We Keep Us Safe: This Ain’t Coachella

0:00This message comes from NPR sponsor Carvana. making buying a car 100 % online with real, transparent pricing and customizable financing that fits your budget. Browse thousands of cars and get yours delivered. Visit Carvana.com today. Delivery fees and terms may apply. Heads up, this episode contains explicit language and the sound of gun violence. You'll also hear intense audio of confrontations between protesters and police, including the sound of flashbangs and other loud booming noises. Previously on We Keep Us Safe. Antonio Jr. left his home for Seattle on June 23, 2020, without telling his dad.

0:46He was shot and killed at the Seattle protest less than a week later. You see a shadow outside the passenger door of the white Jeep. Unless you see any shells on the ground, pick those up, pocket them, take them home. At that time, protests were happening across the country. Say his name! Don't watch! But Seattle was different. Don't get it! Don't get it! Don't get it! God damn it, they got me, you motherfuckers! Police! Stop! Protesters' worst fears materialized. There was a car that started to accelerate. Oh, God! Oh, Jesus! The violence protesters faced actually galvanized the movement. The police are now moving out.

1:31The street is going to open up. That kind of sparked this idea of, we should stay.

1:43At the very beginning of CHOP, it felt like a giant exhale. The standoff was over. The tear gas was gone. This spot that for the past week had been a showdown between police and protesters was now a police-free zone. At the heart of CHOP was a big green city park. At night, you could see dozens of tents for people who were staying there. And during the day, thousands of people converged on this space. Protesters painted murals in the streets and set up a stage for speeches and protest songs. Yo, yo, it's a beautiful, beautiful thing to be alive right now, is it not? My dad in the Philadelphia suburbs is watching the news and is afraid that Seattle has been taken over by radical anarchists.

2:34And he calls me all freaked out, and I'm like, Dad, Dad, it's okay, let me FaceTime with you right now. And I walked him through CHOP. People had dangled extension cords from windows, so protesters living in the park could charge their phones. There were all these tables and tents stacked with donations and bottled water. So when we sing we want our world to change, we have to sing it like we want our world to change. Right here in Free Seattle, look! I want my world to change. I want my world to change. I want my world to change. It evolved into this community, The community of people that were coming together to serve the area that we were occupying better than the city was doing in our eyes.

3:21This is Rashilah Levitt, one of CHOP's emerging leaders who we met in the last episode. She says CHOP was a place where protesters poured their energy into supporting each other and the homeless population staying in the park. We had soup kitchens. We started a community garden. There's lettuces over there. Those would look like chives, maybe. We were feeding everybody. Local restaurants were donating food. Lots of food and snacks. Again, this is all free. And protesters kept up their demands. They kept pushing for city leaders to cut the police budget by at least half and invest in social services.

3:57And so the demand that I put on the list is that we take some of the$400 million that we give to the Seattle Police Department every year, and instead we put the money into community services that know how to help people in crisis without brutalizing things.

4:23I really want to stress that for a moment there, it was utopia. This guy Atris volunteered as a medic during the standoff And then he stuck around to see what this new thing would be like. We're using his codename. A lot of people went by codenames at CHOP because he's worried about the professional consequences of using his real name. I sent my wife and son up during the day to check it out because it was, yeah, it was a place of beauty at first. Yeah. I think we showed the world what it could be. And that's worth remembering.

5:05But amid all of these sunny feelings, there was already something more ominous growing beneath the surface. Protesters felt this fragile new thing they were building could come under attack at any moment, from right-wing extremists or even the police. Some of them decided they needed guns to protect the camp. CHOP existed for three weeks. During that time, a conflict played out between these two aspects of it, the gentler, utopian side and the more extreme and dangerous one. By the time Antonio Mays Jr. arrived in CHOP's final week, the utopia had faded and the more dangerous side had prevailed.

5:56From NPR's Embedded, with KUOW and the Seattle Times, this is We Keep Us Safe. I'm Will James. And I'm Sydney Brownstone. This is Episode 3.

