Monthly Archives: October 2020

BIPOC, Local

1500 march in Seattle for 150 Days of BLM Protest

Video

The video includes strong language, discussion on violence, and police activity.

An estimated crowd of 1500 assembled on Capitol Hill to march in recognition of 150 days of continuous Black Lives Matter protests in Seattle. Assembling at Cal Anderson Park, once the heart of CHOP, at 6 PM, the crowd continued to swell as a host of speakers and organizers addressed the enthusiastic crowd. Three black-owned businesses did a brisk business before protesters assembled for their march.

The march route went through downtown and stopped briefly at the West Precinct. The Seattle police reported graffiti was painted on the ecology blocks that surround the building, and some bottles were thrown. We witnessed fresh graffiti but did not see, nor hear any bottles. The march then went to Westlake, where there were more speeches by organizers and black leaders, a candlelight vigil, and live music by the Marshall Law Band. During this time a group of an estimated 100 protesters broke off and moved traffic barricades into the street according to Seattle Police Department reports.

For the return to Capitol Hill a smaller group, who had attended for over four hours, marched back to Broadway and Pine. As the evening march concluded, a large group from ENDD in black bloc, marched east on Pine before turning north on 11th. A resident of Capitol Hill reported that eggs had been thrown at the East Precinct and there was fresh graffiti.

Seattle police then appeared in force heading west on Pine and drove at a high rate of speed north on 12th. When our team moved to investigate, a large group of protesters rounded the corner at 12th and Pine, heading west, with Seattle Police chasing them with dye enhanced pepper spray and batons. No pepper spray was deployed, and upon our arrival with cameras, SPD released two they were just taking into custody and told the third person, “take a walk.” One was held by SPD while one community member yelled from a window and another protester heckled officers. Ultimately the individual was released.

National, Terra Firma, Weather

Zeta strengthens, Hurricane Watches for Louisiana and Alabama

Zeta strengthened to a Category I hurricane with 80 MPH as it continues its northwestward march toward the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. Officials in Cuba discontinued the Tropical Storm Warnings for the western part of the island nation as Zeta moved away. US officials issued a Hurricane Watch from Morgan City, Louisiana, to the Mississippi-Alabama border. The Hurricane Watch includes Lake Ponchitrain and New Orleans.

In Mexico, Hurricane Warnings include the island of Cozumel, battered three weeks ago by Hurricane Delta. Zeta is expected to pass over the Yucatan Peninsula Monday night, then emerge back into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will gather strength. Forecast models indicate that heavy rain from the system could be lashing the Gulf Coast of the United States by Tuesday night.

WDSU of New Orleans reports voluntary evacuation orders in Orleans Parish for those who live outside of the levees and in Jefferson Parish for all residents. Additionally, mandatory evacuation orders for all campers, RVs, and boat residents on Grand Isle. Zeta will be the 11th named system to make landfall on the United States in 2020, a record, and the fourth system to strike the Yucatan Peninsula. 

Editorial, National, Think About It

Streamer hospitalized in Austin after protester beatdown

Streaming is not easy.

Responsible, journalistic streaming is not an idiot holding a smartphone.

Responsible streaming is not streaming while protesting at the same time, within the body of protesters.

On Saturday morning, Hiram Gilberto, a highly respected streamer out of Austin, Texas, was savagely beaten on camera by a group of protesters. His equipment was destroyed and he was hospitalized. He is now home recovering from a concussion and his injuries include a black eye, bruises, cuts, and scrapes.

There are some dedicated journalists and independents. Locally peeps like Concrete Reporting and Joey can tell you it is hard, it is dangerous, and it comes with almost no reward.

The cops don’t want you filming.
The protesters increasingly don’t want you filming.
The alt-right wants you dead, literally.
The left complains you show too much.
The right complains you don’t show enough.
Journalistic streamers run into the line of fire, not away from it.
Journalistic streamers are vigilant to report the story, not become the story.

In Seattle, respectful streamers spend most of their time in a no man’s land on the police line’s edge. No one has your back. You’re typically the last person through an intersection. If you’re hanging back as you should, somebody could waffle stomp you, or the police could arrest you, and no one would know. Increasingly when protesters chant, “who got our backs, we got our backs, “streamers cringe on the inside.

