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My Fellow Progressives: We Need to Stop the Gaslighting on Crime


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https://www.newsweek.com/my-fellow-progressives-we-need-stop-gaslighting-crime-opinion-1757400


 

Quote

 

Ana Kasparian , executive producer, host, TYT

 

On 11/7/22 at 11:52 AM EST

 

t's been breathtaking to watch the same Democrats who spent more than two years ordering Americans to trust COVID-related data turn around and reject statistics showing a clear rise in violent crime. A crime wave may not be convenient for the party in charge in the countdown to Tuesday's midterm elections, but that doesn't make it any less real.

The FBI's newly-released annual crime report, which isn't even complete, estimated that 2021 saw 22,900 murders, bringing the nation's homicide rate to 6.9 per 100,000 people. It's the highest number in almost 25 years, following a 30 percent spike in homicides between 2019 and 2020. Cities like Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles broke annual homicide records, and there's been an uptick in other violent crimes like armed robbery and aggravated assault.

It's no wonder that 61 percent of all voters, including eight in 10 Black voters, told the Pew Research Center that violent crime is very important to their midterm votes.

Yet all they get from Democrats and progressives is gaslighting. In an interview on MSNBC last week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul brushed off concerns about public safety as nothing more than a conservative conspiracy to brainwash Americans into thinking they're less safe.

Is Governor Hochul under the impression that Black voters feel less safe because they're watching Fox News all day?

All major crimes with the exception of murder are up in New York City this year. Police data show a 33 percent jump in robberies, a 58 percent rise in grand larceny, and a 31 percent increase in shooting incidents.

Hochul's comments on MSNBC show were so woefully tone-deaf that she was forced to walk them back in a subsequent interview on NY1 in a 180 degree turn that was reminiscent of another progressive forced to confront reality, this time in Los Angeles. During a debate last March, Democratic candidate for mayor Congresswoman Karen Bass was asked to rate how safe she feels on the streets of Los Angeles. "I do feel safe," Bass answered. On a scale of one to 10, Bass rated her perception of safety at a 10.

That all changed five months later after two men burglarized her home and stole two of her handguns. "My safety has been shattered," Bass admitted, revising her personal safety rating to a five out of 10.

The ordeal Bass experienced was awful—yet she was lucky: She wasn't confronted by armed individuals, as many Angelinos have been in a new trend of follow-home robberies, which authorities say involve 17 different gangs in the city.

As a progressive myself, it's been frustrating to see members of my political group drop the ball. Poll after poll shows crime is one of voters' top concerns this election cycle. Yet much like Gov. Hochul and Rep. Bass, progressive activists and politicians have downplayed the crime wave by blaming Right-wing fear-mongering and conservative media for voters' concerns about public safety.

CCTV footage from an Los Angeles robbery.
CCTV footage from an Los Angeles gas station robbery - the incident took place at a gas station located at the 5500 block of White Oak Drive on September 4. Los Angeles Police Department

Prominent civil rights attorney Alec Karakatsanis regularly smears reporters as "copagandists" for simply reporting on crime statistics. Karakatsanis is the founder of a non-profit called Civil Rights Corps that employs as its treasurer the progressive former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who was evicted from office earlier this year by voters sick of his soft on crime approach. As homicides were exploding in many parts of the country in the summer of 2021, Karakatsanis argued that "what constitutes a crime is determined by people in power who have a lot of money."

Meanwhile, last year, Progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez similarly minimized concerns about the crime surge in New York City at a virtual event with Rep. Jamaal Bowman, expressing fear that the crime stats were headline-driven "hysteria"—at a time when New York was one of 12 major cities experiencing a devastating homicide surge.

In reality, the Right's messaging on crime is potent because the crime wave is real, and it's negatively impacting the lives of the same minorities and working people the Left claims to represent.

Take the polling from last year's "Defund the Police" ballot measure in Minneapolis, which proposed replacing their troubled police department with a new Department of Public Safety. The proposal sought a "comprehensive health approach" to public safety that would dispatch mental health workers to certain emergency calls while also investing more resources into crime prevention and removing the city's mandated minimum number of deputies based on the city's population.

With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, 56 percent of voters rejected the proposal, including a resounding 78 percent of Black voters. And this despite the fact that the measure's supporters outspent their opponents by $3 million.

The outcome was far from surprising. A recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and The Grio found that only 17 percent of Black voters support decreasing funding for police departments in their area. Nearly double that number of Black voters—34 percent—said they would actually like to see police funding increase. But most wanted to keep police funding the same.

I've seen the crime wave and the police shortage play out firsthand in Los Angeles, a city where I was born and raised and still live today. Yet when I vocalize my own concerns about crime, my fellow progressives gaslight me and demand I reject what I've seen with my own eyes. I've been told repeatedly that it's "all in my head"—even after I was sexually assaulted by a stranger in my neighborhood earlier this year.

But it's working-class Angelinos who bear the brunt of the crime wave. From March 2020 through February 2022, LA's transportation authority recorded a total of 235 assault and battery cases at Union Station. According to the Los Angeles Times, violent crime at the station shot up 94 percent in the first two months of 2022 compared to the same period last year. Property crime also doubled.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Agency finally agreed to provide extra security for Union Station workers after several of them suffered unprovoked physical attacks. But it wasn't soon enough for Albertha Mendez, a janitor at Union Station who was violently assaulted by a homeless man who threatened to rape and kill her as she was waxing the tile floors, or for emergency room nurse Sandra Shells, killed in a random attack while sitting at a bus stop across the street from Union Station earlier this year.