6:23Malcolm Gladwell explores how organizations are using technology to solve complex challenges. I spoke with Sergi Ghosh, Heineken's chief AI officer. If you can connect all the different applications, all the platforms, remove fragmentation, scale very quick, that's what we call the best connected drawer. That's where IBM is really partnering with us. Listen to Smart Talks with IBM wherever you get your podcasts. This message comes from BetterHelp. Summer can feel like a sprint. Kids home, trips to plan, routines flipped upside down. It's easy to slip into survival mode, just trying to get through it.

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7:43There's a very clear moment that led to a lot of the fear and paranoia that would eventually take over CHOP. And it started on the night the police left the precinct and the occupation began.

8:00That night, protesters listening in on scanners heard police say armed Proud Boys might be on their way. We actually got a hold of these recordings through a records request.

8:19Very boisterous tonight. This confirms a fear that protesters were going to be attacked, and this fear spread through the occupation. They'd just lived through an incident in which a car had driven toward a crowd of protesters, and the driver had shot one of them. And that was fresh on their minds as some protesters listened to the scanner that night. Taking my group down around City Hall to monitor the group of the Proud Boys. Later that night, one protester seems ready to help defend the occupation. This moment was caught on video. Somebody over there, he's 18, you know how to use a gun? Hey, I got you, just don't say any names.

9:01Raz Simone is a local hip-hop artist and one of the most recognizable protesters. He was even involved in talks with City Hall. In the video, you can see Raz popping the trunk of his white Tesla, taking out a rifle, and passing it to someone. Take the clip out and put it back in. You can hear someone off screen giving this guy tips on how to handle the gun. They want to know why the gun's tonight. Just the energy that's out right now, it's possible. It might be misinformation, it might be lies. So we're just being ready. This video goes viral. There are pundits calling Raz a warlord, and it becomes a defining moment at CHOP.

9:43Pete Hegseth and Tucker Carlson, both Fox News hosts at the time, comment on it. This is a guy handing out assault rifles inside an autonomous zone, taking over as a quasi-police who thinks he's the leader. Raz Simone was an up-and-coming rapper. Now he's a monarch.

10:05But the Proud Boys never showed up that night. And then the sun rises on this new occupation. Everybody knows we're on the free! That first day, a couple of police officers venture into this new zone to try to figure out what's going on. What they find is a bunch of makeshift barricades around what seems to be a border of chop. These rows of metal fences, they look sort of like bike racks, are blocking off one of the main roads in the neighborhood. The two officers walk past the barricades and start chatting with the protesters. At first, it's pretty friendly. I thought I recognized you. It's nice to see you again.

10:48I'm Jeff. I'm Jeff. A group of people wearing kind of unusual outfits approaches. One is wearing paws and a tail. Well, that is quite an outfit. Fucking thank you. Yeah. A lot of work on that tail. I'm like self-appointed safety committee, community watch, just fucking just... Sure. I've been since 5 p.m. walking around. These people describe themselves as a kind of neighborhood watch for the protest. One guy comes up and gives a cop a fist bump. Good morning. And then another person shows up. All you pigs get the fuck out. This is an autonomous zone. No, no, no. I'm sorry, we were just having a nice conversation.

11:28You can go and ask the mayor to come down here and talk to us. That's who we want to talk to. The person saying this seems to be a white man. He's wearing all black, black pants, black leather jacket, and he's armed. You can see a gun strapped around his right thigh. Why don't we talk up there? One of the other protesters tries to calm things down. Let me try to de-escalate everything. We can escort you out of this facility right here. This is an autonomous zone, and you're welcome to leave it right now. I want to talk, just like you guys. You want to talk? Let's talk up there on the other side of that barricade.

12:02Let's go. Happy to walk up there. Let's go. Could you tell me who I'm talking to? You're talking to a Seattle citizen. De-escalation, de-escalation, de-escalation.

12:14The two officers walked away, but this moment helped determine the relationship police would have with CHOP going forward. The Seattle police decided to take a hands-off approach and would only enter the zone for the most serious emergencies. In the days ahead, guns and barricades would become an even bigger part of CHOP. When we ask protesters today why they were so focused on securing the zone, the most common answer we get is that it's because of those Proud Boys they heard about over the scanner. Omari Salisbury, the journalist who livestreamed the protests that summer, never forgot about that chatter.