Journalistic streamers can spend 3, 4, even 6 hours walking without a break, without a bathroom, without a sip of water. They are holding equipment steady, answering questions, providing real-time narration. They are continually asking questions to themselves. Do I have enough battery charge? Is the lens still clean? Who is behind me, who is beside me, what is that car doing, is that person following me a threat?

The fallacy that someone can shoot four hours of raw video and then edit it for release misses a critical point. If you take four hours of video, you have to watch four hours of video before you even start to edit it. Mass editing of content at that scale requires computing horsepower, technical knowledge that isn’t common, and an enormous amount of time. Most streamers don’t even do highlight clips post stream because it is a tremendous amount of time.

Video stored locally has no concurrent backup (MP4 doesn’t support that). It is far easier for law enforcement to copy off of a device. On a phone or camera with a memory card, that card could just…disappear. Who will believe someone arrested when they say the memory card is gone and the police say it was never there.

Then there are three other 800-pound elephants in the room. First, organizations exist today that create highlight reels of protests and the Black Lives Matter movement; they’re called the mainstream media. They show the essential bits, mostly involving police officers. What they offer is violence, what we like to call protest porn. No one from the MSM has contacted me saying, “Hey, we saw your 3 hours of peaceful protest live stream from Saturday, and we’d like to use it for this news story we’re working on.”

Second, the streamer only has one insurance policy for their personal safety, the stream. If they are arrested, a stream shows a before-during-after and is stored in the cloud. The device can’t be smashed, and the memory card can’t disappear. If they are violently attacked, the stream is the only witness to the assault. An immediate example of this is Brad Fox in CHOP in the late hours of June 28 and his unrelated bullshit arrest about a month later. His stream was the witness to both of these incidents.

No one is going to watch a 2-1/2 hour previously recorded peaceful protest. However, the 2-1/2 hour peaceful protest is needed to fight the “all protesters are violent thugs” narrative. An edited video is quickly dismissed with the declaration, “you edit your videos, so you just took out the bad parts.”

An example of this was a right-wing streamer in Bellevue on October 24, claimed a Starbucks was destroyed. The “proof” was shaky at best, but the story picked up momentum on the eastside. The narrative? “Here is a video of the police rushing to this Starbucks! It got destroyed!” That was good enough for people who want to believe the BLM movement is violent.

When a journalist, and Hiram is absolutely a journalist, is assaulted, we are all assaulted. Not only is Hiram a journalist, but he is also an individual of great ethics.

Should Hiram have taken a walk? Probably. Should he have been hospitalized? Absolutely not; it is disgusting. When you beat reporters in the name of “security,” you become the system you’re fighting.

You cannot watch videos of the violence against the press and condemn it if you support what happened to Hiram. Examples include the Australian news crew beaten by Washington DC police, the US head from the British news organization The Independent falsely arrested in Seattle, or the reporters from The Daily Caller arrested in Louisville. To point to these examples of police brutality, declare “All Cops Are Bastards” and then spin around and beat a reporter senseless is hypocrisy.

Pot meet kettle.
Kettle meet pot.

Worst of all, Austin defunded their police department by over 30% with almost no drama. Texas has shown at least some willingness to address the systemic racism within the police of their state. In comparison, Washington and Oregon appear like racist backwaters.

The actions of these protesters feed the rioters and thugs narrative. It ironically goes against their claims of being endangered by the camera. Beating someone senseless on camera, when your claim being on camera could get you arrested, is ironic. And using the word ironic is charitable. We stand with Hiram and his defense of the First Amendment, which includes a free press.

If you want to support Hiram Gilberto

You can support Hiram Gilberto in his recovery and to secure new equipment on CashApp and Venmo:

CashApp: $Hirambae
Venmo: @hiram-Garcia-2

National, Terra Firma, Weather

Historic Tropical Storm Zeta expected to become hurricane

Tropical Storm Zeta, the 27th named storm in the 2020 hurricane season, is churning in the Caribbean on a collision course with the Yucatan Peninsula.

The earliest 27th named storm in history, Zeta is expected to strengthen into a hurricane before making landfall Monday night or early Tuesday morning, local time. Zeta has sustained winds of 70 MPH, just under hurricane strength and moving northwest at 7 MPH. Hurricane warnings are posted along the northern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula, and Tropical Storm Warnings are posted in western Cuba.