Like nurse Shells, the custodial workers at Union Station aren't wealthy elites who just want to "arrest the homeless," a common accusation progressives use to silence anyone who expresses concern about crime in major cities. Clearly, simply being homeless is not a crime and should never be treated as such. But committing a violent assault, like randomly stabbing an unsuspecting woman with gardening shears and crushing her skull in the process, should land anyone in custody, regardless of their housing status.

The same can be said of the man who beat 40-year-old Jessica Christic's golden retriever mix to death in Brooklyn earlier this year. Somehow, the perpetrator is still roaming the park, free to terrorize others in the neighborhood. When Chrustic reached out to her City Council representative, Shahana Hanif, for help, a spokesperson called the situation "complicated." "We don't believe that the N.Y.P.D. is the vehicle to bring safety to our community," the spokesperson said.

It would be a mistake to think that the public isn't open to necessary criminal justice reform. They just want to make sure that policy changes are balanced by the need for public safety. But when the political group pushing for reform consistently downplays the crime wave as nothing more than Right-wing fear mongering while simultaneously pushing for maximalist police and prison abolition, it's impossible to find them trustworthy.

I'm urging my fellow progressives to take crime seriously.

 

 

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Kasparian, the female sidekick of Cenk Uygur on TYT, is always late to the party. Bless her heart. But she did figure it out. Hochul's tone deafness was at a crazy level.

The denying of the FBI Crime Stats was an expose in Propaganda. 

Edited by DKW 86
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  • 7 months later...

We still taking this ******* donut seriously or nah

20230705_225657.thumb.jpg.efe389dbcdfc15f88983cda09b313c9f.jpg

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Isn't it a little early for Republicans to play the "crime" card? 

They do it without fail, then after the election is over....nahna.  Even when they have the majority.

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1 minute ago, homersapien said:

Isn't it a little early for Republicans to play the "crime" card? 

They do it without fail, then after the election is over....nahna.  Even when they have the majority.

Ana Kasparian is a republican now?

She woke up and started seeing some of the stuff the left was spouting as nonsense. Conservatives didn't do this.

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13 minutes ago, KansasTiger said:

Ana Kasparian is a republican now?

She woke up and started seeing some of the stuff the left was spouting as nonsense. Conservatives didn't do this.

I am quite certain she is still a progressive, but like Bill Maher, she is taking advantage of a gift that keeps on giving and calling out the seemingly never ending supply of stupidity from the left.

In addition to her commentary on progressives gaslighting on crime, she's caught flack for her stance on censorship and cancel culture as it relates to trans issues and puberty blockers. And for calling out progressives in their dark turn towards a hatred of white people. She's not wrong on any of this.   

"At the center of all of this is, I've been doing this s--- for like 17 years and things have gotten worse, and I just don't think whatever strategy the left thinks they're engaging in is an effective strategy. I think it's actually caused more harm than good," she said. 

"I think their rhetoric and their discourse is a lot of times ignorant of the facts and I think that they go around accusing people of doing things that they themselves engage in and I was part of that, too, I'm trying to do better moving forward," Kasparian added.

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1 minute ago, AUFAN78 said:

I am quite certain she is still a progressive, but like Bill Maher, she is taking advantage of a gift that keeps on giving and calling out the seemingly never ending supply of stupidity from the left.

In addition to her commentary on progressives gaslighting on crime, she's caught flack for her stance on censorship and cancel culture as it relates to trans issues and puberty blockers. And for calling out progressives in their dark turn towards a hatred of white people. She's not wrong on any of this.   

"At the center of all of this is, I've been doing this s--- for like 17 years and things have gotten worse, and I just don't think whatever strategy the left thinks they're engaging in is an effective strategy. I think it's actually caused more harm than good," she said. 

"I think their rhetoric and their discourse is a lot of times ignorant of the facts and I think that they go around accusing people of doing things that they themselves engage in and I was part of that, too, I'm trying to do better moving forward," Kasparian added.

My apologies. I wasn't trying to argue she IS a republican now. I was trying to point out to @homersapienthat what he said didnt make sense. This wasn't Republicans playing some crime card, but a fellow progressive realizing the left is headed down a really stupid path.

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11 minutes ago, KansasTiger said:

My apologies. I wasn't trying to argue she IS a republican now. I was trying to point out to @homersapienthat what he said didnt make sense. This wasn't Republicans playing some crime card, but a fellow progressive realizing the left is headed down a really stupid path.

I have no idea if she belongs or identifies with either party. Never heard of her in fact. But she's parroting a Republican meme.

But she is following a typical Republican campaign message - trumpeting "out of control" crime. Hell, it was one of the main messages they used in 2020. 

And like I said, you don't hear anything about it from them now, when they actually have a majority.  They're too busy investigating.

 

Edited by homersapien
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22 minutes ago, KansasTiger said:

My apologies. I wasn't trying to argue she IS a republican now. I was trying to point out to @homersapienthat what he said didnt make sense. This wasn't Republicans playing some crime card, but a fellow progressive realizing the left is headed down a really stupid path.

No apology needed. And for the record, Homey says things that make no sense quite regularly. ;D

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1 minute ago, AUFAN78 said:

No apology needed. And for the record, Homey says things that make no sense quite regularly. ;D

Without example this is just another ad hominem insult (aka, poo flinging).

You aren't a monkey are you?  Or is it you just have a monkey's intellect?

;D

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7 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Without example this is just another ad hominem insult (aka, poo flinging).

You aren't a monkey are you?  Or is it you just have a monkey's intellect?

;D

Oh homey. Poor little feller. :comfort:

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4 hours ago, homersapien said:

I have no idea if she belongs or identifies with either party. Never heard of her in fact….

 

<fer>

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