Seattle-based ice cream company, Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream, is in a dilemma. It wants to continue to support Black Lives Matter but it wants to recoup loses from the “CHOP” zone created by BLM activists and others in 2020. It is suing the city over the abandoning of part of the city to the groups to form the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) but was later renamed the Capitol Hill Occupied protest (CHOP). While first supporting the autonomous zone as part of a “summer of love,” Democratic politicians like then Mayor Jenny Durkan later distanced themselves from the massive damage and crime in the zone.
Molly Moon is now suing over its abandonment by the city to these groups. However, it has struggled to maintain that it supports those groups. Conservatives have also objected that Molly Moon previously advocated defunding police and supported the creation of CHOP.
At the time, the shop reportedly posted:
“This is a photo of #CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) Seattle – a part of Capitol Hill near our shop taken over by peaceful protestors. It’s in the process of transforming into beautiful Black Lives Matter art, now that the police barricade is gone, and is another way our community is standing up for Black lives in our city and country.”
Molly Moon maintains that the lawsuit “does not seek to undermine CHOP participants’ message or present a counter message.” CEO of Molly Moon’s, Molly Moon Neitzel, told Fox News Digital:
“At Molly Moon’s we hold race equity at the top of our list of our priorities for how we want to make the world better. Black Lives Matter. The lawsuit filed on Wednesday, June 7 is not meant to undermine that important message. It’s seeking compensation for the significant revenue losses and team morale impacts we experienced during and for many months after CHOP caused by the City of Seattle’s decision to affirmatively create and assist the CHOP occupation of Capitol Hill, to abandon the police precinct and to stop responding to public safety needs in our beloved Capitol Hill community.”
Many of us were shocked when the local officials decided to abandon the area, including a police station. They then watched from a safe distance as extensive property damage occurred and violent crime spiked in the absence of any law enforcement. It was just politically too difficult to confront these groups so leaders like Durkan joked about it and the media portrayed the zone like a “block party.”
That block party is now the subject of this lawsuit and it could come down to what is considered discretionary decisions by government officials. In ice cream parlance, they could be in for a Rocky Road.
Unsympathetic litigants on both sides
Seattle deserves to lose, yet Molly Moon does not deserve to win.
In Future News: “Molly Moon Cheers Ten Million Dollar Verdict against Seattle but Outraged that Judge Orders Damages Payable Only to ‘Whitey'”.
Just Desserts
You might consider standup comedy as a side gig. You’re getting pretty good at this stuff. I hear Joe Rogan is always looking to host up and coming comics on his show and his Austin, TX venue. FWIW
Thank you, yet admittedly it is more cynacism than comedic talent. I’ll probably share the fate of old linguists and simply die a critic.
I liked your use of Die a Critic. lol;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacritic
This is a very extreme case of “discretionary enforcement”. You can see how there must be limits placed on refusal of law enforcement and mayors to confront law-breaking. Of course, they are in a tough spot, say, retaking the CHAZ zone in the first hours, as there will undoubtedly be violence, injuries and possibly deaths of city employees and citizens. However, the use of National Guard and mutual assistance (from surrounding jurisdictions) was the correct response to such overt lawlessness. I believe Molly Moon should be able to
prevail based on the fact that the Mayor had these options to restore law and order rapidly, and failed to protect life and property by exercising them.
As citizens, we need to challenge any elected leader who claims they “lack adequate resources” and that justifies discretionary enforcement. We need to make them admit that they still have unused options. That approach will smoke out the true motives, and fully expose the leader who fails to diligently enforce the law because they side with the law-breakers’ “cause”.
OT
Since many on here are of advanced age, and receive medical care often, some might want to understand the present US health care mess. Sad but true. The Rx is the message of Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning. It applies more than ever but especially for physicians in America.
The Moral Crisis of America’s Doctors
The corporatization of health care has changed the practice of medicine, causing many physicians to feel alienated from their work.
New York Times, June 15, 2023
This is a bit rich for a company that posted righteously:
“Police Officers: molly moon’s is a gun free zone. please do not come inside if you are wearing a firearm. No guns allowed inside.”
And now in effect to say that there was insufficient police presence after all. The city of Seattle and Molly Moon deserve each other.
The city of Seattle and Molly Moon deserve each other.
To quote HL Mencken
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. Mencken
Autonomous is an adjective that describes persons’ right or power of self-government without any outside political authority or control. Before, during, and after the existence of CHAZ Molly Moon had shown itself to be an active supporter in the ceding of self-government to CHAZ and thus became a willful participant in the anarchy that prevailed. Case dismissed.
What are you going to say as a small business in a zone taken over by political thugs with guns? You cannot afford to go up against this mob. You’re trying to preserve your business, everything you have worked for decades to create. Given the situation, I don’t think Molly Moon’s public statements can be interpreted as necessarily supporting the takeover. it’s obvious that preserving their business would be their chief motive, much more important than vague goals such as social justice. I don’t think those statements weaken their case against the city. They paid their taxes (for police services), and therefore were right to expect the city to crush the takeover as rapidly as possible.
