vox--2020-06-16--Trump’s executive order on police reform, explained

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday outlining White House priorities for police reform , including the creation of a national police misconduct database .
The order also creates new guidelines for use of force and deescalation and proposes an increased role for social workers and mental health professionals in responding to a variety of issues .
While it might be the most federal action taken in response to the nationwide upheaval over the police killing of George Floyd — unless a divided Congress manages to come to some agreement on various proposals — the order is more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ far short of some protester demands .
The “ goal of the order was not to demonize police officers , ” a senior administration official told Politico ’ s Nancy Cook , who wrote : At a press conference on Tuesday , Trump said he met with the family of Ahmaud Arbery , as well as the families of Antwon Rose Jr. and other victims of fatal police shootings in the process of drawing up the executive order .
“ Many of these families lost their loved ones in deadly interactions with police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all of the hurting families , I want you to know that all Americans mourned by your side .
Your loved ones will not have died in vain.
” The president also discussed a variety of other topics over the course of his rambling remarks , including the status of a coronavirus vaccine , the recent performance of the stock market , and school choice .
The order itself represents a surprising tone shift on the part of Republicans over the last few weeks .
Trump previously condemned protests against police brutality by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ encouraged officers to not be “ too nice ” to people under arrest .
Trump also took an aggressive line toward the most recent wave of activism around police reform in the US .
Since Floyd ’ s killing by a Minneapolis officer three weeks ago , thousands of people have turned out in major cities and small towns alike to protest police brutality and systematic racism — demonstrations which the president has suggested governors should “ dominate ” by deploying National Guard troops .
Trump ’ s executive order is less bold @ @ @ @ @ @ @ called for as the antiracism protests following Floyd ’ s death continue .
At Tuesday ’ s signing ceremony , Trump said that the executive order is designed to “ [ encourage ] police departments nationwide to adopt the highest professional standards to serve their communities.
” Though policy is mostly made at the local level , the order outlines a plan to leverage discretionary grant funding by the Justice Department to implement local reforms .
Here are some key details : Independent credentialing and “ proper training ” : According to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the White House , discretionary DOJ grants to state and local law enforcement agencies will now be conditioned on whether police departments have obtained ( or are in the process of obtaining ) credentials certifying that they meet certain training standards .
The credentialing process will emphasize use-of-force and deescalation trainings , and department policy must prohibit chokeholds — unless an officer ’ s life is at risk — in order to meet certification standards .
A misconduct database : The second major provision of the order states that the Justice Department @ @ @ @ @ @ @ misconduct by police officers , and that discretionary funding will be available only to those law enforcement agencies that provide the requested information .
Additionally , the DOJ will “ regularly and periodically make available to the public aggregated and anonymized data from the database.
” The policy resembles one proposed by Democratic Sens .
Cory Booker and Kamala Harris earlier this month , though their bill , which also addresses qualified immunity , is unlikely to gain much traction in the upper chamber .
Social services : The executive order also calls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Human Services Department to work together to create guidelines for “ co-responder programs , ” which would see social workers respond to issues related to mental health , homelessness , or drug addiction along with law enforcement officers .
Congressional action : Lastly , the order lays out some of the White House ’ s legislative priorities , which will reportedly be proposed to Congress by the DOJ and the Office of Management and Budget .
Priorities include assistance for local police departments in implementing the reforms and training programs outlined in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s unclear how effective Tuesday ’ s executive order will be at reforming policing practices at a local level .
According to Emily Owens , a criminology professor at the University of California Irvine , there ’ s not much data available about what impact police training programs actually have on how officers behave in the field .
“ The idea that we ’ re going to require training programs or encourage or incentivize police departments to start training or doing a different set of training programs , you know , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ help , ” Owens said .
“ There ’ s not an evidence base to say this training program is going to change officer behavior in the field.
” Still , Owens says that creating an incentive system using DOJ grants could work .
“ Police agencies and all government agencies respond to incentives , ” she said .
“ So if the federal government sets up a framework where you ’ re not going to be able to get federal grant funding if you do or do not engage in certain things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way that local criminal justice agencies operate.
” There ’ s a lot of energy around police reform .
It ’ s not clear what — if anything — that will change at the national level .
As Vox ’ s Nicole Narea explains , Floyd ’ s killing and the protests — many of which were met by additional police brutality — have propelled an incredibly rapid shift in public attitudes toward policing .
The result : Calls to “ defund the police ” have caught on among protesters , and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the city ’ s police department and “ dramatically rethink ” its approach to to public safety .
House Democrats also introduced a package of police reforms — the Justice in Policing Act of 2020 — last week , which includes an end to the controversial doctrine of qualified immunity , which in many cases shields police officers from lawsuits related to their actions .
But the GOP response in the Senate , where a bill is still in the works , is likely to be even narrower than the Democratic proposal .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ legislative action during Tuesday ’ s press conference , it ’ s unclear what measures the president might support .
One version of a possible deal , as reported by Politico ’ s Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer , could include “ eliminating no-knock warrants and codifying some accreditation standard into law .
The administration could be talked into passing a law to effectively ban the chokehold altogether , according to sources .
But they have drawn the line at limiting qualified immunity.
” In the meantime , House Democrats will forge ahead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Committee markup is scheduled for Wednesday , and leadership has indicated it will go to the floor for a vote next week .
The bill is expected to pass in the lower chamber , but action in the Senate will likely have to wait until after Congress ’ s July 4 recess .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday outlining White House priorities for police reform, including the creation of a national police misconduct database.
The order also creates new guidelines for use of force and deescalation and proposes an increased role for social workers and mental health professionals in responding to a variety of issues.
While it might be the most federal action taken in response to the nationwide upheaval over the police killing of George Floyd — unless a divided Congress manages to come to some agreement on various proposals — the order is more police-friendly than other potential reforms and falls far short of some protester demands. The “goal of the order was not to demonize police officers,” a senior administration official told Politico’s Nancy Cook, who wrote:
Maintaining the political support of police — and appearing like a law-and-order president — has been a leading imperative for Trump’s top aides and political advisers as some liberal activists push to defund police departments and divert money to community programs.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Trump said he met with the family of Ahmaud Arbery, as well as the families of Antwon Rose Jr. and other victims of fatal police shootings in the process of drawing up the executive order.
“Many of these families lost their loved ones in deadly interactions with police,” Trump said. “To all of the hurting families, I want you to know that all Americans mourned by your side. Your loved ones will not have died in vain.”
The president also discussed a variety of other topics over the course of his rambling remarks, including the status of a coronavirus vaccine, the recent performance of the stock market, and school choice.
The order itself represents a surprising tone shift on the part of Republicans over the last few weeks. Trump previously condemned protests against police brutality by NFL players, and in 2017 he encouraged officers to not be “too nice” to people under arrest.
Trump also took an aggressive line toward the most recent wave of activism around police reform in the US. Since Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis officer three weeks ago, thousands of people have turned out in major cities and small towns alike to protest police brutality and systematic racism — demonstrations which the president has suggested governors should “dominate” by deploying National Guard troops.
Trump’s executive order is less bold than the transformative changes many activists have called for as the antiracism protests following Floyd’s death continue.
Trump’s executive order on police reform, briefly explained
At Tuesday’s signing ceremony, Trump said that the executive order is designed to “[encourage] police departments nationwide to adopt the highest professional standards to serve their communities.” Though policy is mostly made at the local level, the order outlines a plan to leverage discretionary grant funding by the Justice Department to implement local reforms. Here are some key details:
Independent credentialing and “proper training”: According to the full text of the executive order released by the White House, discretionary DOJ grants to state and local law enforcement agencies will now be conditioned on whether police departments have obtained (or are in the process of obtaining) credentials certifying that they meet certain training standards. The credentialing process will emphasize use-of-force and deescalation trainings, and department policy must prohibit chokeholds — unless an officer’s life is at risk — in order to meet certification standards.
A misconduct database: The second major provision of the order states that the Justice Department will create a national database to track misconduct by police officers, and that discretionary funding will be available only to those law enforcement agencies that provide the requested information. Additionally, the DOJ will “regularly and periodically make available to the public aggregated and anonymized data from the database.” The policy resembles one proposed by Democratic Sens. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris earlier this month, though their bill, which also addresses qualified immunity, is unlikely to gain much traction in the upper chamber.
Social services: The executive order also calls for the DOJ and the Health and Human Services Department to work together to create guidelines for “co-responder programs,” which would see social workers respond to issues related to mental health, homelessness, or drug addiction along with law enforcement officers.
Congressional action: Lastly, the order lays out some of the White House’s legislative priorities, which will reportedly be proposed to Congress by the DOJ and the Office of Management and Budget. Priorities include assistance for local police departments in implementing the reforms and training programs outlined in the executive order, among other things.
