Radical Hospitality in Seattle's CHOP
Like in many American cities, Seattle protestors demanding racial justice and an end to police brutality gathered for several nights after the killing of George Floyd. Following multiple days of protests outside the East Seattle Police Precinct, protestors established CHOP, or the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, on June 8 when police vacated the station in the heart of Seattle.
Filipino-Mexican American pastor Matt Abad moved into the parsonage at Calvary: The Hill for several weeks during CHOP. The church Abad co-pastors sat within CHOP's boundaries, near the community garden at Cal Anderson Park.
Abad led a team of volunteer congregants providing water, food, restrooms, cell phone charging stations, and basic first aid during CHOP. He is clear that congregants served where they saw a need instead of putting a particular political stake in the ground. “We were not there protesting,” Abad says. “We were loving our neighborhood, and the unhoused neighbors who were somewhat displaced by the presence of the police and protestors.” CHOP welcomed the help, with organizers frequently dropping off medical supplies, bottled water, and food for the church to distribute.
CHOP was an education and an exploitation. It was celebratory and dangerous. Powerful conversations happened on thrifted furniture on the street, and armed white supremacists drove around the perimeter.
Capitol Hill has always been a place for wanderers, skeptics, artists, and the LGBTQ+ community. Like the rest of Seattle, the neighborhood has become more expensive, with one bedroom apartments in new constructions starting at $2,000 a month.
Capitol Hill is also the heart of creative Seattle. When I lived in the neighborhood in the aughts, you could still get a vegan pancake at the Globe for ten dollars that was as dense as a brick and lasted for three meals. It’s been replaced with an Italian restaurant that serves $24 risotto. Capitol Hill is where well-known and unknown Seattle-area bands filled the Chophouse practice spaces until it was turned into a fancy collection of shops and eateries called Chophouse Row.
A friend pointed out that a strength of the protests, and of CHOP, is that residents of an expensive city like Seattle need an infusion of independence and personality—especially anyone that’s been priced out. Something creative, wild, with an element of spectacle. But what do we do when violence overshadows the positive work of organizers, a space established after the killing of a black man becomes a white spectacle, and proud boys start roaming around in pickups?
At their best, when churches are engaged they can be a healing presence in their neighborhood, with its particularities and history. “As Christians, a crucial part of loving our neighbors and caring for our places is understanding the historic forces such greed and racism that have shaped our neighborhoods,” my friend C. Christopher Smith told me. He’s an Indianapolis-based author of books exploring a theology of place and founder of The Englewood Review of Books. “We also must work to resist the continuing effects of these forces.”
Churches aren’t disembodied and placeless. When a church has an address in a neighborhood, are we a part of it or apart from it? At its best, the church can work alongside neighbors to preserve Capitol Hill’s history and steward it into the future.
Making choices that are consonant with the history of a place when it’s under threat is good theology. Working to preserve the historic character of a neighborhood where some have been priced out is good theology. And as Christians, how we think about loving a neighborhood in an inequitable system is critical, no matter where we fall on the political spectrum.
Our faith affirms that God calls us to fight oppression. Our faith affirms that God made the ground CHOP rests on, and it is bloody and bruised. Jesus was a brown, middle eastern man who healed the chronic and ate with sex workers.
Jesus was from a lower-class family living in a middle-of-nowhere town, and he was bent towards the oppressed. Jesus is not a democrat, libertarian, or republican. Jesus does not wear a MAGA hat.
Over its final two weeks, the number of gunshots increased in CHOP. “Sunday, June 28th, was the worst,” Abad said. He went to bed at 11:30, and awoke to gunfire four times in the night, at one point hearing 20 shots about a block from his door. That night, a 16-year-old male died from gunshot wounds, and a 14-year-old boy was injured. When Abad woke up in the morning and opened his door, there was shuffled furniture and blood on the porch.
“CHOP is going to end with our church still being here, so how do we respond to that? If things are violent how do we respond?,” Abad asked. “I want people to understand that all of the players in this are people, and they're not ideals, and they're not simply constituents.”
In the weeks following CHOP, pastors including Abad are finding ways to support the needs of local businesses, residents, and protestors. A group of clergy and congregants on Capitol Hill are doing what the church has always done, quietly and without television cameras. Showing up and practicing radical, quiet hospitality where it’s needed most.