Seattle jumped to support the “Defund Police” movement. It was almost like they were waiting for it, they jumped so quickly. It’s not surprising, though. The cities of the Pacific-Northwest are hard progressive in ways that make Berkeley stand up and say, “Whoa now, let’s not get carried away.” So yeah, they defunded their police department–though not as far as some might prefer.

The results?

Well, they’re pretty much what you’d expect.

Last week, the Seattle City Council voted to slash funding for the police department, leading the city’s first black female police chief to resign. The council defunded the police even after antifa rioters had wreaked havoc on the city in the name of racial justice. In one particularly memorable case, rioters used a van loaded with explosives to blow open a police station. On Sunday, rioters fired explosives at police, wounding at least three of them. Some businesses in the city have had enough.

“What [the] city council has done has been more detrimental to our business than a global pandemic, by far, absolutely,” Joe Raetzer, co-owner of Steepologie Teas with his wife Andrea, told the Fox affiliate Q13 last week. His wife said there are “only so many times you can hire people and lay them off because they don’t want to be in this location, they already didn’t feel safe pre-COVID, pre-riots.”

Steepologie Teas boasted more than 300 loose-leaf teas on 4th Avenue. Seattle Apartments Magazine rated the tea shop “hands down the best tea in Seattle.” Now, the tea store has closed down permanently.

Of the city council’s move to cut police funding, Andrea Raetzer told Eater Seattle, “It might seem like a small cut, but this is where it starts. “The SPD was already shorthanded. We would have rather paid more taxes to help the homeless and drug crisis situation than take SPD off the streets.”

Andrea Raetzer explained that protest is a feature of life in Seattle, but the violent rioters have completely subverted peaceful protest.

Is anyone surprised that stores are closing, businesses are leaving the city, and the rioting has continued?

The truth of the matter is that trying to appease the mob is a losing proposition. All it does is empower the mob, it encourages them. It makes them believe that they have the power to make you do anything in the world.

It’s trying to appease a bully. All that it does is encourage the bully. He or she knows she owns you. The moment you stop doing what they want, they’ll pick back up where they left off…and that’s if they ever really stopped.

That’s all these “protestors” actually are.

Not all protestors, mind you. There are legitimate things to protest, both against and for. There are things I vehemently disagree with, but those protesting in favor of them are actually protesting and no trying to destroy things. I have no issue with that.

These “protestors” get quotation marks because the media likes to call them that, but the proper term is to call them rioters. Call them looters. Call them street thugs with a political agenda. Any and all apply.

And they’re driving off the people who fund the city. If this keeps up, Seattle is going to become a no-go zone for most of America.