Hurricane battered east Texas, Louisana, and Alabama are once again in the bullseye. With confidence growing, Zeta would be the 11th named storm to make landfall in the United States, with projections indicating the storm will arrive Wednesday evening. If Zeta makes landfall in the United States, it would be a record-setting eleventh tropical system to strike the United States in a single hurricane season.

Officials advise Louisiana residents to prepare for yet another tropical system, with storm surge, wind, and flooding rains.

National

The election dashboard flashes yellow for Biden

A slew of new polls has come out over the weekend. Although they don’t indicate the Democrats should panic, they should be moving to yellow alert.

In deciphering the data coming out, each election cycle poses challenges when reading between the lines. In 2016, pollsters missed the divide between white non-college-educated and white college-educated males, with the latter making up a significant portion of Trump’s base. Although many are quick to dismiss the pollsters are egregiously wrong in 2016, the reality is most pollsters came within the margin of error. In the four key states that gave Trump the win, the margin of victory was narrow.

The so-called firewall state for Biden shifted back to Nevada over the weekend, while it has remained South Carolina for Trump. We consider a firewall state a state where there is a 90% or better chance that the state will go to a particular candidate. Any state “left” or “right” of that state (depending on the political leanings) is a lock unless something incredible and unforeseen happens.

Although several bad polls out of Texas battered Trump, and early voting numbers there are massive and giving Biden a considerable advantage, the latest Sienna/NYT poll has Trump up by 4 this morning. Trump grew his tenuous leads in Iowa, Georgia, and Ohio over the weekend.

For Biden, the leads he is holding in North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, and Pennsylvania contracted. If there is a repeat of 2016 polling errors, all three of these states would be won by Trump. A couple of polls out of Arizona show a wild swing in the Kelly(D) vs. McSally (R-I) race. I would consider these numbers suspect as a 13-point swing is hard to process with no apparent event in the race to support it.

Another point of concern with Democratic strategists is the Biden team is turning their focus to Texas and Georgia, believing they can flip these states. Some see this as a repeat of 2016 and want the Biden campaign to prioritize defending the lead in the rust belt states and Pennsylvania while working on flipping Iowa and Ohio.

For Biden supporters, they shouldn’t be hitting the panic button – yet. Biden holds an aggregate national lead of 8-1/2% to 10%, which is significantly larger than Clinton at this same point in 2016 (5.6%) and well outside the margin of error. Additionally, one factor that pollsters may not be correcting enough for is the dwindling number of likely voters who are willing to respond to a poll and haven’t voted yet. Some models predict 100 million Americas will have voted before election day, which is close to 80% of all the votes case in 2016. Are the polls over counting the people who haven’t voted yet, leaning more toward Trump? Pollsters are undoubtedly aware of this and adjusting their models, but do they have a reliable baseline to use?

Regardless of your political affiliation, the most critical thing you can do is vote and vote early. With officials concerned about election day violence, voter intimidation, and ballot boxes burned in numerous cities, there is sure to be manufactured chaos on election day. If you want your vote to count, then do it early this week if possible.

BIPOC, Local

Black Lives Matter protesters took their message to the Eastside on Saturday

A flyer distributed online over the past week had stated the purpose of the march: “Bellevue is home to the richest people in the world — it’s time to wake them up…”

The group gathered at Downtown Park in Bellevue, WA, before marching through the downtown streets of the city. They chanted familiar slogans to those watching nearby, such as “Off your phones and into the streets.”

Several observers cheered as the marchers passed and some, dressed in their gowns, even left nearby bars and restaurants to join in. A baby could be seen marching as well as one woman who described herself as a “grandma.”

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”2″ gal_title=”October 24 Bellevue Protest”]

Not everyone was as enthusiastic. About 15 individuals also followed the march with their cell phones or cameras while live-streaming the demonstration. Neoconservative media personality Katie Daviscourt was among them.

Local initiative celebrity and former gubernatorial hopeful Tim Eyman was also walking alongside the police on the sidewalk. Supporters of Donald Trump, Loren Culp, and the police were out in force near the intersection of NE 8th Street and Bellevue Way NE. One young man on his bike yelled “race traitors” at some of the white marchers.

