It only took eight days for the mayor of Seattle to actually follow through with her verbal committment to bring the former CHAZ and current CHOP to an end.

Well, eight days, one more shooting, one more black teenager murdered and another critically injured, and two lawsuits, but hey, Mayor Jenny Durkan finally had the area formerly known as the CHAZ, and more recently known as the CHOP, cleaned out.

Oh, and the protestors – led by socialist city council member Kshama Sawant – marched on her unlisted house and graffitied it as well, but I’m sure that the CHOP being cleaned out had nothing, NOTHING, to do with that.

Durkan, a former United States Attorney, has her address protected because of threats she received in her previous job (and the lingering aftereffects of the unsolved murder of federal prosecutor Thomas Wales in Seattle in 2001), so Sawant leading her mob to Durkan’s front door is particularly egregious. Durkan is furious and wants Sawant to be investigated by the city council. Sawant is trying to turn CHOP and all of its mob mentality into a stepping stone for her own power base as she is likely eyeing a run for mayor herself. And in the middle of this bitchslap fight of letters was CHOP, with armed Antifa “security,” an empty police precinct, and terrorized residents.

Well, Mayor Jenny had enough (but her house had NOTHING to do with it), and issued an executive order to dismantle the CHOP this morning. Seattle police and city workers moved quickly, starting at daylight.

Police Chief Carmen Best was there to walk into the East Precinct herself.

"We got it back!": Early this morning, as @SeattlePD took back the East Precinct after three weeks, Chief Carmen Best did a walk through of the building to check things out. As she enters a back room, this is how she's greeted by officers. #CHOP #Q13FOX pic.twitter.com/gdVAARCM1m

— Brandi Kruse (@BrandiKruse) July 1, 2020

There were over 30 arrests as the CHOP occupants tried to stop the police from sweeping out the area, but it was done in a matter of hours.

What a difference four hours makes. #CHOP #Q13FOX #Seattle pic.twitter.com/JC9uSkK3fM

— Brandi Kruse (@BrandiKruse) July 1, 2020

And then Mayor Jenny, who couldn’t be bothered to show up before, tried to do a small victory lap and pat everyone on the back for both “peaceful protests” and all the good stuff that CHOP did, while acknowledging that yes, two young men are dead and yes, the neighborhood businesses are in trouble and the city now owes them assistance. But hey, it’s really about the movement, the art, and the friends we made along the way, right? Right???

Racism is hard-wired into our institutions and permeates throughout our society. We can only bring to undo the trauma and injustice by centering the voices of to send who have been most affected, and that is what we will continue to do.

— Mayor Jenny Durkan (@MayorJenny) July 1, 2020

So, what can we learn from this entire shitshow?

First, never give in to the mob. Two young men are dead, and if the police had still been in the East Precinct, odds are much improved that either the shootings don’t happen or first aid is rendered quickly. That entire “summer of love” crap and the abandoning of the precinct is on Mayor Jenny’s hands.

Second, when you say you’re going to do something, DO IT. The second shooting happened days after Mayor Jenny said that CHOP needed a curfew and people needed to start going home. If she had followed through with her remarks from Monday, June 22nd, by clearing out CHOP the next morning, that second shooting with a dead 16-year-old who was likely murdered by the armed Antifa “security” doesn’t happen. Again, Mayor Jenny is to blame.

Finally, Seattle leadership will learn absolutely nothing. With the exception of one council member who made a half-assed effort to say they were all at fault, and Mayor Jenny’s ratioed apologia on Twitter, nothing will really change. After all, the city council went straight back to its ultra-socialist shenanigans less than 12 hours after clearing out CHOP. This time, it’s their attempt to pass a “business tax” in Seattle with a lower-rent version of their “Amazon tax” of two years ago that got passed and then promptly repealed. Because nothing says “recovery after a pandemic shut-down” than passing a tax on businesses, right? And the damn thing will likely pass, because the city council thinks money grows on trees that are just owned by big corporations.

And if Seattle voters run true to form, they will tell us they learned nothing from this entire debacle by the way they vote this fall. After all, this is still Seattle.

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Featured image via Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license