Seattle cedes fire station to protesters to turn into community center

Washington Examiner – by Madison Dibble

The city of Seattle announced that it would turn a fire station into a community center for black residents after weeks of protests.

The city announced on Thursday that it would be turning over ownership of the fire station to the community in line with a list of demands given to the city from Africatown and other black activist groups.

“We at the City of Seattle understand the urgency behind making bold investments in the Black community and increasing community ownership of land in the Central District,” the city wrote. “The City believes in the vision behind the William Grose Center for Cultural Innovation and we remain committed to making the transfer of Fire Station 6 to the community a reality.”

“We have received Africatown’s list of community requests along with a longer list of asks from other black-led organizations. Deputy Mayor Shefali Ranganathan has already met with the King County Equity Now coalition and, on behalf of Mayor Durkan, she will be working with Seattle Department of Neighborhoods and Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development to work on next steps with the community,” it added.

Africatown is a Seattle-based group that aims to obtain “community ownership of land in the Central District that can support the cultural and economic thriving of people who are part of the African diaspora in the Greater Seattle region.”

The decision to change the fire station into a black community center follows days of protests against racial injustice and police brutality triggered by the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes during an arrest.

Protests in Seattle have been raging for weeks. Protesters gained control of a six-block section of the city surrounding a police precinct, which they have started to call the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. CHAZ has become a police-free city of sorts that even features a sign that reads “now leaving the USA” at its entry point.

CHAZ does have the support of some city leaders, including Councilwoman Kshama Sawant, who believes the precinct should be turned over to the protesters permanently.

Washington Examiner

9 thoughts on “Seattle cedes fire station to protesters to turn into community center”

  1. So, all you gotta do is break some windows, steal some big screen tv’s and some jewelry, burn a few cars, and beat up a few people, then hand in your list of demands, and bingo!! You got gifted and you’re in charge.

    I can’t believe what I’m reading.

    Wonder how those Seattle tax-payers feel about this.

    Bill of Rights. Bill of Rights. Bill of Rights.

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    1. And how many whites were murdered in the making of nelson mandela’s communist utopia South Africa?

      This stupid bunch of pygmies is gonna be using the portapotties for bassinets and buffet dishes by the weekend.

      This is just a bunch of feral organ grinding joo toy racists in need of a vaccine.

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  5. Sometimes in the midst of all this it, it feels like a fight to hang onto myself. I’m hangin’ on, but not much fun.

    On the quote below: I post it because it seems the protesters have no sense of the notion of the individual: It’s funny to think this could come out of an aristocratic founding father. How did those guys lose their way? Oh yeah, I forgot. Mammon. Anyhow, perhaps there were moments of clarity:

    “The explicit claim in the Declaration of Independence is that the individual is the sovereign unit in society; his natural state is freedom from and equality with all other individuals; this is the natural order of things. The implicit claim is that all restrictions on this natural order are immoral transgressions, violations; … individuals liberated from such restrictions will interact with their fellows in a harmonious scheme requiring no external discipline and producing maximum human happiness. … Jefferson was taken by the way of life in Saxony during the Middle Ages, where, as he saw it, small communities of people managed their own affairs free from dictates from on high. In a letter written late in his life, Jefferson wrote, ‘God send that our country may never have a government which it can feel.'”
    — Robert Griffin, reflecting on Jefferson

    Afterthought: What then, was owning slaves a blind spot?

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