“We know that Black women in leadership have a hard time. And sometimes people like to crush them,” said the Rev. Harriett Walden of Mothers for Police Accountability at the gathering at Goodwill Missionary Baptist Church. “And I'm here to tell you, I would never let anybody, a white woman or anybody in power, crush a Black woman in front of me.”

“The people have a right to protest — that’s what this is about — but there’s a difference between protesting and occupying,” said the Rev. Harriett Walden, a longtime Black leader in Seattle’s police-accountability movement and co-chair of the Community Police Commission.

“At this moment right now, this is white privilege,” she said of CHOP, “and how are you going to get up there and talk to these young people?”

“We’re here because of the police brutality and the killings, but the police do a lot more than that,” such as responding to domestic-violence calls, Walden said.

“Accountability is for everybody, and now we need some accountability for the other residents in Capitol Hill and other (area) residents,” she added. “They need to be able to get the services that are necessary.”

The perspective of Walden and other civil-rights leaders in the community is invaluable. They can play an important role in resolving the CHOP dilemma.

Walden said that will involve city leadership acknowledging mistakes. Also, they cannot let hatred — from the far right or far left — keep dividing us.

“We’ve had enough of continuous conflict,” she said, summing the situation up well. “How do we build a new world that works for everyone?”