A heavy police presence tracked the protesters’ every move. The Seattle Police Department and Port of Seattle Police were also there providing support to local law enforcement under a mutual aid agreement. Uniformed Washington State Patrol officers provided added security to the Bellevue Square Mall.

As the march continued downtown, a “civil emergency” was declared by the City of Bellevue. Cell phones on all sides suddenly lit up and the emergency alert tones filled the air. The notice read:

“The City of Bellevue has declared a civil emergency and enacted a weapons ban in the downtown area due to an imminent threat of injury to persons and property during protests tonight (Saturday). Please avoid the area.”

The march resulted in no significant property damage and bike officers only intervened twice to separate the marchers from their critics.

The biggest impact of the demonstration may be on the Bellevue economy and lost tax revenue. Many businesses closed early and hired private security at their own expense. A few businesses appeared to have also boarded up their windows. Furthermore, the overtime for the responding law enforcement agencies is likely to be significant.

LGBTQIA

Interview: Eleanor Jones and her son’s quest to play soccer as a transgender teen

Video 1 Comment

Bobby Jones is a 13-year old teen who loves soccer. He is also transgender. The Puget Sound Premier League would allow Bobby to practice with his team, the Titans, but not play. On October 21, 2020, the league granted a one season waiver to Bobby but has not changed their policies. We talk with Eleanor Jones and her family’s story in their quest to let bobby play. #letbobbyplay

BIPOC, Breaking News, LGBTQIA, Local, Weather

Malcontentment Happy Hour: October 22, 2020

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Happy Hour for October 22, 2020

  • Washington reaches a grim C Disease milestone
  • LGBTQ Commission calls for Mayor Durkan Resignation
  • Bobby Jones struggle to play soccer at as a transgender teen and seeking equality for all
  • The Say Their Names Memorial Arrives in Kirkland
  • Winter is coming, and I’m not talking in metaphors BOOKMARK, LIKE, FOLLOW,
Breaking News, LGBTQIA, Local

EXCLUSIVE! Seattle LGBTQ Commission to call for the resignation of Mayor Durkan

The Seattle LGBTQ Commission will announce on Thursday that they are joining calls for Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan to resign or be removed from office.

The public open letter to Durkan and the Seattle City Council reads, in part:

“It is with a heavy heart that we call for Mayor Durkan’s resignation. Mayor Durkan is Seattle’s first out lesbian mayor and only the second woman to hold that office. We believe that LGBTQ+ people and women, along with Black people and others targeted by white supremacy, belong at all levels of the local and federal government. Such representation is important. However, that representation must involve work to protect our community members from very real harm and violence that has been leveraged against Black and brown LGBTQ+ people. Mayor Durkan’s
actions in office have not only failed to create meaningful change for our community but have
indeed undermined other efforts within Seattle to create a more just future.”

Link to LGBTQ Commission Letter: https://t.co/IZV2Ayv3qo?amp=1

The advisory body of representative residents of Seattle advises the Mayor, City Council, Seattle Office for Civil Rights, and other Seattle City departments on issues or policies and their ramifications for LGBTQIA residents of the city.

The mayor herself identifies as a lesbian. She and her partner Dana Garvey have two sons but remain unmarried and are not registered as domestic partners.

The Seattle Human Rights Commission had sent out an open letter on October 7, 2020. It reads, in part:

“As the Commission charged with amplifying the human rights concerns of the Seattle community and providing the City’s leadership with recommendations on improving the rights of all the people of Seattle, it is our duty to speak up and speak out for our least privileged community members and not to be complicit in the harm done to them by City leadership.

Given this, it is our belief that we cannot wait until November of 2021 to remove Mayor Durkan and replace her with a servant-leader who will uphold the duty to protect the rights of all citizens, to hold their humanity above all else, and to live up to Seattle’s designation as a Human Rights city.

“We call on Mayor Durkan to immediately resign, and in the absence of her resignation, we call on the City Council to begin removal proceedings for willful violation of duty…”

Link: https://www.seattlehumanrights.org/…/seattle-human-rights-c…

The total number of current Seattle LGBT Commissioners was not available but 12 commissioners took part in a vote on the matter. The Commission can have up to 21 members; eight appointed by the Mayor herself. The City Council can also appoint eight members. Four are appointed by the Commission itself. The final Commissioner can come through a leadership development program for 18-29-year-olds.