By Miguel Louis
Correction: Within the print edition, we had claimed that the author was involved with the actions in the article. To clarify, this involvement was the retelling of events, giving special consideration to the perspectives of the actors involved.
On Jan. 30, a small group of activists visited the Red Lion Hotel and Suites. The leftist activists with Oly Housing Now had booked 17 rooms online at the downtown staple a couple of days before. That night, they led 33 houseless people from the encampments to the rooms that had been booked, and helped move their belongings into the rooms.
The next day, Jan. 31, they held a rally at 11 a.m. Their speakers exclaimed a common message: Housing is a Human Right. This call originates from Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaims that adequate shelter is a basic tenet of universal human rights.
The activists stated their aim of housing people at the Hotel across the street, they demanded that these people not be evicted into the cold, and made calls for the City of Olympia to guarantee housing in the midst of the wintertime and pandemic.
Over the course of six hours, this protest would turn from a peaceful rally calling for the City of Olympia to provide shelter for the houseless in the midst of winter, to what OPD called a “hostage situation” so intense they would call in SWAT, the Thurston County Sheriff, and over 100 officers combined.
The morning had begun like normal. Activists with Oly Housing Now spent time setting up a rally and called for more people to show up. They were prepared with printed-off lists of demands for the City, and a clear message and purpose. A few activists came forward to announce the plan of the protest. There were people inside the paid-for hotel rooms who were supposed to check out by noon that day, but the protest would demand they not be forced out until the city agreed to work with them for a solution.
Those in attendance then moved across the street to the Red Lion raising signs and chanting “Housing is a Human Right.” At the protest, there was a sign making area and a stand with coffee and food, along with more copies of the demands. Overall, the event had an atmosphere of camaraderie and protest, as folks lined the front of the hotel with signs and their presence in support of the houseless community.
It was then, as they entered the building, that the situation began to turn. Activists had previously interacted with James Grimm, the assistant manager, the day before. It was during that interaction that organizers had been able to discern the fact that the protestors’ position might not be met with friendly reception. On the day of the event, as protesters attempted to enter the hotel, the two sliding glass doors in the lobby slid shut. A few protesters suddenly found themselves trapped in the space between them.
Video evidence from that day shows the assistant manager pushing an emergency button that locked the lobby doors, before walking over to the glass pane that separated the protestors from the interior of the building. People involved stated that he then proceeded to insult and taunt the activists trapped between the doors and brandished a whip-club throughout the confrontation. He screamed foul slurs and hate speech, and referred to them as “Anqueefa”, a specific term used by the far-right against their perceived enemy, the Antifascist Movement, that has risen in response to fascist and white supremacist violence and the election chaos.
Other hotel staff members, curious about the scene, wandered into the lobby. It was then that Grimm yelled at them to run to the basement and barricade themselves inside. At this point, those inside the hotel consisted of staff, guests, and some of the houseless whose rooms were, at the time of the protest, still legally booked. All the while, protesters were trapped between the lobby doors as everyone else in attendance stood outside the front of the hotel.
About ten minutes into the standoff, the assistant manager yelled through the doors, stating that the reason he was uncomfortable was that one of the people in the lobby had a tactical knife attached to their belt. An eyewitness account confirmed that the person, one of those arrested later, offered to take off their belt and hand it out the door if it made him more comfortable. They turned to those recording the scene through the sliding glass doors, with their hands up, to make their intentions clear.
Grimm refused and continued to insult the stuck protestors. After about 15 minutes, the door malfunctioned and slid open. Those who had been stuck in the doorway, moved into the lobby quickly, in panic from the tight space. It was then, after engaging in a physical and verbal confrontation with the incoming activists that Grimm fled, down the lit-up hallway as the protest began to move into the building.
There were staff members still there when the protesters entered, who talked to them directly. Activists informed them of their demands that the houseless would not be leaving their rooms and asked the Hotel to work with them. The Hotel staff refused and argued with the activists. The activists asked if they could get a later checkout, they were denied.
At one point, as they would explain to the police later, several people offered to pay for another night of rooms and showed off the contents of their wallets to reveal that they scrounged what they could to afford the cost of 17 rooms. They hoped to keep the people housed for another day and to speak to the city about the days after. They were denied.
At 12:11 p.m., the staff left their posts and walked to the back of the hotel. Another manager of the Red Lion called the police. Manager Lori Hines claimed that there were people bound in the basement. As did Grimm when he talked to them. This was during the time that the activists were trying to talk to the staff so as to work out a deal with the hotel. Instead, staff called the police and claimed that they were overrun by antifa.
