October 9, 2023 - 5:30pm
In a random act of violence, Ryan Carson was stabbed to death on the streets of Brooklyn while waiting for a bus with his girlfriend. This tragedy has generated particular attention because Carson was a progressive social justice activist. A number of commentators on social media have suggested that he fell victim to the kinds of radical anti-police policies for which he and his girlfriend had advocated.
The killing of Carson was fourth in a series of recent assaults against political activists of far-Left persuasion. Given the intensity of the public discourse around race, crime, and justice in the United States, it is not surprising that such cases generate attention. However, is it fair to say that they were victims of their radical politics? To the extent that “personal is political” it is not far-fetched to suggest that the politically informed choices of these individuals contributed to their victimisation.
All these individuals were assaulted in or around their homes, located in urban neighbourhoods known for extremely high rates of violent crime. As described in Table 1, the specific locations where these activists were assaulted are among the most dangerous areas in the country. Based on their postal (ZIP) codes, all but one of these neighbourhoods earn a failing grade (F) for personal safety.
The Baltimore neighbourhood of Pava LaPere, who was killed in her apartment by a recidivistic sex offender, is ranked in the third percentile, which means that 97% of the ZIP codes in the United States are safer than where this affluent CEO chose to live.
Bedford Stuyvesant and Point Breeze aren’t much better. The Minneapolis neighbourhood where Shivanthi Sathanandan, a leader in the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, was brutally beaten on her driveway by armed teenagers, is ranked in the fifteenth percentile. Anyone who lives in the Twin Cities knows that North Minneapolis is dangerous.
All of these activists are either white or Asian college graduates who attended selective schools, such as University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins, and Pratt Institute. Sathanandan has a Master’s degree from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. So why did these relatively privileged individuals choose to move into areas where most local residents live because they cannot afford anything better? I suspect their progressive values and politics played an important role.
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SubscribeProbably they genuinely believe the rubbish they spout about criminals being victims and lovable cuddly beings, and avoiding high crime areas is somehow racist (because of the correlation of race, fatherless families, bad culture and crime).
“morally responsible for the violence they experienced? Absolutely not.”
Absolutely yes. Because a lot of the reason these parts are so crime infested and devastated with poor behaviour, is due to the kind of policies and incentives these sort of people introduce through academia and public sector.
The ones who are NOT morally responsible, are the responsible, law abiding people who follow rules and codes of decency, and end up paying the price for those policies.
I changed my mind in light of your comment
As a professional criminologist I have have never run into a confrere spouting that “criminals” are lovable cuddly beings. To start to figure out how “we” deal with criminals spend a little time at Rikers, and at Rikers many there have not even been convicted. Of course criminals can be useful for those who want to boost their ego by claiming how decent and good they are. Problem is that the decent appearing and law biding person next door may be a committed career criminal. The nice family man next door could very well be an incest offender or an embezzler or…So do not judge persons how they appear or what they wear, or what uniform they wear. Criminals often pass as nice decent straight guys or gals, as a decent person such as yourself.
My guess is that perhaps many of these victims subconsciously broadcast their availability as a worthy target by the way they behaved and the clothes and possessions they had. They wanted to be part of the life of the downtrodden without the years of street education necessary.
If you watched an Attenborough documentary where a docile faun wandered through a pack of hyenas you wouldn’t be surprised at the outcome.
Great analogy. Ignorance and youth though tend to excuse the faun’s stupidity. The adult humans in these examples have no such excuse.
“A number of commentators on social media have suggested that he fell victim to the kinds of radical anti-police policies for which he and his girlfriend had advocated”. – No argument
“Do any of these considerations imply that the victims of these horrible crimes are morally responsible for the violence they experienced?” – No but they are morally responsible for the violence experienced by others as a result of the policies they champion and sooner one of them is on the receiving end than some ordinary person who did not have a choice
I suspect that they also favour idealogical positions over evidence when deciding on how to navigate the ‘hood.
As for whether these people were hoist with their own petard, it’s worth considering how many others, especially those who cannot choose where they live, have suffered the consequences of their moronic campaigns. At least it wasn’t those people who copped it for once.