12:53He was still thinking about it a few months after CHOP ended. If an officer witnessed 30 Proud Boys, you know what I'm saying, or 30 unidentifiable people with firearms going through downtown Seattle, I said, I want to see the body camera footage that aligns with this radio call right here. Omari filed a public records request. And it turned out there wasn't any body camera footage of the Proud Boys. This triggered an investigation by Seattle's Office of Police Accountability. And the agency concluded that police officers made it all up. This lie right here, this literally was a lie that went around the world.

13:37Police told investigators they were just messing around on the radio, trying to make protesters think they were still using one channel, when really they'd move their communications to a different one. And they filled that fake channel with random conversation to keep it active so that protesters wouldn't get suspicious. We were just kind of feeding information, more mundane, routine kind of information over the radio. One Echo is upset because he lost his vegetarian meal. Check for disturbance for a male throwing live chickens into the roadway. Units on TAC 3 be advised the cookies are not nut-free.

14:13On that first night of CHOP, in addition to the random chatter, some officers started talking about the Proud Boys. Do you feel the goal was to create fear in the protesters who were monitoring the radio? No. I think the majority of the fear was on our side at that time because we've been overrun on multiple occasions. I've never been attacked by the Proud Boys. I have been at protests by Antifa. So I think that focusing on the Proud Boys is not the right thing here. Seattle's Office of Police Accountability ended up calling this an improper ruse that violated department policy. Investigators blamed two officers for overseeing it, though they both left the department before any disciplinary action was taken.

14:58We still don't know all the officers who participated or why. We asked Seattle police about this, but they declined to talk with us. If the ruse was intended to scare protesters away, it backfired pretty dramatically.

15:17Afterwards, CHOP security expanded and CHOP's borders hardened. Throughout CHOP's existence, there were different factions calling themselves security. They were protesters volunteering to keep CHOP safe. Some carried guns, some didn't. I think CHOP was a chaos magnet that just attracted people, some with good, some with bad intentions. Greg Scruggs is a reporter at the Seattle Times. He sits maybe 15 feet away from me, and I'm pretty loud on some of my phone calls, and he overheard me talking about CHOP, came up to my desk and told me, hey, I wrote a freelance piece about CHOP security. I think it was for the Washington Post that I ended up embedding with the chop security and writing about that experience.

16:06He said, yeah, I'll give you all my tape. What's your name? My name is Josh. Josh, do you want to turn your last name? I'd rather not, given the nature of the situation. I'll give you my face. Greg was reporting on chop security in its earliest days. We're talking about the first week. So Greg saw the idealism, the free food and the mutual aid, and then he noticed that there were people walking around looking like they were dressed for war. Can you tell me specifically, I'm not very familiar with firearms. AR-15. That's an AR-15. AR-15. If they were carrying a gun openly, that was usually an indication that they were a self-styled security person.

16:45Tactical gear, like I might have seen some bulletproof vests. Would bulletproof be an accurate term to use? Yes, it would. Okay. And it just covers the vitals, the lungs, and the heart. Right. When Greg approached them, they seemed eager to talk about what they were doing to show off their gear. Washington's an open carry state, so it's legal here to walk around with guns in public. So what's that? This? Yeah, like, this is a concussive BB grenade. It's not lethal, it just stings. Uh-huh. I used to play with them as kids, actually. Kind of a rowdy kid. It was like they wanted to be secretive, but also wanted to be seen.

17:26How would you approach a violent crime situation? Like somebody, you know, an active shooter or kind of like the most extreme situation? If it was an active shooter, I would try and find someone who could eliminate the situation. What does eliminate the situation mean? Stop them. And options for stopping could include what? Armed response. There was a saying at CHOP, we keep us safe. This phrase started years earlier with Black activists. It was a vision for preventing violence that didn't involve police or prisons. And it's been adopted by many different movements since then. But at CHOP, we keep us safe seemed to take on a specific meaning.

