For those of us who know about the history of the Paris Commune, there are echoes with regard to the CHAZ movement-district in Seattle, starting with misinformation and disinformation from those in establishment authority, from media to government to police organizations. There are echoes in how much misinformation and disinformation was printed in and after February 1917, when the Czar was deposed, and how such errors of fact and lies accelerated after the October 1917 revolution throughout American newspapers (radio would not show up until around 1920). In 1920, a then-young Walter Lippmann and another reporter, Charles Merz, analyzed and evaluated the lies and misinformation the NY Times told against the Russian Revolution, in a long article printed in the New Republic, that should be required reading for at least any journalism class. It was stunning to me when I pulled it out of a college library to read through back in the 1980s.
I feel badly for older people in the US who rely on cable news, particularly FoxNews, in this instance, but even CNN and MSNBC, as they will never really get to what is happening in the so-called CHAZ. What needs to be recognized by all is this CHAZ will eventually fade away, as it is simply not large enough to be anything other than a long term Woodstock situation. What the CHAZ portends, however, is what worries those who revel in the mis- and disinformation. The CHAZ is a danger to those in power in our nation because it is the threat of a good example of human cooperation. It is the threat of a good example of non-punitive policing. It is the threat of a good example of priorities that are not market based. It is a threat of a good example of responsiveness to communal needs.
These are the threats that animate the need for lies and errors of fact regarding what has happened and is happening in a small district in Seattle.
