Protestors gather in Woodruff Park to confront Olympia City Council

OLYMPIA –– Dozens of protestors gathered in Woodruff Park on a warm, humid Sunday afternoon this week to confront Olympia City Council members in their own neighborhood in West Olympia. 

The protest was meant to demonstrate opposition to a recent council vote that once again allowed the Olympia Police Department to use less-than-lethal crowd dispersion methods against protestors here, including pepper balls, tear gas and other similar methods. The decision, made last month, followed a vote earlier this summer to actually forbid these methods of crowd control on protestors. 

“This is to bring to the attention of council members that this isn’t acceptable,” said Leah Kosik, a local woman at the protest. “Our police should be maintaining the safety of communities and not using weapons and military tactics.”

Organizers wanted to literally drive the point home to Olympia City Council members this weekend that the kinds of crowd dispersion methods authorized by the latest vote are damaging to individuals exposed to those chemicals. Some of those chemical dispersion methods contain compounds that Sunday’s protest organizers said were banned in other countries like Syria. 

“I’d like to see them take back that vote,” said Miguel Louis, one of the organizers. “I’d like [the Olympia Police Department] to be transparent and not declare a riot just because we’re standing somewhere. That’s a violation of our First Amendment rights.” 

The protest on Sunday took a bit of a different tack than other protests in the community, as organizers called for protestors to “caravan,” or drive through, the neighborhood some of the city council members live in. Many others marched on foot or rode bicycles, carrying signs, flags and megaphones. 

Some at the Sunday protest want to see the city council members recalled, and fear if Olympia police are eliminated, the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office could step in to use the same aggressive measures used by the Olympia Police Department. 

“I want to see them [city council members] have their jobs taken away and I want them to fully defund OPD,” said one woman who spoke on condition of anonymity, for fear of retaliation by police. 

Much like other protests in the community in recent weeks, protestors were progressively angrier at actions taken by city officials and local police in response to Black Lives Matter protests. Many protestors JOLT spoke to Sunday, most of whom refused to give their names out of fear they would be identified by police, said they would like to see a change in leadership in Olympia and money that funds the Olympia Police Department diverted to other services that prevent crime.

“I’d like to see OPD take responsibility and in the end, I’d like to see them defunded,” Louis said. “They’ve shown us over and over they’re not willing to protect the rights of protestors at all.”