Unclear impacts
It’s unclear how effective Tuesday’s executive order will be at reforming policing practices at a local level. According to Emily Owens, a criminology professor at the University of California Irvine, there’s not much data available about what impact police training programs actually have on how officers behave in the field.
“The idea that we’re going to require training programs or encourage or incentivize police departments to start training or doing a different set of training programs, you know, that might help, that might not help,” Owens said. “There’s not an evidence base to say this training program is going to change officer behavior in the field.”
Still, Owens says that creating an incentive system using DOJ grants could work.
“Police agencies and all government agencies respond to incentives,” she said. “So if the federal government sets up a framework where you’re not going to be able to get federal grant funding if you do or do not engage in certain things, that practice historically has changed the way that local criminal justice agencies operate.”
There’s a lot of energy around police reform. It’s not clear what — if anything — that will change at the national level.
As Vox’s Nicole Narea explains, Floyd’s killing and the protests — many of which were met by additional police brutality — have propelled an incredibly rapid shift in public attitudes toward policing.
Polling shows a sudden, seismic shift in public opinion: 57 percent of Americans and 49 percent of white respondents now believe that police are more likely to use excessive force against African Americans. In 2014, after Eric Garner died in police custody, only 33 percent of Americans and 26 percent of white respondents said so. More than two-thirds of Americans believe that Floyd’s killing indicated broader issues in the way police treat black Americans, rather than just an isolated incident. By a two-to-one margin, voters are also more concerned by the actions of police in relation to Floyd’s killing than they are about violent protesters. (The protests have, by and large, been peaceful.)
The result: Calls to “defund the police” have caught on among protesters, and the Minneapolis City Council has pledged to dismantle the city’s police department and “dramatically rethink” its approach to to public safety. House Democrats also introduced a package of police reforms — the Justice in Policing Act of 2020 — last week, which includes an end to the controversial doctrine of qualified immunity, which in many cases shields police officers from lawsuits related to their actions.
But the GOP response in the Senate, where a bill is still in the works, is likely to be even narrower than the Democratic proposal. And while Trump signaled openness to more legislative action during Tuesday’s press conference, it’s unclear what measures the president might support.
One version of a possible deal, as reported by Politico’s Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer, could include “eliminating no-knock warrants and codifying some accreditation standard into law. The administration could be talked into passing a law to effectively ban the chokehold altogether, according to sources. But they have drawn the line at limiting qualified immunity.”
In the meantime, House Democrats will forge ahead with their bill. A House Judiciary Committee markup is scheduled for Wednesday, and leadership has indicated it will go to the floor for a vote next week. The bill is expected to pass in the lower chamber, but action in the Senate will likely have to wait until after Congress’s July 4 recess.


vox--2020-06-16--Seattle’s newly police-free neighborhood, explained

After eight days of continuing clashes with protesters , staff at the East Precinct police headquarters in Seattle suddenly vacated the building on Monday , June 8 , shredding documents and leaving it empty .
Among protesters , there was initial confusion over why police would outright leave , but organizers suspected a trap .
“ The SPD seem like what they wanted to do is abandon the East Precinct and then wait on the borders , just like a few blocks away , for somebody to try to set a fire to repeat what was going on in Minneapolis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is being identified by a pseudonym to protect her privacy , told Vox .
“ Then they can rush in and say , ‘ Now our use of military force against unarmed civilians is justified.
’ ” But that ’ s not what happened .
Instead , protesters set about creating a peaceful — and safe — police-free neighborhood .
And the officers largely haven ’ t bothered to come back .
The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone , or CHAZ as it was referred to early on , started as a meme , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the morning after the East Precinct was abandoned , and CHAZ was sort of just a joke that people were sharing , like , ‘ Oh , this is an autonomous zone , ’ ” she told Vox , referring to an area that is free from the local government structure and control .
But the idea soon took off among the protesters .
City personnel showed up the day after the precinct was abandoned to remove the barricades that police had set up to control the protests , but protesters convinced the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to keep city traffic out of the area .
They ended up sequestering an approximately six-block area in the central Seattle neighborhood of Capitol Hill .
“ This is the urban core of the city , ” Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant , whose district encompasses the protest area , told Vox .
“ It ’ s dense and it has a long history , including of LGBTQ rights activism in the ’ 80s.
” CHAZ has since evolved further into a center of peaceful protest , free political speech , co-ops @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invited the city ’ s houseless population , who had been subject to a mass “ clearing ” of tent communities throughout the city , to come stay in the neighborhood .
Movie nights have been held , including Mississippi Burning , about two FBI agents investigating lynchings of black people and activists in Mississippi during the civil rights era .
“ There was an impromptu dodgeball game , ” said Carla .
“ There are people smoking weed in circles ... and just having normal conversations , and then 20 feet away @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people standing around somebody with a megaphone talking about Marxism.
” The zone , where hundreds of people can be found on any given day , is largely leaderless , with decisions often being made by vote .
But volunteers have stepped in anyway , doing everything from distributing food to cleaning up garbage in the area .
The vibe there is pretty relaxed , said Carla .
“ It ’ s really hard to pin this place down , ” she said .
“ This is a place that is built and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re the voices that are driving this.
” Yet right-wing media has painted CHAZ as some kind of war zone , portraying the tiny neighborhood as if it were forcibly seceding from the US .
While protest organizers in the area are understandably reticent to speak with reporters — several protest leaders did not respond to interview requests from Vox — there is no hint of the violence suggested by the likes of Fox News .
There are also goals to the protests .
Organizers put out an extensive list of demands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , broken into four categories : the justice system , health and human services , economics , and education .
They include defunding and abolishing the SPD , an end to the school-to-prison pipeline , and the de-gentrification of Seattle , among many other demands .
Nine days into the zone ’ s creation , its name has also evolved , as it ’ s now known as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest , or CHOP .
But regardless of what it ’ s called , the run of events that brought the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of protester organizing — and police incompetence .
The protests that gave birth to CHOP Sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police in Minneapolis , Minnesota , mass protests have broken out all over the country over the past several weeks , and Seattle saw some of the most intense demonstrations .
“ There ’ ve been multiple protests throughout the city on a daily basis , ” Sawant told Vox .
“ One of the key sort of battlegrounds happened to develop at the 11th and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Sawant , who was at the Capitol Hill protest the evening of June 7 , which saw the most intense police crackdown of the week , it was police who first turned violent against otherwise peaceful protesters in the area .
“ One moment I was having political conversations with a group of young people about how do we fight police violence and racism and how that connects to capitalism itself , ” she said .
“ And the next moment , I felt mace in my eyes .
And then a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gas and flash-bang grenades going off .
Somebody counted hundreds of them the next morning.
” The violence of police crackdowns on otherwise peaceful protesters sent shock waves throughout the liberal city .
During the preceding week , calls for Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan to step down began to grow louder .
“ That violence lies at the doorstep of Democratic establishment and Mayor Durkan , ” said Sawant .
“ There started to be calls for Durkan to resign because people were correctly horrified at this violence .
People were just stunned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The day after the protest , police vacated the precinct building , and even now , more than a week later , no one knows who ordered it .
Neither Durkan nor Police Chief Carmen Best has taken responsibility .
“ We were asked to do an operational plan in case we needed to leave , ” Best said at a press conference Thursday .
“ The decision was made .
We ’ re still evaluating about how that change came about but it didn ’ t come from me.
” However , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abandoned in the first place .
“ We did not abandon the precinct , but we had to remove personnel for a short period of time , ” Best told Good Morning America on Friday .
While police haven ’ t yet moved directly against protesters , officers have been seen in and around the precinct building over the past several days , according to social media reports .
Initial media reports about the zone , especially at Fox News and throughout the conservative mediasphere , portrayed the autonomous zone as a kind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ notorious Fox News live hit included a graphic indicating that the network was reporting from the US-CHAZ border , as if the zone were no longer part of the United States .
Further , several right-leaning media outlets reported that local business owners had been approached by armed anarchists who demanded mob-like protection payments .
That has since been debunked by business owners who explained that it was false and that the local businesses were racking up much-needed sales after being hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic .
Then , on June 12 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Seattle Times for photoshopping an image of a gunman with a green mask into images of protesters in the area .
But the initial reports were enough to catch the attention of President Donald Trump .
On June 11 , Trump tweeted at Washington Gov .
Jay Inslee and Durkan to “ take back ” the city by force before he was compelled to intervene .
People on the ground inside the protest zone have been encouraging one another not to believe media reports or rumors over what ’ s happening in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ It ’ s a game of telephone , ” Carla said .
