on the ground and his by-standing friends would yell at him to stop the music - we can’t hear each other. He would stop until someone filming prompted more sound harassment. People SCREAMING “de-escalate!” over and over again. Protesters offering water to the guy on the ground, protesters demanding that people walk another way. Protesters insisting people not stay to watch, while personally staying to watch. People announcing it is a “medical emergency.” People telling others to go to the stage.

So as I watched this torrent of madness, as I watched endless efforts rise and fall, I decided the two friends who were ready to go and at least not writhing on the ground respectively were going to probably end up having to help their friend depart. The ready to go guy was on his phone explaining to someone, “Have you heard of the Seattle Autonomous Zone? Well that’s where we are and…” I decided to obviously not engage in any conversation with either of them because they are trained to turn any topic into salvation. But I found a moment to walk up to the two upright Christians, with hands full, and say, “If you will allow me to, I will hold your (banner to one of them, speaker and bible to the other one) so you can help your friend. I will follow you out of here and give it back to you.” One of them said, “I am not going to bodily remove him,” and the other said, “It won’t do any good because he won’t leave.” To both of them I said, “I will be here. If you change your mind, just hand them to me.”

Just then, the mad Christian on the ground got himself up, and worked his way up the street to his beloved stage to interrupt the speakers. His friends followed him, and I followed his friends. Their friend was screaming about Jesus in the crowd watching the stage, and protesters and security were swarming around all three of them, trying to force them out. By this point, we knew their names, and Bruce implored the one who didn’t want to leave, “David, help your FRIEND!,” really in his face. As he backed off he kept yelling, “David, HELP YOUR FRIEND! DAVID HELP YOUR FRIEND!” as other protesters joined in the chant. 

Surprisingly, David looked over at me and I walked over to him and took the banner from him. Within about thirty seconds his friend looked at me, and I got Bruce to grab his speaker. Even though I tried to take his bible for him also, he kept it. They finally helped their friend leave. 

We followed them for about a block with a diminishing crowd of protesters making sure they were actually leaving, and we gave them back their speaker and banner. There was a protester beside us who had been filming at the stairs while a security guy demanded he stop it. This had all happened at our elbows. Bruce says the security guy knocked the phone out of his hand because he did not agree to stop. The security guy who did that had been told about ten times over the two hours we were watching all of this that he “escalates.” 

He ended up in the face of the protester whose phone was broken and they stopped walking and really yelled at each other and I thought they were going to fight. Also the same security guy yelled at Bruce, assuming that because we had their banner and speaker we were with the Christians. Bruce was yelling the truth to him while the guy with the broken phone was yelling at him about breaking his phone. 

As we left, we caught up with the Christians in a parking lot, where one of them was interviewing the one who was on the ground, who had just minutes before seemed so delusional that the rest of us were debating theories of mental illness or inebriation (if so, on what?”)

Then we saw the video they posted on the twitter feed that the protesters use, appearing disturbingly calm and lucid, discussing his belief in Trump and in the theft of this city, laying to rest all of our theories of substance use or mental illness. Making me realize the guy who was watching beside me who said, “I think he is faking it,” right. Now I wish I knew what he saw!

This crazy Christian was the eye of a storm of a thousand ideas about what to do to solve the problem. When someone started dragging his body across the pavement, others were in an uproar against it - both because “just don’t” and because that will be used against this entire movement. When he was wriggling across the ground beneath two men up against a fence, he crawled with his head on one side of a guy’s leg, and his torso on the other side of it. Even though he had put himself there, he used the moment to scream “your foot is on my neck!” Others screamed at the guy preventing him from going up the street to let him go, which was how he ended up getting back up the street. A topic of discussion between those of us watching with the security people was how much it seemed like they wanted to corner “us” into calling the police. Most of this was on the ground, invisible to the rest of the gathering.

This was our experience, because we stayed and watched the trouble. We went with questions about anarchy in our heads, and left with questions about anarchy in our heads. We both sincerely want this experiment to evolve and grow. To be a better idea. We love the heart of what this seems like it can be.

So we are fascinated by whatever this is called, and by whatever it is trying to accomplish. Our hearts are sincerely with all of the people with and without rainbow dreads trying to make this work. It is peace and love, conversations and kale, art and grit, camping and hotdogs. It is fierce speakers and hard truths. It is a magnet for people who want to destroy it, and every single one of them is a conundrum. A moral dilemma. An argument.