18:09Like, we're going to take security into our own hands.

18:16There was one security group in particular that took this mantra to heart, and it was mostly white. They called themselves the Sentinels. This group popped up in the first few days of the occupation and took on the role of guarding CHOP's barricades. They handed out radios, organized communications, and coordinated who was stationed at the borders of this roughly eight-block zone. During CHOP, most people were introduced to the Sentinels through its most famous member, a figure who went by the codename James Madison. James Madison has transitioned since 2020, so you'll hear us using she-her pronouns.

18:56We reached out to interview her, but she declined to talk with us. Protesters back then probably remember someone who seemed to be a confident, almost brash young man who had one of the most iconic looks at CHOP. She typically wore a face mask, oftentimes tan pants, a bulletproof vest, and usually carried around an AR-15 style rifle. All you ever really saw of James Madison's face was this little sliver of skin around her eyes. Like she was part soldier, part ninja. And just a few days into this occupation, this face would come to define CHOP nationally. Fox News published an image of James Madison in full gear, photoshopped in front of a totally different image of smashed windows in downtown Seattle.

19:46It fed into this narrative that CHOP was a violent takeover of the city. Fox News ended up apologizing for putting out this deceptive picture, but James Madison didn't shy away from the attention. She kind of reveled in it. At the height of CHOP, she talked for more than an hour With a podcast called Yeah, But Still. I'm sure you've seen the photo of me running around the news, the Photoshop job. That's me. In these interviews, Madison brags about having this really hardcore military experience. I did door-kicker things. I did the stuff that our government doesn't speak of. James Madison says this type of experience is necessary to defend the protesters at CHOP.

20:28A lot of people out here think this is awesome. It's a nice little, like, summer street care kind of thing. That's the vibes we get here during the day and stuff. But it is a powder keg. But not even a powder keg because of the people here. The enemies of this group of people. It is the racists. It is the fascists that still live in this country. This image of CHOP security that James Madison puts out there appeals to a lot of people. At its peak, the Sentinels had dozens of volunteers. But while volunteer security focused on the borders, CHOP medics were watching something else change from the inside.

21:09They needed as many people with actual medical skill as they could get. Aaron was a medic at CHOP. We're using his middle name because he fears the repercussions of what speaking out publicly would do both for his career and his personal safety. So I popped down there and was wandering around and I found a little medic tent and there a bunch of untrained civilians doing really, really basic festival care, band-aids, broken fingers, that kind of thing. I was like, hey, I'm fully trained. You guys need some help? And they're like, yeah. What Aaron calls festival care, these are the injuries people sustain generally when they're having fun.

21:49They're throwing around a frisbee and they sprain a wrist. They take some ecstasy and forget to drink water. These kinds of injuries may have started happening more at CHOP because, as time went on, it started to feel less like a protest and more like a festival. Seattle, how does it feel to party in a free state? It's like a block party. Similar to something like Coachella. Thousands of people had converged on the protest zone. It's kind of like Burning Man. It's freaking chill and awesome. There were live streamers everywhere. What's up, everybody? There was also, as time went on, they started inviting the houseless population in.

22:28There was this facet of CHOP that overlapped very heavily with Seattle's street population. So unsheltered people, marginal people, very poor people. Seattle at the time had the third largest homeless population in the country. And more of those people were out on the streets because of the pandemic. Shelters had quarantined or had shut their doors completely. And then CHOP appeared and it had all this infrastructure like tents and food and medical care. So people in need started going there. And that population requires a ton of medical intervention and resources. In many cases used really dangerous street drugs, synthetic drugs, and or had serious mental illnesses that caused psychosis.

23:21We started having to worry about overdoses, and then the overdoses evolved into assaults. And along with drug use comes crime. A Seattle police intelligence report said gang members were flooding into CHOP, dealing drugs, carrying guns, running into rivals, taking advantage of the absence of police. For protesters heading into their second week of occupation, this meant that, as safe as Chop might have felt during the day, it was a very different place at night. Do not walk around by yourselves. Do not walk around in the dark. It is unsafe. Very, very unsafe.

24:04That's after the break.