“ I ’ ve gotten into the habit of just saying if you don ’ t know the person that you ’ re talking to , and if you don ’ t have the full context of a video clip or an audio clip , then just assume that it ’ s deliberate misinformation .
Ask yourself who stands to gain from that kind of misinformation.
” One of the reasons for all the conservative media hoopla is that autonomous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all that frequently .
Like CHOP , Camp Maroon in Philadelphia is a recently created autonomous zone of houseless people with their own list of demands for city and state officials .
Even with the inaccurate reporting , that isn ’ t to say there isn ’ t some discord at CHOP .
According to Carla , the name change and subsequent confusion came from an internal struggle between two groups of protesters with differing visions for the area .
For days , Carla said , there has been a power struggle between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ peaceful , organized protest against police violence , and another group who wanted to see CHOP become more of an anarchist space where marginalized people could obtain mutual aid when needed .
While the protest does have some loose leadership , there are few formal structures .
Sawant compares the space to the “ Night of 500 tents ” during the Occupy Wall Street movement in Seattle in October 2011 , of which she was a part .
Back then , Occupy protesters were able to drive police from their space before police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the protests took place .
Already , said Sawant , CHOP has outlasted what they were able to achieve with that Occupy action , which only lasted three days .
But she said she expects police to clear the area sometime in the near future .
“ I don ’ t think that we can in any way assume that the police will not come back and specifically attack this space , ” she said .
“ I think we should expect that that could happen at any moment , because that ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In the meantime , protesters have managed to create a police-free space in which black people , indigenous people , people of color , queer people , and houseless people feel especially safe .
It ’ s even become somewhat of a tourist attraction for more affluent white , liberal families .
“ Talking with my friends and talking with a couple of people on the ground , I keep hearing people say , ‘ I never felt this safe walking in the city , ’ ” said Carla , noting that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ neighborhood has largely given over to graffiti and friendly faces .
“ The knowledge that the police aren ’ t there [ has created ] this feeling that this is a space that belongs to everybody.
” Sawant has a more complex explanation .
“ We have an interest in having safe neighborhoods , but what makes neighborhoods unsafe is not the absence of police , ” she said .
“ What makes neighborhoods [ and ] neighbors unsafe , and what generates the conditions for crime , predominantly is economic inequality and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is introducing several measures at the city council level to address the demands of protesters , including turning the East Precinct building into a community center , cutting the city ’ s police budget , and permanently banning the use of less lethal force against protesters by police .
Both Carla and Sawant hope the space persists into the future as a place for protesting and political organizing .
But Sawant also notes what an achievement it ’ s been to show the world that these protests don ’ t need harsh crackdowns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ days ago , that same space on Capitol Hill was a war-like scenario with the police inflicting 100 percent of violence and brutality against peaceful protesters , ” said Sawant .
“ Since the young people were able to win this political battleground victory , they have been able to demonstrate [ they can create a space ] which is welcoming , peaceful , and multiracial.
” Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to @ @ @

After eight days of continuing clashes with protesters, staff at the East Precinct police headquarters in Seattle suddenly vacated the building on Monday, June 8, shredding documents and leaving it empty.
Among protesters, there was initial confusion over why police would outright leave, but organizers suspected a trap.
“The SPD seem like what they wanted to do is abandon the East Precinct and then wait on the borders, just like a few blocks away, for somebody to try to set a fire to repeat what was going on in Minneapolis,” Carla, a protester who is being identified by a pseudonym to protect her privacy, told Vox. “Then they can rush in and say, ‘Now our use of military force against unarmed civilians is justified.’”
But that’s not what happened. Instead, protesters set about creating a peaceful — and safe — police-free neighborhood. And the officers largely haven’t bothered to come back.
The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ as it was referred to early on, started as a meme, said Carla. “I was there the morning after the East Precinct was abandoned, and CHAZ was sort of just a joke that people were sharing, like, ‘Oh, this is an autonomous zone,’” she told Vox, referring to an area that is free from the local government structure and control.
But the idea soon took off among the protesters. City personnel showed up the day after the precinct was abandoned to remove the barricades that police had set up to control the protests, but protesters convinced the workers to let them set up roadblocks to keep city traffic out of the area. They ended up sequestering an approximately six-block area in the central Seattle neighborhood of Capitol Hill.
“This is the urban core of the city,” Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant, whose district encompasses the protest area, told Vox. “It’s dense and it has a long history, including of LGBTQ rights activism in the ’80s.”
CHAZ has since evolved further into a center of peaceful protest, free political speech, co-ops, and community gardens. Protesters have invited the city’s houseless population, who had been subject to a mass “clearing” of tent communities throughout the city, to come stay in the neighborhood. Movie nights have been held, including Mississippi Burning, about two FBI agents investigating lynchings of black people and activists in Mississippi during the civil rights era.
“There was an impromptu dodgeball game,” said Carla. “There are people smoking weed in circles ... and just having normal conversations, and then 20 feet away, you have this large group of people standing around somebody with a megaphone talking about Marxism.”
The zone, where hundreds of people can be found on any given day, is largely leaderless, with decisions often being made by vote. But volunteers have stepped in anyway, doing everything from distributing food to cleaning up garbage in the area. The vibe there is pretty relaxed, said Carla.
“It’s really hard to pin this place down,” she said. “This is a place that is built and maintained by marginalized people, and they’re the voices that are driving this.”
Yet right-wing media has painted CHAZ as some kind of war zone, portraying the tiny neighborhood as if it were forcibly seceding from the US. While protest organizers in the area are understandably reticent to speak with reporters — several protest leaders did not respond to interview requests from Vox — there is no hint of the violence suggested by the likes of Fox News.
There are also goals to the protests. Organizers put out an extensive list of demands in a Medium post on June 9, broken into four categories: the justice system, health and human services, economics, and education. They include defunding and abolishing the SPD, an end to the school-to-prison pipeline, and the de-gentrification of Seattle, among many other demands.
Nine days into the zone’s creation, its name has also evolved, as it’s now known as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, or CHOP. But regardless of what it’s called, the run of events that brought the zone into existence was an extraordinary demonstration of protester organizing — and police incompetence.
The protests that gave birth to CHOP
Sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, mass protests have broken out all over the country over the past several weeks, and Seattle saw some of the most intense demonstrations.
“There’ve been multiple protests throughout the city on a daily basis,” Sawant told Vox. “One of the key sort of battlegrounds happened to develop at the 11th and Pine intersection on Capitol Hill.”
According to Sawant, who was at the Capitol Hill protest the evening of June 7, which saw the most intense police crackdown of the week, it was police who first turned violent against otherwise peaceful protesters in the area. “One moment I was having political conversations with a group of young people about how do we fight police violence and racism and how that connects to capitalism itself,” she said. “And the next moment, I felt mace in my eyes. And then a few moments later, there was tear gas and flash-bang grenades going off. Somebody counted hundreds of them the next morning.”
The violence of police crackdowns on otherwise peaceful protesters sent shock waves throughout the liberal city. During the preceding week, calls for Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan to step down began to grow louder.
“That violence lies at the doorstep of Democratic establishment and Mayor Durkan,” said Sawant. “There started to be calls for Durkan to resign because people were correctly horrified at this violence. People were just stunned that this is Seattle in 2020.”
The day after the protest, police vacated the precinct building, and even now, more than a week later, no one knows who ordered it. Neither Durkan nor Police Chief Carmen Best has taken responsibility. “We were asked to do an operational plan in case we needed to leave,” Best said at a press conference Thursday. “The decision was made. We’re still evaluating about how that change came about but it didn’t come from me.”
However, Best disputed the characterization that it was abandoned in the first place. “We did not abandon the precinct, but we had to remove personnel for a short period of time,” Best told Good Morning America on Friday.
While police haven’t yet moved directly against protesters, officers have been seen in and around the precinct building over the past several days, according to social media reports.
cop hanging out in the corner of the second floor of the east precinct in the CHAZ pic.twitter.com/l9FSSwUmXh — ᓚᘏᗢ (@xvrqt) June 12, 2020
Right-wing panic over the protest zone
Initial media reports about the zone, especially at Fox News and throughout the conservative mediasphere, portrayed the autonomous zone as a kind of anarchist threat to society. One notorious Fox News live hit included a graphic indicating that the network was reporting from the US-CHAZ border, as if the zone were no longer part of the United States.
Further, several right-leaning media outlets reported that local business owners had been approached by armed anarchists who demanded mob-like protection payments. That has since been debunked by business owners who explained that it was false and that the local businesses were racking up much-needed sales after being hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
Then, on June 12, Fox News was busted by the Seattle Times for photoshopping an image of a gunman with a green mask into images of protesters in the area.