They actually believe it’s safe there. They are in the grips of an idea. The idea is that there is no grounds for fear.
Hmm, reply straight into moderation. I’ll try again.
I suspect that they also favour idealogical positions over evidence when deciding on how to navigate their environment.
As for whether these people were hoist with their own petard, it’s worth considering how many others, especially those who cannot choose where they live, have suffered the consequences of their grandstanding. At least it wasn’t those people who got it in the neck for once. Quod severis metes.
When I think of these (mostly white) bourgeois leftists going into the ‘vibrant’ areas of dangerous cities, I’m reminded of the
Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) character in Gran Torino: ‘These guys don’t wanna be your bro, and I don’t blame them!’
lol, nailed it
At what point is it a Chicken/Egg dilemma? What really came first; did progressive activists move into crime or did progressive activists create or exacerbate the conditions of crime.
It appears to be a little of both. Its known that young hipsters move into more downtrodden areas probably because of the cost of living but also to “rejuvenate” the area. They of course do this with the full Virtue Signal of keeping the area “edgy” and speaking loudly on behalf of the long-term residents that are getting priced out by them. They’re gentrifiers against Gentrification. Total contradiction.
In other scenarios, progressive establishments seem to invite crime because being good progressives they encourage loitering and policies that prevent crack down on open air drug markets, while simultaneously discouraging police enforcement. The Homeless situation in cities is not happening for no reason. Progressives have emboldened people to take and live on the streets as a precondition of a dignified society.
At this point, most Conservatives are fleeing Progressives and trying to limit progressive infiltration into their towns and cities because everywhere urban hipsters go, the crisis conditions follow them.
“They of course do this with the full Virtue Signal of keeping the area “edgy” and speaking loudly on behalf of the long-term residents that are getting priced out by them”
Thus Stokes Croft here in Bristol.
I agree but how can one limit progressive infiltration?
If your local government starts talking about reimagining institutions, you need people that voice their opinion to stop it instead of ignoring it. It’s that simple in many instances. They’ve completely seized institutions with little to no resistance so far.
They live in these areas because they’re idiots.
It’s probably because these clever fools persuade themselves of their own “allyship” with the oppressed and therefore imagine that they will not themselves become victims of the supposedly oppressed.
Like the guy who climbs into the lion’s age at the zoo
Exactly.
Yep. Cleaner returning from work at an ungodly hour – would take an Uber if they could afford it in order to be safer. White progressive making a statement about being an ally of the ‘hood – gets mugged or worse.
If the Darwin Awards is still a thing I think they found this year’s winner in Carson. His GF is either a Grade A sociopath or paid the guy to do it.
Everyone hates a tourist.
As for tourist, the person appearing to be a tourist may be a terrorist in a tourist uniform. Bottom line- do not judge by appearance.
It is not exactly a new phenomena…
“The economic, social and cultural deprivation of slum dwellers attracted in the second half of the nineteenth century the attention of various groups of the middle- and upper-classes, which included philanthropists, religious missionaries, charity workers, social investigators, writers, and also rich people seeking disrespectable amusements. As early as in 1884, The New York Times published an article about slumming which spread from London to New York.”Slums and slumming” The Victorian Web
However, back then they could do it without fear of being murdered.
A UK author can’t be faulted for not knowing the streets of U, S. cities especially second-tier ones like Baltimore, where I lived for decades. But the area of Baltimore where the tech woman was killed is not especially dangerous and has become recently gentrified. The issue is it lies in a sprawling political district which is far poorer and dangerous, hence the stats he quotes.
That’s a useful correction, but isn’t it the case that she let this person into her building, or at least into the building? “Per Baltimore Police, on September 22, 2023, LaPere allowed Jason Billingsley access to her apartment building; he was seen getting on an elevator with LaPere” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pava_LaPere]
Incidentally, the Wiki article is useful for highlighting the idiot-liberal-Baltimore soft-on-criminals system: in any society with a sense of self-preservation, this man would have been serving 30 years for previous violent assaults and rapes.
