I discovered CarJitsu this past April at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, where a bout was broadcast on a wall-mounted television above a display of Doritos. There is, truthfully, not much to explain about this newfangled sport. CarJitsu is an athletic contest, really a wrestling match, between two people who grapple inside a small car until one of them submits to some sort of chokehold or pin. There are two three-minute rounds but possibly a third if the match is tied after the second round. The combatants start buckled next to each in the passenger and driver seats (selection determined by a coin toss), then unbuckle themselves and attack. They are not allowed to punch or strike each other, much less jab or poke an eye. They can use the seatbelt to strangle each other, however, and this is in fact one of the crowning tactical maneuvers in the sport. They can trap someone’s head underneath the steering wheel or manipulate the levers that adjust the seats, weaponizing the seat itself to pin or press their opponent. Though the FAQ on Pro League Network’s CarJitsu website specifies that wrestlers cannot open the car’s doors during a fight, they have done exactly that during some matches I’ve watched. Perhaps the rules of CarJitsu are evolving, much like human culture in general. The advantage of opening the door and touching the ground is that it resets the round. CarJitsu wrestlers have accomplished all these feats and more in the interest of securing a sign of submission, either a tap or a verbal indication, like a scream, from their opponent. And that’s CarJitsu.
It’s worth emphasizing that in the ideal state of submission, a CarJitsu combatant has been reduced to red-faced immobility and crammed into a crevice where most of us grimace to reach on the occasions we are obliged to retrieve an escaping M&M during a long car trip. None of this was clear to me back in April, when all I had planned was a flight to Oklahoma. But there’s something to be said for the unaided experience of not understanding what you see. A little instruction or experience will help you to appreciate the pleasures of Mark Rothko paintings or the finer points of bebop, but buying a banana at a Hudson News in the airport doesn’t help anyone immediately grasp why a man on the television wearing a skin-tight polyester workout shirt sprinkled with corporate logos is choking another man with a seatbelt inside a Toyota Scion. Especially puzzling are the onlookers sitting in folding chairs. A citizen of the world sometimes proceeds alone, hoping to gain knowledge and wisdom. I became fixated and proceeded to watch as much as I could take.
If it counts as an invention, CarJitsu was invented by a mathematics graduate student from Russia named Vik Mikheev. A couple of entrepreneurs from the “alternative sports creator” Pro League Network (PLN), which also broadcasts slap fights, slap poker, as well as whatever Beastball and Coffin Wars are, then acquired the rights to CarJitsu and turned it into one of their premier products. They have been broadcasting since 2022 on their website, on YouTube, and on whatever backwater channels show up on airport convenience-store TVs. The PLN has a television studio in Branson, Mo., and perhaps will spread farther afield, like an infection. This past spring, they filmed a competition in Dubai.
When the news broke of the Bite of Seattle shooting, I was standing in the parking lot of the Beacon Hill Red Apple in shock and horror as I thought of all the families whom I saw enjoying their lives two hours earlier. I was heartbroken to imagine how all of that was shattered. Later, I was saddened further to learn that the shooter was a 15-year-old child and that a 19-year-old kid’s life was shattered; the latter will not go home.
Two others, aged 44 and 56, also would not go home to their families and numerous others were injured and traumatized. The youngest among them was a two-year-old baby.
In a video shared on Instagram, author and South Seattle Emerald publisher Marcus Harrison Green posed a moral challenge to this narrative: “What are we doing people?” On Thursday, when rumors were swirling that Police Chief Shon Barnes had been fired, Black civic and religious leaders held a press conference to denounce Mayor Wilson’s decision, and instead of feeling pride, I felt disgust, as I confided in several friends and fellow activists.
I felt disgust on multiple levels: 1) I was wondering why we weren’t focusing on the victims or what we need to heal the community; 2) listening as a Black man who is deeply concerned about advancing police accountability, seeing some people I respect seemingly run political cover for a police officer who has committed himself to a homophobic, transphobic, reactionary, and sexist status quo.
Harrison Green’s eloquent outrage at our current discourse’s focus on blame and not being about healing was brilliant, and I’m not going to retread that territory. My point is that the Seattle Times and other media outlets that are framing this cover for a status quo cop as representative of the needs of the Black community have it wrong.