But the initial reports were enough to catch the attention of President Donald Trump. On June 11, Trump tweeted at Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Durkan to “take back” the city by force before he was compelled to intervene.
Radical Left Governor @JayInslee and the Mayor of Seattle are being taunted and played at a level that our great Country has never seen before. Take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game. These ugly Anarchists must be stopped IMMEDIATELY. MOVE FAST! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 11, 2020
People on the ground inside the protest zone have been encouraging one another not to believe media reports or rumors over what’s happening in the zone unless they see it themselves.
“It’s a game of telephone,” Carla said. “I’ve gotten into the habit of just saying if you don’t know the person that you’re talking to, and if you don’t have the full context of a video clip or an audio clip, then just assume that it’s deliberate misinformation. Ask yourself who stands to gain from that kind of misinformation.”
Life inside the CHOP
One of the reasons for all the conservative media hoopla is that autonomous zones like this don’t happen all that frequently. Like CHOP, Camp Maroon in Philadelphia is a recently created autonomous zone of houseless people with their own list of demands for city and state officials.
#CampMaroon is an Autonomous Zone in Philadelphia, started by mostly houseless POC. Their demands are housing, and an end to police harassment. This should be getting the same attention #CHAZ is getting. People are taking care of each other without police. https://t.co/iarkMslEAC — Cori Durdy (@CoriDurdy) June 14, 2020
Even with the inaccurate reporting, that isn’t to say there isn’t some discord at CHOP. According to Carla, the name change and subsequent confusion came from an internal struggle between two groups of protesters with differing visions for the area. For days, Carla said, there has been a power struggle between organizers who envisioned the zone as a peaceful, organized protest against police violence, and another group who wanted to see CHOP become more of an anarchist space where marginalized people could obtain mutual aid when needed.
Scenes from the #SeattleAutonomousZone or #CHAZ. Beautiful murals. A lot of community. A boarded up Seattle Police East Precinct.
But also - some protestors tell me they feel this detracts from the goal of making strides towards police accountability & ending systemic racism. pic.twitter.com/t2yWPTfYbX — Deedee Sun (@DeedeeKIRO7) June 10, 2020
While the protest does have some loose leadership, there are few formal structures. Sawant compares the space to the “Night of 500 tents” during the Occupy Wall Street movement in Seattle in October 2011, of which she was a part. Back then, Occupy protesters were able to drive police from their space before police returned and cleared out the area where the protests took place.
Already, said Sawant, CHOP has outlasted what they were able to achieve with that Occupy action, which only lasted three days. But she said she expects police to clear the area sometime in the near future. “I don’t think that we can in any way assume that the police will not come back and specifically attack this space,” she said. “I think we should expect that that could happen at any moment, because that’s exactly what happened in Occupy.”
In the meantime, protesters have managed to create a police-free space in which black people, indigenous people, people of color, queer people, and houseless people feel especially safe. It’s even become somewhat of a tourist attraction for more affluent white, liberal families.
“Talking with my friends and talking with a couple of people on the ground, I keep hearing people say, ‘I never felt this safe walking in the city,’” said Carla, noting that the anti-homeless architecture and corporate feel of the neighborhood has largely given over to graffiti and friendly faces. “The knowledge that the police aren’t there [has created] this feeling that this is a space that belongs to everybody.”
Sawant has a more complex explanation. “We have an interest in having safe neighborhoods, but what makes neighborhoods unsafe is not the absence of police,” she said. “What makes neighborhoods [and] neighbors unsafe, and what generates the conditions for crime, predominantly is economic inequality and injustice.”
For her part, Sawant is introducing several measures at the city council level to address the demands of protesters, including turning the East Precinct building into a community center, cutting the city’s police budget, and permanently banning the use of less lethal force against protesters by police.
Both Carla and Sawant hope the space persists into the future as a place for protesting and political organizing. But Sawant also notes what an achievement it’s been to show the world that these protests don’t need harsh crackdowns in the first place.
“Only days ago, that same space on Capitol Hill was a war-like scenario with the police inflicting 100 percent of violence and brutality against peaceful protesters,” said Sawant. “Since the young people were able to win this political battleground victory, they have been able to demonstrate [they can create a space] which is welcoming, peaceful, and multiracial.”


vox--2020-06-16--India and China just had their deadliest clash since the 1960s

India and China , the world ’ s two most populous nations , each armed with nuclear weapons , are in the middle of their most severe crisis in decades — and it ’ s unclear how both nations will step back from the brink .
At least 20 Indian troops were killed in a skirmish with Chinese forces in the Galwan Valley , a contentious territory in the high-altitude Ladakh region , on June 15 and 16 , according to the Indian Army .
Meanwhile , there are unconfirmed reports that there were 43 casualties among Chinese troops .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ clash between the two countries on the border since 1967 .
For about 80 years , India and China have quarreled over a roughly 2,200-mile frontier spanning the Himalayas , occasionally going to war over their competing claims .
Despite 20-plus rounds of negotiations , they haven ’ t come close to agreeing on most of the boundaries , providing a continuous source of tension between Beijing and New Delhi .
The latest flare-up began last month in the Galwan Valley .
India ’ s government said that earlier this month , unprovoked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the western Himalayas .
Beijing counters that claim , instead blaming Indian forces for illegally walking into Chinese territory .
Whatever the reason , a combined 100-plus soldiers from both sides sustained injuries during two skirmishes on May 5 and May 9 .
There were a couple of other small fights leaving dozens injured at two points along the 2,200-mile border in recent weeks .
Even so , experts hoped that would be the worst of it , hoping there wouldn ’ t be a repeat of the 1967 border fight that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the ongoing spat in Ladakh has turned deadly .
Earlier on Tuesday , the Indian Army said three soldiers died during a “ violent face-off ” with Chinese troops .
It turns out that was a very low estimate , with the army increasing the death toll to 20 troops hours later .
Importantly , Indian forces note that “ sub-zero temperatures ” played a role in why some soldiers “ succumbed to their injuries.
” Chinese forces , meanwhile , also noted their troops suffered “ casualties , ” but it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if some died .
There ’ s still a lot we don ’ t know .
For one , it ’ s not clear how the fight started .
Some reports noted there was an avalanche or that both sides fought with sticks in a melee , and both sides are blaming the other for instigating the skirmish by crossing the disputed border .
“ India is very clear that all its activities are always within the Indian side , ” read a statement from India ’ s foreign ministry .
“ We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Indian troops crossed the disputed border “ and conducted illegal activity , and deliberately launched provocative attacks , triggering violent physical conflicts between the two sides , resulting in casualties ” the Chinese military claimed .
The facts , of course , matter .
But either way , experts say the ramifications will be the same : These two powers will struggle to stand down from this fight .
“ There ’ s every likelihood that this could get worse , ” Sumit Ganguly , an expert on India ’ s foreign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me .
“ There ’ s no easy off-ramp.
” Most experts agree .
“ The best-case scenario is they use this incident as a wake-up call to shock them into solving this [ border fight ] once and for all , ” Vipin Narang , an expert on Indian forces at MIT , told me .
“ The worst case is the nationalists push to escalate and it ’ ll be a long , long summer.
” He noted that China has much stronger forces overall but that India has amassed enough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can rival Chinese troops at that frontier .
Which means “ once the bullets start flying , it ’ s unclear how it ’ s going to go , ” he said .
The current situation is about much more than the decades-long border dispute .
It ’ s also about the increasingly bitter rivalry for power in Asia .
China , especially under President Xi Jinping , frequently uses its military might to bully neighbors and claim more territory for itself , including along the mountainous frontier .
India , meanwhile , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its border with China in an attempt to exert more control , piquing Beijing in the process .
After tensions simmering for years , they have officially boiled over .
The seeds of the current flare-up were planted during British colonial rule of India .
In the late 1800s , the British drew two borders to formalize the yet-undefined frontier between India and China , one in the “ Western Sector ” in Kashmir and the other thousands of miles away in the “ Eastern Sector.
” But China — along with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the British proposals , leaving demarcation an open question for decades .
After India gained independence from Britain in 1947 , its leaders said the British-drawn boundaries were firm and claimed some of the disputed territories — including the Aksai Chin region near the Galwan Valley — for itself .
Though it initially accepted some of India ’ s stances , China changed course over time .
In 1957 , for example , the Chinese built a road in the Western Sector through parts India said it controlled .
Ties between the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ frayed over the next few years in part due to the border problem .
Skirmishes between Indian and Chinese patrols first began in 1959 but grew more frequent and violent until October 1962 , when Chinese troops invaded India over the disputed border .
After 32 days of fighting , China had gained more control in the Western Sector and pushed the ill-trained and ill-equipped Indian troops back about 12 miles in the Eastern Sector .