At this point, Grimm and Hines were spotted sitting in and next to a Mazda in the parking lot, as activists tried to talk with them. Grimm drove the vehicle to the parking lot across the street, next to the abandoned Greyhound station. Soon the police arrived and parked next to him and Lori, where they sat and conversed for 30 to 45 minutes.
Some staff members wandered over as well, to discuss. They ducked their heads, avoiding the activists out front trying to wave them down to compromise. One activist alleged of Grimm talking to the police, “He was over there for quite a while. It means the cops told him exactly what to say to warrant the police response we would get later. They were coaching him and the other manager on the phone, asking them to make stuff up so they could justify what happened later.”
For a few hours, the activists and houseless sat in the lobby as the police watched in their vehicles. Activists who worked with the houseless in the rooms roamed the hallways, working to meet basic needs and check on people. One activist and Olympia resident, Nolan Hibbard-Pelly, said, “The entire time I was there, it was really peaceful. People held signs, and sang, and chanted. There was a medic stand, and food and coffee.”
Several guests entered the hotel to try to book a room and talked to the activists. They explained the scenario, their protest, and that the staff had left their posts but were in the hotel, as the activists wanted to bargain with them. One man sat down with the protesters and conversed with them while he ate the pizza they had brought for everyone.
At 6 p.m. we received word that OPD and the City had decided to treat the protest at the hotel as a “hostage situation”. SWAT was on its way. There was no official word from the city as to how the situation developed. Instead, this warning came in the form of a text message from a sitting member of the city council. This was the only warning activists received for what to expect next. It was also the only communication from members of the city government. The city had made no attempts to work with activists.
Just before this, a housing activist requested their friends to bring a karaoke machine and beer, as everyone was in a good mood on the ground, and the event was entirely peaceful. The protest had thinned out, as protesters had set up shifts for eviction defense and there was a lapse in numbers.
The police response was immediate and intense. Over 100 officers surrounded the hotel, front, side, back. All roads in the vicinity were blocked, a line of police cars flooded the back street towards Heritage Park with flashing lights.
SWAT teams entered through the basement and the lobby of the hotel. They moved in, detained those in the lobby, and sent a team to raid all the rooms booked by activists. As police moved from door to door, those of us in attendance could see them searching, through the windows. They threw several flashbangs inside the hotel rooms and forced the houseless folks to abandon their things as they were forcibly kicked out.
The police used a taser on a houseless person until he went into a seizure. He was wheeled out on a stretcher and was taken to Thurston County Jail, where he remains behind bars, and underwent a mental health crisis due to the horror of the response. One of those forcibly removed spoke out after she witnessed what happened to her friend, and then she was forced out of the hotel without being allowed to grab her shoes or a coat, as the rain poured and the temperature dropped.
In the next two apartment buildings over, above the Olympia Tattoo Company, tenants called out about being stuck inside their building amidst all the chaos outside. One person claimed they were nearly arrested for trying to go to their partner’s place. A man shouted “Hey cops, are you done here? I’d really like to leave. My dog needs to pee. You’re keeping US trapped in here!”
“Hey cops are you done here? I’d really like to leave. My dog needs to pee. You’re keeping US trapped in here!”
In the end, the police made 5 arrests. None related to the notion of a “hostage situation”. Instead, houseless activists and the houseless were charged with burglary and assault, for a protest in the hotel.
Since then the city has responded by denouncing the protesters. Mayor Selby called activists “domestic terrorists” in a city council meeting, the third time she has used this term in response to Left-wing protesters in Olympia. City council members warned that the city was already leading the way in houseless response, that they were doing all they could do, and made personal denouncements of the activists and organizers involved.
The city claimed in a press release early the next day that they had connected the houseless affected with services and that all of them had fled to local shelters in panic. This was false. Four people connected with the events went to the closest Interfaith shelter. Two were allowed a bed. The rest returned to their camps, without their things, in the rain, and right back where they started.
Activists have since been there to support the people at the camps, as they worked to replace what OPD has stolen from the houseless. There were requests that could be matched: phones, batteries, sleeping bags, backpacks. And there were things that have not yet been replaced. All as the area descended into a snowstorm and freezing temperatures.
The police put out a random notice four days after the protest, only on Twitter, to inform those involved that they could get their things back from the hotel. Activists eventually saw the Tweet and went to the police station to gather what they returned. In the end, wallets, cash, and stimulus cards and checks were not returned to the houseless living in the camps.
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