I appreciate this piece for making it clear that what matters is protecting businesses - not people. Certainly not black people.

"Can businesses still rely on local governments, which are now rethinking the role of the police, to keep them safe?" https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/us/defund-police-seattle-protests.html

Local governments are rethinking the role of the police because police officers keep killing people.

It is possible to write a story reconciling the impacts of CHOP without creating a false equivalence that this is what happens if you rethink policing.

This piece is actually really fascinating because it illustrates the way media works to maintain the status quo.

The businesses were harmed by CHOP
The city did not aid them
They are suing for recompense

These are all the facts of the story (I'm assuming this is all true)

But the subtext is that CHOP is what will happen if BLM movement achieves its goal of defunding the police.

Here's how the story does it.

First, it never really tells us what BLM means when it says defund the police. Does it look like CHOP? Article thinks so.

Second, it makes a tie between BLM movement and CHOP directly, when CHOP said it was unaffiliated but acting in support of. Also it appeared to be mainly white anarchists.

Third, it assumes that police will keep people and property safe in a way that CHOP didn't

But, CHOP formed in reaction to police violence against protesters. In other words policing as it is currently practiced CREATED CHOP. And that's separate from, as the piece points out the police abdicated their duty.

Fourth, unless I'm wrong none of the business owners actually said how they feel about defunding the police? Just that they didn't want CHOP in their neighborhood and it wrecked business?

Fifth, the use of small business is the lens cause US people love small businesses.

Sixth, it never really talks about why people are protesting. It just says George Floyd protests and doesn't quantify that police in the US kill more people per capita than "criminals" in other countries.

It contrasts a vague idea of "bad policing" against small business owners

Seventh, it does not explicitly point out that like the police were so violent during the protests that the city had to pas a tear gas ban.

Eighth, it equates what BLM is asking for - the ordered shut down of precincts and allocation of funds to other services that have a proven track record of reducing crime - to officers abandoning precincts in a fit.

I could keep going (but don't hate myself enough). The whole point of the piece is it's basically saying that if we listen to BLM it's going to cost "us."

But at the baseline the real question is who is "us". Yes, it's disproportionately black, brown, and native people.

Who die at the hands of police officers. But police officers kill a lot of people, including a lot of white people. The levels at which police officers kill people in the US is unheard of in other countries.

But even if you think that it will never be you, we're spending a ton of money on policing and prisons - 80 billion a year per the Marshall Project. And there's little evidence any of this is making us safer.

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/12/17/the-hidden-cost-of-incarceration#:~:text=The%20Bureau%20of%20Justice%20Statistics,2.3%20million%20people%20behind%20bars.

Two last points I only noticed the second time but just think is weird is... the only person whose race is disclosed is Mr. Khan's

None of this is me saying I think CHOP was great. I wasn't in Seattle I can't speak to it. This is 100 percent a media critique.