It was a humiliating loss for India that haunts the country to this day .
To semi-officially @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Actual Control ” ( LAC ) was finally adopted by both countries , marking the disputed claims along the thousands of miles of land — but it was by no means definitive .
Much of the LAC was , and remains , porous , noncontiguous , and unmarked , and thus did little to resolve the competing claims between the two countries .
The two nations don ’ t even agree on the actual length of the LAC .
Simmering tensions have persisted despite the pseudo-border in place .
Just days before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Prime Minister Narendra Modi in September 2014 , over 200 Chinese troops entered Indian territory in the western Himalayas to build a road .
Indian troops challenged the Chinese soldiers , pushed them back , and reportedly destroyed the road .
In 2017 , Chinese engineers tried to build a road through the Doklam plateau , also an area in the Himalayas claimed both by China and Bhutan , a small country wedged between the two larger powers .
Indian troops on their side of the border directly intervened and pushed the crew @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and New Delhi finally ended with India agreeing to pull back troops from the area and China agreeing to end its project ( though Chinese leaders vowed to keep patrolling the area ) .
Satellite images released the following year by the independent intelligence firm Stratfor showed that both sides had continued to build up their forces near Doklam , with India placing attack helicopters at an airfield and China deploying a fighter jet and missile system to its airbases .
That activity continues to this day .
“ Both China and India @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — building infrastructure , sending military assets — to have more control in the region , ” Adam Ni , a board director of the China Policy Center in Australia , told me last month .
The incursions continue , too .
According to the Indian government , China ’ s forces crossed into Indian territory more than 1,000 times between 2016 and 2018 .
However , they engaged in a massive deadly clash since 1967 and neither side had even shot at the other since 1975 , abiding by agreements both countries @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weapons in these skirmishes .
That helped lead to a fragile peace — and that peace is broken now .
This is really all about China and India ’ s larger rivalry There ’ s a lot more to this border dispute , according to the experts I spoke to .
Sure , it ’ s obviously about the years of animosity built up at the undefined frontier .
But it ’ s really about each side sending a larger message to the other .
China wants greater control along the LAC and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s size and coziness with the United States make it hard for Beijing to achieve that .
Starting a fight along the border “ is a way for Chinese to signal to the Indians that they can make life pretty bad , ” Ganguly told me in May .
India , meanwhile , wants to send its own signal that it won ’ t be pushed around by its powerful neighbor , especially in the same area where it lost a brutal war just a few decades ago .
And New Delhi @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as the country invests billions in infrastructure in the region , aiming to build 66 roads along the Chinese border by 2022 .
One of those roads connects to a military base in the Galwan Valley .
As long as the regional rivalry continues and the border issues remain unsolved , skirmishes will likely persist .
“ This is a new normal that we ’ re likely to see play out a lot in the coming months and years , ” Michael Kugelman , an India expert at the Wilson Center in Washington @ @ @ @ @ @ @ news , experts noted at the time , was that neither side actually wants a full-blown war .
Both nations , of course , have their hands full dealing with the coronavirus pandemic .
Beijing is also preoccupied with growing animosities with the US and seizing more control in Hong Kong , while New Delhi knows that challenging China militarily would likely end badly for India .
That still holds , as a war between two large nations with nuclear weapons could get out of hand very quickly .
“ Neither side has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” said MIT ’ s Narang .
The problem is that nationalist voices in both countries will likely call for revenge , possibly putting pressure on Xi and Modi to respond forcefully .
In other words , there isn ’ t a clear off-ramp right now — and it could all get worse before it gets better .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
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India and China, the world’s two most populous nations, each armed with nuclear weapons, are in the middle of their most severe crisis in decades — and it’s unclear how both nations will step back from the brink.
At least 20 Indian troops were killed in a skirmish with Chinese forces in the Galwan Valley, a contentious territory in the high-altitude Ladakh region, on June 15 and 16, according to the Indian Army. Meanwhile, there are unconfirmed reports that there were 43 casualties among Chinese troops. Still, it’s the deadliest clash between the two countries on the border since 1967.
For about 80 years, India and China have quarreled over a roughly 2,200-mile frontier spanning the Himalayas, occasionally going to war over their competing claims. Despite 20-plus rounds of negotiations, they haven’t come close to agreeing on most of the boundaries, providing a continuous source of tension between Beijing and New Delhi.
The latest flare-up began last month in the Galwan Valley. India’s government said that earlier this month, unprovoked Chinese troops threw rocks at Indian soldiers in the western Himalayas. Beijing counters that claim, instead blaming Indian forces for illegally walking into Chinese territory. Whatever the reason, a combined 100-plus soldiers from both sides sustained injuries during two skirmishes on May 5 and May 9.
There were a couple of other small fights leaving dozens injured at two points along the 2,200-mile border in recent weeks. Even so, experts hoped that would be the worst of it, hoping there wouldn’t be a repeat of the 1967 border fight that led to hundreds dead.
But now the ongoing spat in Ladakh has turned deadly.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Indian Army said three soldiers died during a “violent face-off” with Chinese troops. It turns out that was a very low estimate, with the army increasing the death toll to 20 troops hours later.
Importantly, Indian forces note that “sub-zero temperatures” played a role in why some soldiers “succumbed to their injuries.” Chinese forces, meanwhile, also noted their troops suffered “casualties,” but it’s unclear if they were wounded or if some died.
...and exposed to sub-zero temperatures in the high altitude terrain have succumbed to their injuries, taking the total that were killed in action to 20.
Indian Army is firmly committed to protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the nation. (2/2) — Sushant Singh (@SushantSin) June 16, 2020
There’s still a lot we don’t know. For one, it’s not clear how the fight started. Some reports noted there was an avalanche or that both sides fought with sticks in a melee, and both sides are blaming the other for instigating the skirmish by crossing the disputed border.
“India is very clear that all its activities are always within the Indian side,” read a statement from India’s foreign ministry. “We expect the same of the Chinese side.”
Indian troops crossed the disputed border “and conducted illegal activity, and deliberately launched provocative attacks, triggering violent physical conflicts between the two sides, resulting in casualties” the Chinese military claimed.
Slightly amended translation of the PLA Western Command's statement on the Galwan River clash. Not my day job. pic.twitter.com/S45ccEt5h6 — M. Taylor Fravel (@fravel) June 16, 2020
The facts, of course, matter. But either way, experts say the ramifications will be the same: These two powers will struggle to stand down from this fight. “There’s every likelihood that this could get worse,” Sumit Ganguly, an expert on India’s foreign policy at Indiana University Bloomington, told me. “There’s no easy off-ramp.”
Most experts agree. “The best-case scenario is they use this incident as a wake-up call to shock them into solving this [border fight] once and for all,” Vipin Narang, an expert on Indian forces at MIT, told me. “The worst case is the nationalists push to escalate and it’ll be a long, long summer.”
He noted that China has much stronger forces overall but that India has amassed enough military force at the border that it can rival Chinese troops at that frontier. Which means “once the bullets start flying, it’s unclear how it’s going to go,” he said.
The current situation is about much more than the decades-long border dispute. It’s also about the increasingly bitter rivalry for power in Asia.
China, especially under President Xi Jinping, frequently uses its military might to bully neighbors and claim more territory for itself, including along the mountainous frontier. India, meanwhile, has been building roads and airstrips along its border with China in an attempt to exert more control, piquing Beijing in the process.
After tensions simmering for years, they have officially boiled over.
The long China-India border fight, briefly explained
The seeds of the current flare-up were planted during British colonial rule of India.
In the late 1800s, the British drew two borders to formalize the yet-undefined frontier between India and China, one in the “Western Sector” in Kashmir and the other thousands of miles away in the “Eastern Sector.” But China — along with a then-independent Tibet — didn’t agree to the British proposals, leaving demarcation an open question for decades.
The border skirmishes are not new to the 3,488km (2,167-mile) frontier between India and China, most of which remains disputed and undemarcated. | Great map work by @AliaChughtai pic.twitter.com/ScW0ai6LD0 — Saif Khalid (@msaifkhalid) May 27, 2020
After India gained independence from Britain in 1947, its leaders said the British-drawn boundaries were firm and claimed some of the disputed territories — including the Aksai Chin region near the Galwan Valley — for itself. Though it initially accepted some of India’s stances, China changed course over time. In 1957, for example, the Chinese built a road in the Western Sector through parts India said it controlled.
Ties between the two countries remained cordial, but they frayed over the next few years in part due to the border problem. Skirmishes between Indian and Chinese patrols first began in 1959 but grew more frequent and violent until October 1962, when Chinese troops invaded India over the disputed border.
