Tides of Flame: 3 short articles

from Tides of Flame #13

The day after a veteran SPD officer announced his plan to place memorial plaques for the 58 police officers who lost their lives while on duty in Seattle, another heroic SPD officer lost his life while struggling to protect the community. On January 5th, 2012, Rick Nelson shot himself in the head (appropriately enough) on the John Wayne Trail in North Bend.

Earlier in the day, he had been booked into the King County Jail for stealing crack from evidence. After he was released, he drove into the woods and killed himself. It is unknown how many people Nelson sent to jail for drug-related offenses during his 21 years with the SPD, but it is clear that losing his easy access to crack cocaine and having to face his own hypocrisy drove Nelson to do the right thing: kill himself. We applaud Nelson’s noble act and only wish that he had taken down some of his fellow swine with him.

Predictably, the SPD was quick to label what happened as a “tragedy.” True to form, the gang-like SPD immediately began singing the praises of a man who was clearly deranged. Nelson’s former partner, Brian Guenther, repeated the line being towed by his superiors: “This is a tragedy. Despite what some people will try and paint him as, he was a good man, a good officer, and we lost a great person today.” This type of idiocy and denial has come to characterize the exceptionally corrupt Seattle Police Department. It is well known amongst many Seattle residents that in addition to drug and alcohol problems, many SPD officer are addicted to steroids, a chemical that does nothing to minimize the natural symptoms of their insecurity.

While the City Council prepares to allocate city funds to memorialize all fallen police officers, the localNPR station, KUOW, is still sitting on a finished broadcast that details SPD steroid use. It is unknown why they have not aired this broadcast, but now would be the right time.

We hope that 2012 will be the year that the SPD is utterly destroyed and disgraced. Nelson’s suicide was an encouraging start! May all cops kill themselves and all prisoners go free, may Seattle liberate itself, and may this coming year be filled with joy, freedom and rebellion.

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Central District - Well, Turritopsis Nutricula, the immortal jellyfish, has died and is now reborn. The squat on 23rd and Alder was raided by a small police-military unit, equipped with assault rifles and an armored vehicle. Cops seem to be obsessed with piss and shit, given that they always think it’s going to get thrown on them. (Evidence of a guilt complex?) They told the media they’d heard on ‘social media’ that the evil demons inside the building were planning on throwing human waste at them and leaving booby-traps (like in the movies). Of course, when they got there, they found a bunch of sleepy people and naturally felt the need to point their guns at them.

Later, the media filmed the evicted squatters digging through their belongings that had been tossed out on the sidewalk by the police. They portrayed this salvaging as proof of the squatter’s filth and debauchery, but in reality, things were obviously quite different. Inside the immortal jellyfish, a small group of people, constantly increasing and decreasing in size, lived hectic and joyful lives. People went out in the day, got food, brought it back to share, joked, laughed, played music, talked about all manner of insane subjects, loved each other, hated each other, and lived freely.

Denmark West, former employee of Goldman Sachs and Microsoft and current executive at BET, was the legal owner of the house. He claimed that his deceased wife’s goal was to turn the long-vacant, half-finished property into affordable housing to “better the community.” However, just down 23rd, one of his properties is being rented at prices that cannot be afforded by most low-income people. We do not know all the details of his other properties and who lives there, but the media’s focus on West’s supposed “good intentions” obscures the fact that he is a member of the ruling class who has spent his adult life as a capitalist stooge of the highest order.

The occupiers of the house did nothing more than expropriate from a gentrifying corporate executive landlord and turn the property into free housing for homeless people and youths. Turritopsis wasn’t “affordable,” it was free. This is direct action. For nearly two months, the house functioned smoothly, though not without problems, like any other household. And then the police came with their armored truck and their guns and their bomb robot. They destroyed the jellyfish, dispersed it, sent it away. But on the 14th of January, a torch-lit march left 23rd and Union and rampaged to the East Precinct. Most of the former occupants of the house were there, screaming like crazy. Soon, there will be a new social center in the Central District. The jellyfish will never die.

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There have been two notable actions in Seattle since our last issue. The first took place in the early hours of January 1st, 2012. A 23 year-old man (who is said to be an art student) climbed the fence of the construction site on 15th and Pine and proceeded to begin vandalizing the construction equipment being used to erect new, expensive apartments. Unfortunately, the nearby residents of these new, expensive apartments decided to call the police and report his actions. The police arrested him for malicious mischief and burglary, claiming that he caused over $1,000 worth of damage.
We know very little about this young man other than what mainstream media has revealed.

A KIRO broadcast interviewed a construction worker who indicated that the young man once lived in the construction area and was angered that his former home was being destroyed. The construction worker told the reporter that the young man called the area “his home and we took his home away.” A week before the action, the young man wrote on his Facebook account, “I, and I trust others as well, wish to witness this world’s end. And with that end, something new and exponentially more human to manifest. We can construct the most beautiful creature with the bones of a monster if only we can bring the beast to its death. There will be no need for tombstones, only for gardens.” It is said that this young man lives on Capitol Hill. If that is the case, and he reads these words of ours, we hope he shares with us his motivations and thoughts.

The second action was far more serious and far more shrouded in mystery. In the early morning hours of January 6th, 2012, an incendiary device was discovered in the ATM foyer of the Chase bank across the street from the Othello Light Rail station. Unfortunately, this device failed to ignite and was discovered by a patron of the bank at 6:37am. The police arrived, sealed off the area and sent a bomb robot in to inspect the device. They determined that the device was in fact meant to burn down the bank and that this action was a serious attempt to strike at one of the biggest banks in the world. There is no indication as to who was behind this action, but it is clear that there are some individuals who want to strike against their capitalist enemies immediately. The media has played up the fact that this action could have hurt someone using the ATM in the middle of the night, but we trust that the authors of this act have no intention of harming anyone and that their objective is the total destruction of the capitalist world system. We have no way of knowing if this is the case, but we hope this is true.


http://tidesofflame.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/tof13read.pdf