During the press conference and seemingly righteous display of local Black political power that was done in the rest of the Black community’s name, several of the leaders expressed solidarity with outgoing Chief Barnes because “he had shown up.” As prominent figures in nonprofit, corporate, and religious spaces, they expressed the ability to access his office and feel heard.
They cited the local impact of the national decline in crime and violence and framed Barnes as a change agent and reform leader. The decrease in crime nationally, including in Seattle, is due to several factors that are not quite clear to experts. NPR’s reporting this July, which heavily featured Seattle, noted that while crime has decreased, violence remains an issue, quoting Gary Ernsdorff, the supervisor of the Special Operations Unit in the King County Prosecutor's Office: “[King County] still has gang violence. We're still having drive-by shootings. We're still having armed robberies."
Likewise, local sources cite the unevenness of the progress made in each neighborhood. Nonetheless, the Black Lives Matter movement and Racial Justice advocates didn’t march and organize because crime was out of control in our communities. We organized and marched because the Seattle Police Department (SPD) has been notorious for racist, discriminatory, and violent behavior and a culture that is antithetical to our values of social justice.
During Chief Barnes’ tenure, the Office of Police Accountability received 60 complaints about his travel schedule, unprofessional behavior. Recently, two more complaints were opened after a testy exchange with a South Seattle Emerald reporter, according to King 5. Likewise, Publicola has documented the lack of progress on SPD’s goal of having a 30% female recruit class by 2030 that the agency had only managed to hire five women, a decrease from previous years, as well as ongoing homophobia and discrimination lawsuits.
Within Barnes administration, officers were hostile to the Black Lives Matter movement – a movement led by an intergenerational coalition of Black activists and religious leaders that I participated in, and which even included many who were at Thursday’s press conference. As Erica C. Barnett notes, “[Chief] Barnes also passed over a gay lieutenant [for promotion] who was a fixture in the Capitol Hill community and had been serving as acting captain of the East Precinct, Doug Raguso, in favor of an infamous officer named Mike Tietjen."
Tietjen’s name was synonymous with his misconduct during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in the neighborhood, when he drove his SUV onto a sidewalk full of protesters, likening them to “cockroaches” as they ran out of his path. Tietjen was also disciplined for an incident that same year, in which he was among a group of officers who harassed a trans woman, asking if she “had a dick under” her skirt.”
In addition to Barnes’ record of discriminatory behavior, Barnes was a part of SPD’s infamous undermining of the CARE team and its ability to execute its mission to provide civilianized behavioral crisis intervention, as an alternative to always dispatching an armed officer. This is one of the major demands of police reformers locally and the Black Lives Matter movement nationally.
The Community Assisted Response & Engagement (CARE) crisis response team poses with a department SUV in West Seattle, with the downtown skyline visible across Elliott Bay. While the team recently doubled in size, the police labor contract greatly limits the calls they can take. (City of Seattle)
So what’s going on? What are we doing here? To say it plain: this ain’t it. This is either a well-meaning but shortsighted protest or disturbingly cynical and toxic re-litigation of the 2025 election that is sidelining the political conversation that we need to have about real change with SPD!
Seattle’s Black community is a small portion of the overall population and it's very diverse, made up of a number of different diasporas of transplants and immigrants, as noted by Harrison Green in his piece during the 2025 election. The accusation and insinuation that Mayor Wilson’s is anti-Black or tone deaf to the Black community go back to an unsuccessful reelection strategy by Bruce Harrell. Many of those at the press conference were openly Bruce Harrell supporters and/or individual donors.
Due to gentrification, our small community has many faces and is more spread out than ever. Seattle’s Black community is fundamentally different than it was in the 1990s or the 2000s. My point is not to disregard and disrespect many of leaders who were present and who have done meaningful work and who have been a pillar of the community long before now; the point is that the idea that defending a police chief who didn’t live here full time and didn’t advance any of the programs, demands or cultural change that many of us have been advocating for isn’t healthy for our community as a whole.