After 32 days of fighting, China had gained more control in the Western Sector and pushed the ill-trained and ill-equipped Indian troops back about 12 miles in the Eastern Sector. It was a humiliating loss for India that haunts the country to this day.
To semi-officially separate the two, a “Line of Actual Control” (LAC) was finally adopted by both countries, marking the disputed claims along the thousands of miles of land — but it was by no means definitive. Much of the LAC was, and remains, porous, noncontiguous, and unmarked, and thus did little to resolve the competing claims between the two countries. The two nations don’t even agree on the actual length of the LAC.
Simmering tensions have persisted despite the pseudo-border in place.
Just days before Xi’s first visit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in September 2014, over 200 Chinese troops entered Indian territory in the western Himalayas to build a road. Indian troops challenged the Chinese soldiers, pushed them back, and reportedly destroyed the road.
In 2017, Chinese engineers tried to build a road through the Doklam plateau, also an area in the Himalayas claimed both by China and Bhutan, a small country wedged between the two larger powers. Indian troops on their side of the border directly intervened and pushed the crew back.
Weeks of negotiations between Beijing and New Delhi finally ended with India agreeing to pull back troops from the area and China agreeing to end its project (though Chinese leaders vowed to keep patrolling the area). Satellite images released the following year by the independent intelligence firm Stratfor showed that both sides had continued to build up their forces near Doklam, with India placing attack helicopters at an airfield and China deploying a fighter jet and missile system to its airbases.
That activity continues to this day. “Both China and India are ramping up activities in the Himalayas — building infrastructure, sending military assets — to have more control in the region,” Adam Ni, a board director of the China Policy Center in Australia, told me last month.
The incursions continue, too. According to the Indian government, China’s forces crossed into Indian territory more than 1,000 times between 2016 and 2018. However, they engaged in a massive deadly clash since 1967 and neither side had even shot at the other since 1975, abiding by agreements both countries signed in the 1990s to not use weapons in these skirmishes.
That helped lead to a fragile peace — and that peace is broken now.
This is really all about China and India’s larger rivalry
There’s a lot more to this border dispute, according to the experts I spoke to. Sure, it’s obviously about the years of animosity built up at the undefined frontier. But it’s really about each side sending a larger message to the other.
China wants greater control along the LAC and parts of South Asia, but India’s size and coziness with the United States make it hard for Beijing to achieve that. Starting a fight along the border “is a way for Chinese to signal to the Indians that they can make life pretty bad,” Ganguly told me in May.
India, meanwhile, wants to send its own signal that it won’t be pushed around by its powerful neighbor, especially in the same area where it lost a brutal war just a few decades ago.
And New Delhi wants to stake its claim even further as the country invests billions in infrastructure in the region, aiming to build 66 roads along the Chinese border by 2022. One of those roads connects to a military base in the Galwan Valley.
As long as the regional rivalry continues and the border issues remain unsolved, skirmishes will likely persist. “This is a new normal that we’re likely to see play out a lot in the coming months and years,” Michael Kugelman, an India expert at the Wilson Center in Washington, said last month.
The good news, experts noted at the time, was that neither side actually wants a full-blown war. Both nations, of course, have their hands full dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. Beijing is also preoccupied with growing animosities with the US and seizing more control in Hong Kong, while New Delhi knows that challenging China militarily would likely end badly for India.
That still holds, as a war between two large nations with nuclear weapons could get out of hand very quickly. “Neither side has an incentive for this to escalate,” said MIT’s Narang. The problem is that nationalist voices in both countries will likely call for revenge, possibly putting pressure on Xi and Modi to respond forcefully.
In other words, there isn’t a clear off-ramp right now — and it could all get worse before it gets better.


vox--2020-06-16--6 feet away isn’t enough. Covid-19 risk involves other dimensions, too.

When states had strict stay-at-home orders and lockdowns in place , many decisions about the risk of getting the coronavirus were simple .
People didn ’ t have to think about whether dining in a restaurant is safe if the restaurant was closed .
Now , that states are opening up — with varying degrees of precautions and adherence in place — individuals will need to weigh some risks on their own .
It isn ’ t easy ; information about what ’ s safe , and what ’ s not , can be contradictory and confusing .
A state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to resume , but should you really go ?
Is it safer if people are only allowed to dine outside ?
The hunger for guidance is clear : On May 6 , infectious disease expert Erin Bromage posted a blog post summarizing the evidence of coronavirus transmission risks , and 17 million people have since read it , he says .
The CDC didn ’ t post its own updated guidance for individuals and events venturing out into a post-lockdown world until June 12 .
Perhaps a bit too late , as new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ several states .
As Bromage conveys , the scientific understanding of how the virus transmits in public is improving .
Contact tracing studies around the world have taken a magnifying glass to the “ superspreading ” events , where one person ends up infecting dozens of others .
These studies shine a light on the key risk factors that create dangerous situations .
From these studies , one thing is clear : The main way people are getting sick with SARS-CoV-2 is from respiratory droplets spreading between people in close quarters .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ put , “ is breathing in everybody ’ s breath , ” says Charles Haas , an environmental engineer at Drexel University .
Droplets fly from people ’ s mouths and noses when they breathe , talk , or sneeze .
Other people can breathe them in .
That ’ s the main risk , and that ’ s why face masks are an essential precaution ( they help stop the droplets from spewing far from a person ’ s mouth or nose ) .
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contact over other modes of transmission .
“ The virus does not spread easily in other ways , ” the CDC writes .
It ’ s still possible that a person can catch it from touching a contaminated surface ( more on that below. )
.
But it ’ s “ not thought to be the main way the virus spreads , ” the CDC states .
As Bromage put it in his piece , “ We know most people get infected in their own home , ” from housemates or family members @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
So how can we assess the risk of going places outside the home ?
The story is a little more complicated than the simple “ stay 6 feet away ” guidelines .
Coronavirus risk is simply not one-dimensional .
We need to think about risk in four dimensions : distance to other people , environment , activity , and time spent together .
A simple suggestion : Imagine people are smoking , or farting really bad , and try to avoid breathing it in It ’ s easy to get into the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and spreading the coronavirus as people reenter communal spaces in society .
We can talk about the number of viral-laden droplets expelled by a single breath ( a lot , perhaps 100 or more ) , by a person talking ( 10 times more than breathing ) , about how far a sneeze can propel those droplets ( much farther than 6 feet ) , how long those viral droplets linger in the air ( around eight to 14 minutes , at least in a controlled indoor lab setting ) .
But really @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the greatest Covid-19 risk is being around breathing , laughing , coughing , sneezing , talking , people .
It ’ s still hard to visualize the risk , though , as the respiratory droplets are invisible to our eyes .
Perhaps helpful : Imagine everyone is smoking , as Ed Yong reported in the Atlantic , and you ’ d like to avoid inhaling as much smoke as possible .
In a cramped indoor space , that smoke is going to get dense and heavy fast .
If the windows are open @ @ @ @ @ @ @ away .
If fewer people are in the space , less smoke will accumulate , and it might not waft over to you if you ’ re standing far enough away .
But spend a lot of time in an enclosed space with those people , and the smoke grows denser .
The denser the smoke , the more likely it is to affect you .
It ’ s the same with this virus : The more of it you inhale , the more likely you are to get sick .
An alternative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ With my kids , I just sort of joke around that if you can smell their farts , you need to move farther apart , ” Bromage says .
So if not smoking , imagine everyone is farting .
Keep this in mind and surely you ’ ll realize outdoor activities are better than indoor ones .
“ This tells you the gradient of risk , ” Bromage says .
“ The closer you are , the more it ’ s gon na smell , the more dangerous it is.
“ At @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being close enough to people to smell their farts .
So even in outdoor spaces , we need to limit our contacts .
A crowded indoor place , then , with poor ventilation , filled with people talking , shouting , or singing for hours on end will be the riskiest scenario .
A sparsely populated indoor space with open windows is less risky ( but not completely safe ) .
Running quickly past another jogger outside is on the other end of the spectrum ; minimal risk .
There are many scenarios @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outdoors is lower risk , ” Muge Cevik , a physician and virology expert at the University of St. Andrews , says .
But “ if you have a gathering or a barbecue outside , and you spent all day together with your friends , your risk is still higher.
” What recent contact tracing studies can teach us about risk Scientists pointed out a few recent contact tracing studies that nicely illustrate the dimensions of Covid-19 risk .
In China , 8,437 shoppers and employees of a supermarket were tracked in late @ @ @ @ @ @ @ confirmed positive with Covid-19 while working in the store .
The risk for infection was much higher for the workers than for the shoppers .
Around 9 percent of the supermarket employees ( 11 out of 120 employees ) got sick as a result .