Yesss…. but can we concede that there’s a matter of degree? They could have stuck s BLM sign in their window and given the proper salute when confronted, and left it at that. But they didn’t. They threw their weight, whatever it is or was, behind the forces of CHAZ.
That said – the police, and by the extension the city, are tasked with protecting even those who spit on them and reject their services, so I think MM should prevail.
pbinCA: And now? No threat, no BLM mob — yet Molly still spews the same tripe they did back when they actively colluded with the terrorists.
Molly Moon maintains that the lawsuit “does not seek to undermine CHOP participants’ message or present a counter message.”
I read that statement as a position of neutrality (non-hostility, non-support).
But for many political addicts these days, there is no ability to perceive neutrality. There are only 2 choices, with “them” or with “us”. And so a statement that is neutral can be (mis)interpreted.
One of the hallmarks of paranoia is inability to recognize neutrals as distinct from enemies. By misperceiving neutrals as enemies, the paranoid dramatically overestimate the perceived enemy’s size and clout — called aggrandizement of threat.
I think most Americans don’t want to be making that kind of mental mistake.
Molly can’t have it both ways. The destruction is an inherent part of CHOP. She should just face up to the fact that she sacrificed her business on the BLM altar.
This reasoning sound like trial by public opinion. The legal questions go much deeper than “whose side were you on?”
Be careful what you ask for ……
30 years ago, when my son relocated from Bklyn, NY to Redmond WA and then eventually to Bellevue, Capitol Hill was a community reminiscent of the Greenwich Village of my youth. Now it has been reduced to excrement thanks to the self-satisfied social justice engineers of the political establishment who decide how everyone else should live, whilst excluding themselves
Trademark of communist democrats…. speak out of both sides of one’s collective mouth and demand payment from your comrads for burning down the house.
So let me get this straight. You have a leftist who supported an organization that destroyed her property now crying in her chocolate malted beverage about the damage she helped to perpetuate through her support. It takes a lot of big round strawberry scoops to want to be reimbursed for the damage the big round strawberries caused when they fell to the pavement. No problem, just call in the tax payers to clean up the mess after she helped to push the cone to the hot pavement caused by the fires that she helped set. It’s like an arsonist who set fire to his own home filing a law suit because the firefighters did not get there fast enough. However, it is nice to see virtue signaling paying a price. Sorry if I’m not shedding a tear.
TiT,
Yep.
You got it right on the waffle cone.
Ditto. It’s a bit like pushing one’s grandma down the stairs and asking her why she’s running. Or perhaps murdering and inheriting. The list goes on.
Democrats want to abort the baby, cannibalize her profitable parts, sequester her carbon, and have her, too. #PatheticPride
Which BLM are they struggling to support? The BLM that fleeced whitey and spent all the money on themselves? That BLM?
Redistributive change through the back… black hole… whore h/t NAACP. Karmic irony.
I think they are suing the wrong people.
They should be suing BLM. Seems to me, they are the ones who were responsible for all the destruction during the 2020 Summer of Love.
Fiery But Mostly Peaceful!
Actually, while thinking on it, I think Moon should sue not the city itself, even though that is where the money is but former Mayor Jenny Durkan.
If the case were to get thrown out or they lost, I would cheer. Clearly they are trying to get money from the city and support BLM at the same time who they should be suing.
If they were to win and other followed suit, I would cheer. Show the city, “Go woke? Go broke!”
@ UpstateFarmer: Perhaps Molly contemplated same until news of BLM’s financial collapse was heard. Apparently that’s not the case……https://www.blackenterprise.com/black-lives-matter-bankruptcy-rumors/
“I scream, you scream, we all scream for not seeking to undermine CHOP participants’ message or present a counter message as we, in fact, present a counter message!”
Is it just me or is that corporate seal for Seattle extremely offensive and racist.
Molly Moon Neitzel not only loves ice cream, she likes to have her cake and eat it too!
Democrat = Greedy Hypocrite
Seems like Molly Moon and Gavin Newsom are both trying to have it both ways when it comes to pandering that cuts too deep financially. It’s all fun and games and in theory, reality, not so much. This really is the problem with liberal ideas, they just don’t work.
I should proofread my own comments before posting. 😅
No worries, we are told the blog has a conscientious editor that cleans up our messes.
Good to see you posting, Kristin. The check is in the male…..LOL.
😉
Thanks! 😄
Hi Kristin! (waves)
Hello!
Actions have consequences. So does trying to get others to pay for your own mistakes, particularly in terms of credibility.
Sometimes hard to live with what you advocate for others.
B.tch when karma bites.