Seattle is one of many U.S. cities rife with “progressives” devoted to the enshrinement of a compassionate, inclusive approach to the Rule of Law. In Dec. of 2020, KUOW, Seattle’s National Public Radio station, announced the following: “The Seattle City Council is preparing to discuss changes to its criminal code that, if enacted, would make Seattle the first city in the nation to excuse misdemeanour offences linked to poverty or, potentially, addiction and mental health crises.” Apparently if one was poor, mentally ill or drug addicted, one ought to be exonerated of such minor crimes as theft, trespassing and even some forms of assault.
On Aug. 5 of 2022, The Stranger, Seattle’s only newspaper, published the following headline: Seattle’s Crackdown on Low-Level Crime Targets the Poor, Mentally Ill …… The City’s Quest for “Accountability” Also Reinforces Systemic Racism.
Obviously the 2020 push to exonerate certain demographics of their petty crimes had led to the “crackdown” cited by The Stranger just 2 years later. The paper’s article seethed with outrage, pointing out that while only 7% of Seattle’s population were people of colour, they had comprised a disproportionate 28% of those recently arrested. Equally appalling, apparently, was the fact that 58% of those charged under the crackdown were homeless.
Every rational conservative, in spite of the rhetoric spewed by the Left, favours programs designed to help the disadvantaged. But suspending the Rule of Law for any demographic is insane! The Stranger’s suggestion that the inordinate number of Blacks arrested in Seattle is the product of systemic racism, is insane! Both KUOW and The Stranger, as you may have guessed, are of a progressive bent. That the paper parenthesized the term “accountability” in its article is ironically telling, for the absurdity of the Neo-Marxist Left is that it exonerates all “oppressed minorities” of any responsibility for their actions. They are all Victims, pure and simple! Of course the poor Blacks and homeless of Seattle turned out in droves to pillage their local grocery stores. They were told they had every right to do so! And as always the real victims of the Leftist narrative are decent, hard working people, those who have achieved, apparently, simply because they are “privileged.”