But just 0.02 percent of the shoppers ( 2 out of 8,224 shoppers ) got sick .
What does this show ?
The employees are at a much larger risk due to the time they spent working in the store .
Both the employees and shoppers were in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ risk was not the same .
( The study did not note whether the shoppers and customers were wearing masks in the store . )
The employees may have interacted more with their colleagues , but they also had a greater chance of breathing in the virus .
What we should learn from this : If we have to spend time with people indoors , try to make it quick .
Another recent study out of China investigated an outbreak that started at a Buddhist temple event .
Two buses brought people to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ buses , there was a person who later tested positive for the coronavirus who had not yet started to feel symptoms .
The other bus was free of infected people .
Both buses brought people to the same temple , where they mixed and mingled .
But who was most at risk of getting sick ?
Those who rode the bus with the infected person .
Twenty-four out of 67 people on that bus got sick .
No one on the other bus did .
The event was attended by another 172 people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seven of these people got sick .
The lesson ?
The confines of a bus are a much riskier environment for viral spread than a larger space , like at the temple .
The risk in the temple was not zero .
But it was much reduced compared to the confines of the bus .
So if you have to choose between a big open indoor space and a smaller one , choose the larger one , where people can spread out .
“ When you look at public transport , work spaces @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re just trying to fit many people in a small confined space — respiratory viruses like those spaces , ” Cevik says .
It ’ s “ just common sense.
” There ’ s no set time that ’ s safe to be in these places .
“ Generally , for droplet transmission , we say 15 minutes , ” Cevik says .
“ So if you spend 15 minutes face to face with somebody , you ’ re close contact [ and at high risk ] , but that doesn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ risk is zero.
” And it ’ s not just the location or the time spent together : The activity people are engaged in matters , too .
In Washington state , a person with the virus attended a choir practice , and more than half of the other singers subsequently got sick .
This was labeled a “ superspreading ” event , as one infection led to 32 others .
Why was this so risky ?
“ The superspreading event is about the behavior of the person involved , ” Cevik says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ person could become a “ superspreader ” : Some people shed more of the virus than others , and it appears people shed most of it when they are just starting to feel symptoms .
But what made this event so risky was the convergence of many risk factors : the singing activity ( during which the infected person released viral particles into the air ) , the time spent together ( the practice was 2.5 hours ) , and the interaction between the choir members in an enclosed space ( not only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also split up into smaller groups and shared cookies and tea ) .
In a new paper published by CDC , researchers in Japan identified 61 clusters ( five or more cases stemming from a common event ) of Covid-19 cases .
The researchers found most commonly the clusters originated in health care facilities .
But outside of that they note “ many Covid-19 clusters were associated with heavy breathing in close proximity , such as singing at karaoke parties , cheering at clubs , having conversations in bars , and exercising in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Notably , too , were the ages of the people who instigated spread outside of the health care settings .
“ Half ... were 20–39 years of age , ” the report finds .
Which is a reminder : younger people can catch the virus , survive , but at the same time spread it to others who may die from it .
What about touching something with infected droplets ?
Is that still a risk ?
According to the CDC , the coronavirus does not often spread from people touching surfaces .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ touches a hand railing , does that make that hand railing dangerous for other people to touch ?
The CDC is now saying that such events are not a huge risk for Covid-19 transmission .
But , there ’ s a catch : It is still the case that surface transmission is possible .
Scientists believe the virus can remain viable on a hard , non-porous surface like plastic or steel for around three days , and a rough surface like cardboard for about a day .
You could , conceivably , touch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your face , and get sick .
( The good news is that even though some virus can remain on a surface for a day or more , the amount of virus on a given surface drops by half after several hours , and then continues dropping . )
Bromage cautions it ’ s just really hard to study surface transmission .
In contact tracing studies , it ’ s much easier to ask people who they ’ ve been in contact with than to have them remember every surface they ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ [ CDC ] statement , ” Cevik says , agreeing that surfaces aren ’ t the most significant mode of transmission .
“ But this does not mean it does not happen.
” Cevik points me to a contact tracing study that suggests ( with a good deal of uncertainty ) that some people caught the infection in a mall via the restroom .
“ Bottom line , ” she says , “ it ’ s still important to maintain personal hygiene and wash hands.
” Also consider how scientists recently found live @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bathroom hygiene is still as important as ever .
There are no magic numbers to eliminate risk It would be great if there were very specific numbers and guidelines we could follow to minimize coronavirus risk to zero .
But there aren ’ t .
While 6 feet away from another person , it ’ s not like the virus will immediately decide to drop dead .
That ’ s why we need to think of risk in terms of many dimensions : so we can each think critically and not fall back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ When I first said restaurants were risks , people interpreted that as ‘ every restaurant is a risk , ’ ” Bromage says .
“ Each restaurant has its own unique environment , its own unique challenges that need to be worked out .
If you ’ ve got a large open-seating area , and you can open up the windows and doors ... the risk there is much lower than a boutique restaurant with five tables that creates that really intimate atmosphere.
” When we venture out into the world , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ risk , but never eliminate it .
“ Wearing a mask is not going to completely reduce your risk , hand-washing is not going to completely reduce your risk , and staying a distance away from people in an enclosed space is not going to completely reduce your risk , ” Haas , the Drexel professor , says .
“ But the concurrent use of all those strategies will hopefully reduce your risk down to a lower level .
We can never get to zero .
There ’ s no such thing as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more data , and follow-up on potential exposures .
A hair salon in Missouri made headlines when a couple of their hair stylists were reportedly back at work after testing positive for Covid-19 .
Both hairdressers wore masks , and so did their clients , and a follow-up investigation by their county health department revealed no new infections among the 140 clients they saw .
This data point is a bit anecdotal .
“ I think they got lucky , ” Bromage says .
“ But it does highlight the importance of masks.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ getting a haircut while everyone is wearing a mask is a low-risk activity .
Contact tracing studies have taught us a lot so far .
But as of now , most of this work has been done in Asian countries , which may have different expectations around mask-wearing , among other differences .
“ Contact tracing , testing , isolating — these are the building blocks to understand where the transmission is occurring , ” Cevik says .
And the more we learn , the more power we have to stop the spread @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

When states had strict stay-at-home orders and lockdowns in place, many decisions about the risk of getting the coronavirus were simple. People didn’t have to think about whether dining in a restaurant is safe if the restaurant was closed.
Now, that states are opening up — with varying degrees of precautions and adherence in place — individuals will need to weigh some risks on their own.
It isn’t easy; information about what’s safe, and what’s not, can be contradictory and confusing. A state may allow restaurants to reopen and concerts to resume, but should you really go? Is it safer if people are only allowed to dine outside?
The hunger for guidance is clear: On May 6, infectious disease expert Erin Bromage posted a blog post summarizing the evidence of coronavirus transmission risks, and 17 million people have since read it, he says. The CDC didn’t post its own updated guidance for individuals and events venturing out into a post-lockdown world until June 12. Perhaps a bit too late, as new cases and hospitalizations are currently rising in several states.
As Bromage conveys, the scientific understanding of how the virus transmits in public is improving. Contact tracing studies around the world have taken a magnifying glass to the “superspreading” events, where one person ends up infecting dozens of others. These studies shine a light on the key risk factors that create dangerous situations.
From these studies, one thing is clear: The main way people are getting sick with SARS-CoV-2 is from respiratory droplets spreading between people in close quarters. The risk of catching the coronavirus, simply put, “is breathing in everybody’s breath,” says Charles Haas, an environmental engineer at Drexel University. Droplets fly from people’s mouths and noses when they breathe, talk, or sneeze. Other people can breathe them in. That’s the main risk, and that’s why face masks are an essential precaution (they help stop the droplets from spewing far from a person’s mouth or nose).
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) emphasizes the risk of close contact over other modes of transmission. “The virus does not spread easily in other ways,” the CDC writes. It’s still possible that a person can catch it from touching a contaminated surface (more on that below.). But it’s “not thought to be the main way the virus spreads,” the CDC states.
As Bromage put it in his piece, “We know most people get infected in their own home,” from housemates or family members who caught the virus in the community.
So how can we assess the risk of going places outside the home?
The story is a little more complicated than the simple “stay 6 feet away” guidelines. Coronavirus risk is simply not one-dimensional. We need to think about risk in four dimensions: distance to other people, environment, activity, and time spent together.
Let’s walk through them.
A simple suggestion: Imagine people are smoking, or farting really bad, and try to avoid breathing it in
It’s easy to get into the weeds talking about the risk of catching and spreading the coronavirus as people reenter communal spaces in society. We can talk about the number of viral-laden droplets expelled by a single breath (a lot, perhaps 100 or more), by a person talking (10 times more than breathing), about how far a sneeze can propel those droplets (much farther than 6 feet), how long those viral droplets linger in the air (around eight to 14 minutes, at least in a controlled indoor lab setting).
