Determined to reconcile with Capitol Hill—the center of Seattle’s LGBTQ community and this week’s Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality—Mayor Jenny Durkan kicked off the city’s Pride Month festivities today by surprising the neighborhood with rainbow-colored tear gas.
“As a proud lesbian woman myself, I thought, what better way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Pride than with a colorful re-enactment of the Stonewall riots themselves?” said Durkan as Seattle police prepped chemical weapon canisters. “We may not be able to do much with Pride this month since there’s a pandemic ravaging people’s respiratory systems. But that’s not going to stop me or SPD from pumping your every facial orifice with gas that’s been outlawed in international warfare since the Geneva Protocol of 1925.”
As police shot sets of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple canisters throughout the Pike-Pine corridor, blindsided protesters and residents oohed and ahhed gasps for air.
“The tear-gas powder looked so pretty floating through my open windows before covering everything I own,” said Tammy Nguyen through coughing fits in her fourth-story apartment with no central air. “It left me so breathless I escaped to the hallway where all my neighbors were desperately gasping for clean air too. It was a really sentimental, trauma-bonding moment, and all because the City of Seattle is so thoughtful about celebrating Pride this year.”
Festivities concluded with a finale of 50 flash-bangs going off at once.
“I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed my chauffeur speeding me far away from it,” Durkan said on the phone. “We look forward to many more years of surprising our peaceful residents with fun weapons even our military wouldn’t dare use on its worst enemy.”