Seattle has a nasty history of having a Black face in a White space of power and considering that enough to move the needle. This trend is true in many American cities. We need to do better.
CARE department chief Amy Barden was among the leaders touting Mayor Bruce Harrell’s 2026 budget, which includes a 0.1% sales tax hike for a handful of public safety investments. (Amy Sundberg)
The next Chief has to be comfortable with the uncomfortable reality that we will not trust them because of a history of discrimination and pain; and be comfortable embracing a truly community driven public safety policy that doesn’t prioritize surveillance but, instead prioritizes healing, prevention, and de-escalation. Moreover, they need to be brave enough to break with the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), one of the biggest obstacles to progress on public safety in the city.
SPOG appeared to be the driving force behind Chief Barnes slow walking of CARE department expansion, which included him refusing to even meet one on one with CARE Chief Amy Barden for more than a year. The next police chief must do better and be a true partner, rather than a major obstacle to civilian response that virtually all Seattle leaders are united in at least saying they support.
The next police chief must realize that concrete systemic change at SPD is necessary. That must mean change which lifts all of our voices, not just a select few within or in proximity to power. The thing we are missing is not symbolic victories; it’s tangible, structural change to deliver better outcomes for Seattleites, especially the Black communities that are used to be forgotten or treated as pawns.
Clifford Cawthon is a community activist, public employee, and podcast host of "The Unmasked Agenda" on Rainier Avenue Radio. Cliff has called Seattle and King County home for 12 years and in that time he has worked with local labor and progressive organizations to campaign to raise the minimum wage, renew the Seattle Housing Levy, expand mass transit, and pass the Covenant Homeownership Program. He was previously the Housing Chair for the Seattle-King County NAACP and on the Board of Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County, and currently sits on the board of the MLK Working Families Party, advises the Rainier Beach Action Coalition, and is a Democratic Socialist of America member.
When Audrey Wang Gosselin (@dreyslashthem.bsky.social) realized their interest in menswear revealed deeper truths about their gender, they wondered what suits might do for them.
Behold, a coming out story + historically attuned as guide to local bespoke menswear:
https://www.chum.news/suitless-in-seattle
My colleagues and I are working with Seattle Public Utilities on a food waste study. My team conducted research to learn how people use (and don't use) the food they bring home. Another team will take the insights we made and create a campaign with them. We want to reduce how much food people waste, and encourage them to compost the food that isn't edible. The problems our respondents shared will feel familiar to most readers. People buy too much food, often more than they plan to use. A sale or bulk buy from Costco might load the cart heavier than they expected. The next thing you know, you have a huge bag of onions, or half a pint of heavy cream, or eggs that are close to expiring. Hint: might be time to make a frittata! One of my colleagues suggested a way out of this still-good food going bad in our fridges. People want to know their excess food is going to a good cause. We could start a program that picks up this food and gets it to people who could eat it.
I wasn't excited about the idea based on my own experience in food banking. I didn't think food banks' existing infrastructure could handle an exchange like that. It's a lot of logistics to get food from one place to another in a safe way. I asked instead, "could we promote a neighbor to neighbor approach? something like, 'I have extra tomatoes I can't eat. I'll ask my neighbor if she wants them.'" We could cancel the refrigerated trucks waiting idle nearby. Instead, we'd encourage people to walk down the hall and ask their neighbor if they want it. Easy! Done by lunch. Well. It might be their lunch now.
Is it that simple, though? If I were on the receiving end of a campaign message like that, what would I do? Who would I offer my excess food to? I don't even know most of my neighbors. To many, it seems easier to imagine a complex distribution network for our leftovers than it does to talk to our neighbors. We would rather someone pick up our sad half-bag of spinach than knock on a door near our home and ask if they want it. This bring me back to some of the tension I feel when people talk about community. What does it mean to be a part of one? Are we in community just because we live near each other? Do we need more than that to consider ourselves in kinship with one another?
