(Image: Matt Mitgang/CHS)
Seattle Police and members of the city encampment clearance workers were at Cal Anderson Park’s south end Wednesday morning to move tents and tell campers around the Black LIves Memorial Garden to move along. A notice provided a phone number for campers to call to find out more about shelter options.
Wednesday’s efforts appeared focused on the tents and campers and did not involve the arrival of any heavy equipment like the type that was delivered by Seattle Parks to the area in late October.
CHS reported then on the parks department decision to back down from clearing the area and removing the garden. More tents have joined the area since as organizers have maintained a presence at the site lined up for what Seattle Parks says is a needed “turf restoration” project in the bowl that officials say is required “to host gatherings and large events” as part of the space’s “intentional design as a natural amphitheater and proximity to electrical and water hook-ups.”
(Image: Matt Mitgang/CHS)
The mayor’s office typically handles communications around Unified Care Team activities and has not yet responded to our inquiry about Wednesday’s clearance. In September, the Harrell administration told CHS camping activity on the other end of the park had become a recurring problem as the area continued to be “repopulated” despite repeated clearances.
UPDATE: A spokesperson for Mayor Bruce Harrell confirmed the sweep. “This morning, the City’s Unified Care Team (UCT) resolved an unauthorized encampment at Cal Anderson Park as part of our efforts to keep public spaces clean, open, and accessible to all.” The rep tells CHS that 14 people were “residing onsite” and said that outreach workers were able to connect four individuals to “shelter referral.”
The mayor’s office say Cal Anderson is monitored regularly by the Unified Care Team “as a frequently repopulated site.”
The parks department, meanwhile, has not backed off its plans to clear the garden and remove it from the park’s southern edge. Seattle Parks says it has offered to work with the Black Star Farmer group that helped shape the initial garden and that has stewarded the space over the years to relocate the garden in the park or move it to another Seattle Parks location including a space behind the Rainier Community Center.
Black Star Farmers says the garden should remain where it was created in June 2020 during CHOP. “Forceful displacement of community projects like BLMG is consistent with violent state projects like imperialism, colonization, and gentrification,” the group said in its “call to action” asking for public support against moving the garden.
(Image: Matt Mitgang/CHS)
Volunteers have worked to improve the area in recent weeks including painting artwork on the park’s facilities including its restrooms and shelter house community space.
We are still gathering information on Wednesday’s clearance effort and what might come next. There were no immediate reports of arrests during the operation a city spokesperson said included “outreach and site cleaning activities.”
HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE THIS SPRING
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🦢🐑🌞🌻
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It could have been relocated east and west of the community room to accommodate events in the sun bowl, but the anarchist collective said no because they were never really interested in gardening. They are just bullies that want to occupy a public space because they can to get attention and to use as their clubhouse for vandalizing the neighborhood whenever an national or international event gives them an excuse to be self-righteous a*ssholes.
You are 100% correct. As of late, they guard and occupy this area 24/7 in some form or another. These are similar tactics they had deployed all of 2020, but have recently refocused their efforts to once again take advantage of this strategic location. We are all watching.
If you are looking for guards you’ll see guards. Try saying hi and being nice. Or even… open (I know, I know, but hear me out) I’ve seen people fed, clothed, equipped for safer sex and drug use, and brought back from overdoses in the garden. I’ve seen college classes come learn about plants and mutual aid and political struggle in the garden. I’ve said hi to people in the garden and they’ve been friendly and welcoming. Please don’t be so quick to judge a book by its Komo headline. It’s just tired.
Some of them probably don’t even live around here.
Agree.
Public spaces belong to all people. And no more squatting and hoarding and leaving 5 tons of garbage for tax payers to pick up the tab.
With the new City Council, I expect this malaise finally being addressed.
Wow!!! I did not see that coming. I was walking past their last night and I was like, this might be here a while. Honestly I supported it since the last times I saw tents there was blm. In other news. My levels of empathy are taking a hard hit, and as a self proclaimed empath, that is not good. Telling unhoused, disabled and those who will hopefully have seek and need proper recovery, to figure it out somewhere else’s is getting harder to deal with emotionally. Of course like most, I have no solutions, and it’s starting to feel like I don’t have a heart either, but like most, I also don’t have the resources alone to have a solution. #community
It’s supposed to be a community space for the ENTIRE community. The garden can be moved to an area adjacent to the bowl space which can then be used for community events and gatherings instead as a token patch of weeds.
Ungardened garden space for all!!!
Sawantism is dead and D3 majority Seattle is dancing on its grave. Rejoicing the parks are being given back to their rightful owners – the City of Seattle – and not some fundraising stage prop Marxist ‘garden.’
Nice new tents too. Looks like Mutual Aid continues to throw away their money acquiring new tents to donate. Mutual Aid continues trying to force permanent revolution on a neighborhood that has rejected it multiple times now.
Who are you actually talking about here? “Mutual aid” is the name of a general activity, not a specific organization.
They growing weed or poppies in this anarchist garden? If the answers no, it gotta go.
“Volunteers have worked to improve the area in recent weeks including painting artwork on the park’s facilities including its restrooms and shelter house community space.”
In other words, illegal graffiti!
“Illegal” Graffiti (/legally ambiguous graffiti currently?) is a huge part of our neighborhood’s character. If you don’t like it, well, that’s okay I guess, decorate your own living room however you want. Some of it isn’t my favorite either. I got my own living room I can put my art in so I don’t feel like I gotta tear down someone elses. Also the stuff that’s really good they always seem to paint over first.
Public parks are only for $3k a month 1 bedroomers and their dogs ok. All others must go into treatment.
Now that the fall harvest is over this is a good time for everyone to take a nice break from all the intense farming!
Not to be a know-it-all, but firewood gathering season follows the harvest in subsistence cultures.
I feel like this is the most attention that organizers have given to the garden all year. For most of the past growing season, the garden looked straggly and untended. I assumed it was abandoned, then came the announcement that Seattle Parks was planning to restore the area and suddenly they cared about it.
That’s exactly what happened. There were events put on by the Garden about once every 3 months. Then when announcement it was going to be dismantled it changed two events three times a week along with a film series. The promotional material made it seem like these were normal goings on when in fact it only started up when the announcement was made nothing had been planned previous.
There were at least monthly work parties and gatherings all summer. During peak growing season I saw people there weekly… Just because it looks like plants should look, and not some manicured collection of non-native ornamental plants doesn’t mean that it’s not been well-cared for!
Can someone explain how removing a garden that was planted in a public park without consent is like imperialism or colonialism? If anything, wouldn’t the people who took the land away from the public for their own use be the colonizers in this scenario? I have no opinion about the garden, but I really hate faulty arguments.
No, of course not. Imperialism and colonialism are not even remotely appropriate pejoratives for what has been happening with the removal this garden.
They are however very effective buzz words that some activists throw around in attempt to give urgency and weight to their stances on such matters. No good progressive wants to be on the wrong side of “imperialism” and “colonialism,” do they?
The person behind this has never lived on Capitol Hill and only lived in Seattle two years prior to chop/chaz. So he came into this public space in a neighborhood he had no real ties with and declared that this plot of public land would be his for his purposes. I would say that would be the colonialism. So why is he accusing those opposed to it of colonialism? I guess it’s one of those things of accusing others of what you’re most guilty of.
I read it as a reference to the fact that this area was a thriving source of food and medicine prior to the spread of colonization and the major land transformations that were involved with those projects. There’s no reason we couldn’t still have many of those resources throughout our city, but it requires prioritizing plant diversity over more monoculture turf grass…