🎧 Power of Place Episode #48 | Talking CHOP – Nikki Yeboah

Power of Place - Stories of the Pacific Northwest

Join us as we stroll through Seattle’s Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) circa 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our guest, documentary playwright Nikki Yeboah, begins this journey at 11th & Pine, the CHOP’s epicenter—and the title of her current project. Yeboah, an Assistant Professor of Playwriting in the School of Drama at the University of Washington, shares how her team gathered oral histories of over 30 protestors, stories that allow her to convey this momentous event’s impact on its participants. She also explores why nearly all traces of the occupation (including street art, soup kitchens and vegetable gardens) vanished so quickly after the protest ended. Throughout this episode, experience the good vibes of hip-hop fusionists Marshall Law Band, courtesy of its leader Marshall Hugh, who rallied his bandmates to perform throughout the occupation. "CHOP was utopic. No matter how people feel it ended, it began utopically; it was a desire to create a space in which everyone was welcome, regardless of your class, or sexuality or race.” ~Nikki Yeboah