PEOPLE OF THE EI @ SEATTLE PROTESTS
INTERVIEW WITH VOLUNTEER MEDIC JOSH ANDERSON
For nearly two weeks now the Black Lives Matter Protest / George Floyd Rebellion has raged in Seattle, much of the action centered around Cal Anderson Park at 11th and Pine in Capitol Hill. We’ve been hearing a lot of reports of first aid supplies being destroyed and medics being specifically targeted by SPD during the protests. We wanted to talk to some of the folks on the ground who are trying to keep the protesters safe.
Josh Anderson is an independent volunteer medic working on the ground during the protests. He says he has a background in military and special ops and works in security at venues in Seattle. I wanted to talk to Josh about his own perspective as a medic on the frontlines here, as well as discuss rumors I’ve been hearing on the ground about medics being specifically targeted by police.
In a phone interview this morning, Josh told me that the first couple days were fine, but that as the medic crews and supply chain of food, drinks, protective gear and bathrooms started to get solidified and organized, there was a definite shift in the attitude of police towards medical crews on the ground.
“After the first couple days on the ground, that’s when they started targeting us,” he said. “I believe they got scared that we were so organized, that once we had a supply chain going and medic stations set up we were too organized and would be harder to manage and control and shut down. So they suddenly withdrew from East Precinct, moved back to Volunteer Park and other areas where we don’t have an existing supply chain. Tactically, I think they were just trying to disorganize our organization.”
We talked about Sunday night June 7, the night that several protesters were injured- two of our Entropy ground crew including my daughter Meg (who redshirt medics treated on the stairs of their building) as well a 26-year-old woman not from our crew who was hit in the chest and had to be taken to the hospital.
“What the hell happened out there that night? It was fine if a bit chaotic when I left the barricades maybe an hour before, what happened that you saw that led to things getting so explosive so fast ?” I asked.
“That night went a little hectic,” he said. “Earlier that day (at the barricades), a small group started throwing a bike rack over the barrier and eventually they started moving the barrier up and the whole crowd moved up behind them. It wasn’t everyone at first, just a few of them. They were yelling at the cops, antagonizing them.”
I note that I had been at the barricades myself the previous day and then later had watched on livestream as that group dismantled the bike racks and spirited them out through the crowd. I actually thought that was pretty ingenious, how they managed that right under their noses, I say. He acknowledges that it was clever with a wry chuckle. I point out that the crowd has every right to yell at the cops and insult them and express their anger verbally without being tear gassed and attacked, and he acknowledges that, yes, they do.
I ask if he had also been there on the ground the previous evening (Saturday), when protesters also moved the barrier up peacefully, all the way up to the police line, without being tear-gassed, and then engaged in a tense but lengthy dialogue with a line of bicycle cops. Yes, he was there that night too, he says, but notes that “the energy was very different on Sunday.” I agree with him on that, noting that I’d felt that energy myself before things went down.
“SPD did give several warnings that I heard,” he says, “Including a warning about something being thrown at one of their officers.” A water bottle from the back is what I had heard, I say, or maybe a rock. He agrees that it’s unclear what exactly was thrown that hit the officer.
I pointed out that SPD was fully protected in riot gear, rumored to be roughly $5K per officer, and that even a rock being thrown was unlikely to cause actual harm, whereas the protesters are largely unprotected and facing pepper spray, flashbang grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas. Does he consider the SPD response to be disproportionate?
“Yeah, that’s true,” he acknowledged. “I don’t agree with anything they (SPD and National Guard) are doing out there, it’s terrible.”
Josh notes that one thing he has seen escalating things is on the ground is fights between protesters. I ask him to expand on that – what kind of fights? What kinds of protesters? He gives an example of a group of folks arguing over what one of them was saying on a mic or megaphone, how it started to get very heated and how he and other security and medics noted police getting into defensive posture.
“We’ve been having to de-escalate a lot of fights between protesters,” he notes. “And it seems that SPD might be using any kind of conflicts among protesters as an excuse to start gassing people.”
Because Josh also works in venue security and knows many people who work in nightlife security, I want to dive deeper on this issue. You work venues in Seattle, I say, you know many people who work in nightlife where you have to learn to de-escalate situations. In your years of experience in those situations, have you ever seen a case where SPD would escalate, say, a fight between a group of 5-6 drunk dudes outside a venue, into tear gassing everyone inside the venue to stop those few people? No, he answers, that wouldn’t happen. We chat about that for a bit, but neither of us has any conclusive answers for why SPD couldn’t just use basic security de-escalation techniques to deal with one or two troublemakers as opposed to tear gassing and pepper spraying and flashbanging an entire crowd.
With your military/tactical hat on, I ask him, what was the point of SPD attacking the protesters on Sunday when Saturday’s barrier move had ended in peaceful dialogue ?
“I have no idea what they (SPD) were thinking at that moment,” he says. “But their response has been very inconsistent, I’ll say that.”
How about the sudden retreat from East Precinct? I ask. From a tactical viewpoint, what are your thoughts on that ?
“I mean it’s all basic tactics, you can see the tactics they’re using if you know what to look for. If you feel like you’re about to get overwhelmed, you retreat, you bolster up your forces, you rest up, which is what they’ve done. You wait for them to come to you,” he said. “But when they abandoned the precinct, that was really weird, how fast the police just disappeared.”
Because they didn’t all actually leave, I said, we always knew they had a whole team inside that building just waiting for things to go down. He agrees.
“We speculated maybe they weren’t actually gone, and then I saw on the news the next day that they’d just been hiding inside the whole night and never left.”
What do you think they hoped to accomplish by that, abandoning East Precinct for a couple days and then coming back today? I ask. He has no idea and again emphasizes SPD acting inconsistently, from a tactical standpoint. I agree with him on this and note that it seems very arbitrary, how decisions are made on both sides. Like there’s not a real plan, or the plan changes depending who’s in charge.
Before we close, I want to hear from Josh about an issue I’ve been hearing from a lot of medics and security on the ground: their sense of betrayal at the SPD and how they have been specifically targeting medics and crowd security. How does he feel about this ?
“Yeah, one of the security crew got shot by rubber bullets like seven times, and I’ve seen them targeting medics myself,” he says. “I am not wearing a redshirt out there so I’ve been less of a target, but I’ve seen it, yeah. A lot.”
He pauses. I hear the exhaustion in his voice as he adds, “Many of us worked hard to have such good standing and relationships with the officers who regularly respond to our calls at venues. We’ve worked in partnership with them on the scene, we’ve worked CHBP (Capitol Hill Block Party) and Bumbershoot alongside these guys. And one officer here told me to ‘fuck off’ just for trying to get some information, others wouldn’t even respond to me.” He sighs. “I’ve worked side-by-side with them. It feels really weird to have them turn against us like this. They haven’t even once just acknowledged that we’re down here to help. It’s sad.”
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Kim Voynar
(she/her pronouns)
LinkedIn: Kim Voynar
kimvoynar.wordpress.com
“Money is the cheapest thing. Freedom is the most expensive.” – Bill Cunningham