But really, what all this means is that the greatest Covid-19 risk is being around breathing, laughing, coughing, sneezing, talking, people.
It’s still hard to visualize the risk, though, as the respiratory droplets are invisible to our eyes.
Perhaps helpful: Imagine everyone is smoking, as Ed Yong reported in the Atlantic, and you’d like to avoid inhaling as much smoke as possible. In a cramped indoor space, that smoke is going to get dense and heavy fast. If the windows are open, some of that smoke will blow away. If fewer people are in the space, less smoke will accumulate, and it might not waft over to you if you’re standing far enough away. But spend a lot of time in an enclosed space with those people, and the smoke grows denser.
The denser the smoke, the more likely it is to affect you. It’s the same with this virus: The more of it you inhale, the more likely you are to get sick.
An alternative image to thinking about this risk: “With my kids, I just sort of joke around that if you can smell their farts, you need to move farther apart,” Bromage says. So if not smoking, imagine everyone is farting. Keep this in mind and surely you’ll realize outdoor activities are better than indoor ones. “This tells you the gradient of risk,” Bromage says. “The closer you are, the more it’s gonna smell, the more dangerous it is.“
At a barbecue, you can still imagine being close enough to people to smell their farts. So even in outdoor spaces, we need to limit our contacts.
A crowded indoor place, then, with poor ventilation, filled with people talking, shouting, or singing for hours on end will be the riskiest scenario. A sparsely populated indoor space with open windows is less risky (but not completely safe). Running quickly past another jogger outside is on the other end of the spectrum; minimal risk.
There are many scenarios in between. “In general, outdoors is lower risk,” Muge Cevik, a physician and virology expert at the University of St. Andrews, says. But “if you have a gathering or a barbecue outside, and you spent all day together with your friends, your risk is still higher.”
What recent contact tracing studies can teach us about risk
Scientists pointed out a few recent contact tracing studies that nicely illustrate the dimensions of Covid-19 risk.
In China, 8,437 shoppers and employees of a supermarket were tracked in late January after one of the employees was confirmed positive with Covid-19 while working in the store.
The risk for infection was much higher for the workers than for the shoppers. Around 9 percent of the supermarket employees (11 out of 120 employees) got sick as a result. But just 0.02 percent of the shoppers (2 out of 8,224 shoppers) got sick.
What does this show?
The employees are at a much larger risk due to the time they spent working in the store. Both the employees and shoppers were in the same physical space, but their risk was not the same. (The study did not note whether the shoppers and customers were wearing masks in the store.) The employees may have interacted more with their colleagues, but they also had a greater chance of breathing in the virus.
What we should learn from this: If we have to spend time with people indoors, try to make it quick.
Another recent study out of China investigated an outbreak that started at a Buddhist temple event.
Two buses brought people to the function. On one of the buses, there was a person who later tested positive for the coronavirus who had not yet started to feel symptoms. The other bus was free of infected people.
Both buses brought people to the same temple, where they mixed and mingled outdoors*. But who was most at risk of getting sick? Those who rode the bus with the infected person. Twenty-four out of 67 people on that bus got sick. No one on the other bus did. The event was attended by another 172 people who arrived by other transportation. Only seven of these people got sick.
The lesson? The confines of a bus are a much riskier environment for viral spread than a larger outdoor space, like at the temple. The risk at the temple was not zero. But it was much reduced compared to the confines of the bus. And it appears those who were exposed at the temple were in close contact with the infected person.
“When you look at public transport, work spaces, restaurants — places where we’re just trying to fit many people in a small confined space — respiratory viruses like those spaces,” Cevik says. It’s “just common sense.”
There’s no set time that’s safe to be in these places. “Generally, for droplet transmission, we say 15 minutes,” Cevik says. “So if you spend 15 minutes face to face with somebody, you’re close contact [and at high risk], but that doesn’t mean if you spend 14 minutes your risk is zero.” And if you have to choose between a big open indoor space and a smaller one, choose the larger one, where people can spread out.
It’s not just the location or the time spent together: The activity people are engaged in matters, too.
In Washington state, a person with the virus attended a choir practice, and more than half of the other singers subsequently got sick. This was labeled a “superspreading” event, as one infection led to 32 others. Why was this so risky?
“The superspreading event is about the behavior of the person involved,” Cevik says. There are many reasons why a person could become a “superspreader”: Some people shed more of the virus than others, and it appears people shed most of it when they are just starting to feel symptoms.
But what made this event so risky was the convergence of many risk factors: the singing activity (during which the infected person released viral particles into the air), the time spent together (the practice was 2.5 hours), and the interaction between the choir members in an enclosed space (not only did they all practice together, they also split up into smaller groups and shared cookies and tea).
In a new paper published by CDC, researchers in Japan identified 61 clusters (five or more cases stemming from a common event) of Covid-19 cases. The researchers found most commonly the clusters originated in health care facilities. But outside of that they note “many Covid-19 clusters were associated with heavy breathing in close proximity, such as singing at karaoke parties, cheering at clubs, having conversations in bars, and exercising in gymnasiums,” the scientists wrote.
Notably, too, were the ages of the people who instigated spread outside of the health care settings. “Half ... were 20–39 years of age,” the report finds. Which is a reminder: younger people can catch the virus, survive, but at the same time spread it to others who may die from it.
What about touching something with infected droplets? Is that still a risk?
According to the CDC, the coronavirus does not often spread from people touching surfaces. That is, if someone with Covid-19 touches a hand railing, does that make that hand railing dangerous for other people to touch? The CDC is now saying that such events are not a huge risk for Covid-19 transmission.
But, there’s a catch: It is still the case that surface transmission is possible. Scientists believe the virus can remain viable on a hard, non-porous surface like plastic or steel for around three days, and a rough surface like cardboard for about a day. You could, conceivably, touch a contaminated surface, and then touch your face, and get sick. (The good news is that even though some virus can remain on a surface for a day or more, the amount of virus on a given surface drops by half after several hours, and then continues dropping.)
Bromage cautions it’s just really hard to study surface transmission. In contact tracing studies, it’s much easier to ask people who they’ve been in contact with than to have them remember every surface they’ve touched.
“I agree with this [CDC] statement,” Cevik says, agreeing that surfaces aren’t the most significant mode of transmission. “But this does not mean it does not happen.” Cevik points me to a contact tracing study that suggests (with a good deal of uncertainty) that some people caught the infection in a mall via the restroom. “Bottom line,” she says, “it’s still important to maintain personal hygiene and wash hands.”
Also consider how scientists recently found live Covid-19 virus in feces. So good bathroom hygiene is still as important as ever.
There are no magic numbers to eliminate risk
It would be great if there were very specific numbers and guidelines we could follow to minimize coronavirus risk to zero.
But there aren’t. While 6 feet away from another person, it’s not like the virus will immediately decide to drop dead. That’s why we need to think of risk in terms of many dimensions: so we can each think critically and not fall back on rules that are too simplified.
“When I first said restaurants were risks, people interpreted that as ‘every restaurant is a risk,’” Bromage says. “Each restaurant has its own unique environment, its own unique challenges that need to be worked out. If you’ve got a large open-seating area, and you can open up the windows and doors ... the risk there is much lower than a boutique restaurant with five tables that creates that really intimate atmosphere.”
When we venture out into the world, we need to remember we can reduce risk, but never eliminate it.
“Wearing a mask is not going to completely reduce your risk, hand-washing is not going to completely reduce your risk, and staying a distance away from people in an enclosed space is not going to completely reduce your risk,” Haas, the Drexel professor, says. “But the concurrent use of all those strategies will hopefully reduce your risk down to a lower level. We can never get to zero. There’s no such thing as zero risk.”
And we still need more data, and follow-up on potential exposures. A hair salon in Missouri made headlines when a couple of their hair stylists were reportedly back at work after testing positive for Covid-19. Both hairdressers wore masks, and so did their clients, and a follow-up investigation by their county health department revealed no new infections among the 140 clients they saw.
This data point is a bit anecdotal. “I think they got lucky,” Bromage says. “But it does highlight the importance of masks.” Perhaps more data will reveal that getting a haircut while everyone is wearing a mask is a low-risk activity.
Contact tracing studies have taught us a lot so far. But as of now, most of this work has been done in Asian countries, which may have different expectations around mask-wearing, among other differences.
“Contact tracing, testing, isolating — these are the building blocks to understand where the transmission is occurring,” Cevik says. And the more we learn, the more power we have to stop the spread of this pandemic.
*This piece was updated to clarify the temple event occured outdoors.