Hello again, everyone. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on today's show is Christopher Rufo. Chris is a documentary filmmaker who's based in Seattle. He's the director of the Discovery Institute's Center on Wealth and Poverty, and he's a City Journal, a contributing editor. You can follow him on Twitter at Real Chris Rufo. As I imagine many of our listeners have heard about by now,

activists in Seattle protesting the police following the killing of George Floyd in police custody

in Minneapolis have occupied a six-block area in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.

After the city's police made the decision to abandon the local precinct building and evacuate the area,

activists took over the barricades and declared it the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,

or Chaz, for short, though in recent days it seems it's perhaps been renamed the Capitol Hill organized protest or chop.

But we'll get back to that a little later.

Chris has written extensively for City Journal about politics and radical activism,

especially in his hometown of Seattle, his two most recent pieces for us on the website

or about the situation in Chaz, and it's the reason we asked him to come on the show today to talk

about it. Chris, thanks a lot for joining us.

That's great to be with you.

First of all, Chris, I was hoping you could sort of give us a timeline of the events that led up to the declaration

of Chaz. And, you know, really explain what led the Seattle police to abandon the East

precinct and the Seattle City government to allow what is actually a significant chunk of the city

to be taken over in this fashion.

Yeah, well, all of this really originated with the George Floyd protests. And over the course of time,

after some kind of rioting and looting in the central core of downtown Seattle, the protests really

took focus around the East Precinct building in Capitol Hill.

And it's important to keep in mind that Capitol Hill is the most progressive neighborhood

in Seattle. It elected a city council member from the Socialist Alternative Political Party.

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