Capitol Hill Commune shakes Trump's 'nervous system'

The Capitol Hill Commune, in the heart of Seattle, has been awaiting its first anniversary and has become an uncomfortable thorn in the side of President Donald Trump, who has vociferously ordered Democratic Mayor Jenny Durkan and the governor to immediately retake the area on Twitter.

Activists from the Black Lives Matter movement, autonomist and anarchist collectives, among other groups, created the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone" in Washington state, in the northwestern United States. The autonomous area, surrounded by barricades, extends for about ten blocks in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, including one of the city's police precincts. The region, in central Seattle, was the scene of protests and clashes with police after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25th.

Trump restarted his reelection campaign under the shadow of vigorous uprisings by the Black population across the country and the symbolic Capitol Hill Commune. Sectors of the far right are calling for forceful action against the "terrorists," an expression also used by the US president to refer to the new "communards" of the era of globalized social networks.

The images of Capitol Hill these days aesthetically remind us of the self-managed hippie camps of the 60s, and according to the New York Times, it's a mix of "street festival and politicized commune." Meanwhile, for the Trump-supporting Fox News, the place has become a dangerous nest of terrorists and evildoers who promote chaos, extort money from businessmen in the occupied area, and threaten to set the country ablaze.

The national debate surrounding Capitol Hill expresses the deep class contradictions of American society. The wave of anti-racist protests and protests against police violence that arose in the wake of George Floyd's murder is one aspect of the social unraveling in the country – with approximately 40 million unemployed and ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic.

A look at the movement's list of demands accurately portrays the hardships and obstacles faced by the majority of the Black and poor white population in the United States. The 30 demands presented by the Capitol Hill Commune are the same as those presented by various movements and coalitions fighting for rights in the US.

The demands address economic and social issues such as increased investment in healthcare, the creation of a system to ensure access to housing, public funding for universities, and greater social protection from the state. In addition, there are the demands that gave rise to the protests: an end to the systematic and brutal police repression against the Black population, changes to police protocols and demilitarization, the implementation of community policing with patrols made up of residents, and the dropping of all charges against participants in the anti-racist protests.

Several political analysts see the movement as part of a plot to favor the Democratic Party in the November elections, whose candidate is a "pale" Joe Biden. Analysts linked to Steve Bannon's conspiratorial thinking believe in a grand scheme by the "deep state," with transfers of fabulous sums of money and technological contributions to Black Lives Matter, which they claim is controlled by the Obama couple. Both assessments are part of narratives involved in the immediate political dispute already focused on the presidential elections.

The protests and the Seattle commune itself are inseparable from the struggle for greater democracy and inclusion in American society, revealing the ongoing weakness and decay of the imperialist establishment. Progressive and left-wing forces should support and show sympathy for the uprising in the heart of the empire – without resorting to pre-established mental models and ideological recipes.

One immediate effect of Capitol Hill was the shock to Trump's nervous system and that of his "campaign staff," and it was also a week in which domestic politics kept the Trumpist far-right awake at night, relieving the burden of machinations against Venezuela and Cuba – at least for a few days and hours. And all this thanks to the young and connected "communards" of Capitol Hill. It's not much, it won't amount to anything, some would say, but it's a lot…