A Seattle city councilwoman said on Saturday that President Donald Trump may be to blame for a deadly shooting that morning in the city’s police-free zone.
Kshama Sawant, a member of the Socialist Alternative party, said in a statement, “If this killing turns out to be a right-wing attack, President Trump bears direct responsibility, since he has fomented reactionary hatred specifically against the peaceful Capitol Hill occupation, and even threatened to intervene with federal troops.”
Sawant has previously condemned law enforcement’s use of crowd-control and curfew measures.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s office said on Sunday it was “premature to determine or speculate about the cause of Saturday’s shooting, or the perpetrators, including whether it was connected or related to any of the protests occurring on Capitol Hill.”
At a press conference on Monday, Durkan and Police Chief Carmen Best announced plans to retake control of CHOP, or the Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone, following the fatal gunfire, which left another man in critical condition, and another shooting on Sunday.
Best criticized the Seattle City Council for last week banning police crowd-dispersal methods, saying the decision may have cost the life of Saturday’s shooting victim, who she noted was black.
- In addition to the three weekend shootings, Best said police had received reports of “a rape, assaults, burglary, arson and property destruction.
Sawant is not alone in seeking to blame the right for violence associated with nationwide protests against police and racism.
- A number of Democrats across the country, including Durkan, have pointed to right-wing radicals or just to white men as alleged perpetrators.
- But Howard Graves, a research analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center, recently said, “I have not seen any clear evidence that white supremacists or militiamen are masking up and going out to burn and loot.”
- Claims by Trump and other conservatives about organized left-wing violence, including by antifa activists, have also gone largely unconfirmed.
Nor is Sawant the only liberal politician to fault Trump for the violence in the streets, as well as supposedly resurgent white supremacy in the United States.
- Statistics, though, have shown anti-black violence and racism in the United States in long-term decline.