Are things different for people who don't live in a big city like I do? My parents know all their neighbors (and like most of them). They do things for each other when someone goes out of town. People may come over for a barbecue or a backyard sit. These are things I assume only happens in a small town or a neighborhood of single-family homes. Neither of those cases will be part of my life anytime soon, nor for the many people I share a grid of streets with. So why does it feel so hard to ask a person who shares a wall with me if they want to split a jumbo box of croissants? Some ideas why:
It's hard to know who's interested in our stuff. Lots of folks in society have an aversion to leftovers. Lots of folks, myself included, think dinner is often even better the next day. Connecting these two groups is tough as it is. At the same time, we must reject the expectation that poor folks should take what they can get.
Existing relationships aren't set up like that. There's a huge stigma against appearing poor, much less being poor. For a lot of people, cooking still feels limited to the needs of an immediate household. When people do share food, it's likelier to be at a distance in something like a Little Free Pantry.
The hard times don't feel the same for everyone.Economic segregation within neighborhoods has gotten worse over time. Setbacks in the economy always hit different incomes differently, and this one is no different. Some folks have great incomes, even now. They can afford everything they need. Other folks want to give the impression they’re in that first group. Credit card debt is sky high as people take out loans for takeout. The truly poor have fewer avenues into relationships with the first two groups. This makes it harder for homes with extra to share it with a household who could use it.
talking to our neighbors
I've only known a few of my neighbors in my many years as a renter. Last year, I was reading in the living room in relative silence. It was still enough that I started to hear music wafting down from the apartment above. It was exactly within the tastes I have—some synth, some dance, and the kind of plaintive indie music I love. A part of me wanted to walk upstairs and knock or leave a note, but I never reached out. I didn't want to puncture the illusion of isolation that our homes in the city give us. But the truth is, my decision wasn't without consequence. The person upstairs moved out a month or two later; the worst case scenario was that I lost a potential friend.
Beyond crying together to Sufjan Stevens albums, there are many reasons to get to know your neighbors. They're often closer than an emergency contact and could hold onto a spare key. They're a potential friend that doesn't have to travel across town to hang out. If I were to make a campaign for getting to know your neighbors, this is where I'd start.
Practice vulnerability. A simple smile or "hey how are you?" repeated over months can go a long way. You can adapt the approach to your level of social comfort. You can leave a note instead of knocking on the door, for example. Be willing to accept rejection, too. Not everyone will respond exactly the way we hope they do, but that doesn't mean losing hope.
Break the ice. Be the person who says hello first. Julie Beck and Becca Rashid talked with Pete Davis about his book, How to Talk to People. They make a good point that lots of people want to be the one who others approach. But at least half of us need to do the approaching.
Take your time. I tell the folks I work with that they can't connect with their community only in the moment they need something. It takes a while to build trust and rapport with almost anyone. We also have to start with a genuine desire to connect. Kat Vellos says that we should try to be curious in ways that are true to us without being creepy.
the practice of being in relation
I'm still reflecting on the impulse to seek out services that take away the things we don't want. The thought that there will always be someone who will take what we're tired of can excuse our drive to consume. But we can't remove the friction out of every inconvenience. It's worth taking the time to be part of a neighborhood or community rather than just living in it.
I doubt it's a coincidence that people feel so disconnected from each other. To some extent, many of us have lost the need to be close to the people around us. Society insists we only need help from our closest friends or immediate families, but that isn't true. Communities don't end at our front door. That's where they begin.
Back in 2024, Anil Dash published Don't Call it a Substack - an informative post about Substack's problematic history and foundations. This sums it up nicely:
Substack is, just as a reminder, a political project made by extremists with a goal of normalizing a radical, hateful agenda by co-opting well-intentioned creators' work in service of cross-promoting attacks on the vulnerable.
That may sound like an extreme review but the receipts are in the post. It's well noted on Wikipedia too, Substack allows Nazi content "because attempting to censor them would make the problem worse." Great, right? /s
I am sure there is a bit of fatigue when it comes to thinking about what is a "Good" platform. Meta is a nightmare company but I still use Instagram. I left Spotify because of unfair artist treatment but I use YouTube Music instead... is Google really a "good" company? I left Twitter when Elon took over and, well, I do feel good about that one. Substack feels like a benign example when compared to the worst offenders but I bring this up just so you are aware. It's worth considering going elsewhere.
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