Slow down everyone.
I and many other people live in neigborhoods that aren’t the safest because the rest of the city’s housing prices are far out of line with what we can pay. In my case, and many others, the neighborhood was full of guns and very aggressive people. (btw the cops were most dangerous of all.) People got shot all the time.
I went out of my way to get to know my neighbors. Some other newcomers don’t do this. It quickly became apparent that most of neighborhood is actually full of very nice families; many nicer than my own. Progressive ideology barely makes an impression; they’re busy with jobs and families and mortgages, and trying to stay safe.
Blaming the victims is completely uncalled for.
ah, thank you Laurence. The rush here to laugh and gloat over ‘idiot progressives’ getting killed is ugly. Andrew Sullivan did a piece on the right-wing blogosphere lighting up with this schadenfreude.
“Of all the vices that can contribute to the collapse of civil society, a special place of honor surely needs to be reserved for mocking the newly murdered.”
“What crosses the line of what Orwell prized as “common decency” is using the occasion of someone’s untimely death to say they deserved it. “The homosexuals have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution” was Pat Buchanan’s charming response to the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic. In the same vein today, on the other side as it were, there’s a “Herman Cain Award” subreddit with half a million members, devoted to naming and mocking vaccine skeptics who subsequently died of Covid. A giant, unified chorus of “ha-ha”s across the decades.
“Social media and CCTV cameras have made the schadenfreude more visceral. This past week, a young “social justice” activist, Ryan Carson, was knifed to death on the street by a deranged 18-year-old assailant, as Carson’s girlfriend, paralyzed with shock, looked on. It’s good to make fun of people who support criminals when they get murdered by criminals,” commented one on Twitter. “Ryan Carson took the phrase ‘bleeding heart liberal’ way too literally,” said another. (Carson’s actual heart was pierced by the murder weapon.) Other virtual tricoteuses went after the traumatized bystander: “Ryan Carson’s girlfriend is the Douche of the Week. 1. Showed almost no concern as her guy was murdered. 2. Expressed zero concern as he lay on the ground dying. Didn’t even bend down. 3. Refused to give police the murderer’s description. Soulless Marxist.”
Those wo mock the newly murdered are engaging in indecency. They give no recognition to the murdered survivors. All too many people stay away from the relatives/survivors of the murdered. One is often stigmatized and avoided if a close friend or relative was murdered. Such was what led in part to the creation of Parents of Murdered Children.
Yes who would want to live in the so called Holy Land ?
Indeed. It seems most of the commenters here have huge sympathy, as do I, for the Israelis recently killed by their crazy neighbours (and contempt for those politicking the issue/victim blaming) ; but none for their own countrymen killed by their crazy neighbours. The cognitive dissonance is deafening.
Yes and yes again to Dominic A.
So we have 4 candidates for Darvin award.
To admit that these areas are inherently dangerous would be to admit that their social policies are inherently false and harmful. Not in their psychological makeup.
Further, they’re convinced that crime is caused by the evil inherent in capitalist society, not criminals themselves, so their opposition to that system gives them a certain magical protection. They often learn too late that they’re mistaken.
I brought a dilapidated house in a south Berkeley because that was what we could afford near our employment. The area borders Oakland. Our gangsters kill their gangsters. After my young sons were victims of a racially motivated stomping in the local park, I joined the newly formed group demanding action from the City. Took us ten years of serious effort to rid the area of the worse individuals, businesses and families responsible for the majority of robberies, drug sales, and gang violence. We instituted best practices in problem oriented policing, targeted and effective, only now the pro-crime activists have recaptured city hall and undermined the progress throughout the bay area. Our ‘hood remains safer with less gang violence since we rooted out several properties using public nuisance injunction relief.
Great article! It seems to me that there are two obvious types of gaslighting that cause the persistent drama around crime filled neighborhoods, and the eternal cycle of conflict between social justice warriors and the police.
One is when cops overreact and beat or kill citizens who aren’t doing anything to justify that level of violence, but have violent past convictions themselves. This strikes the general public as inappropriate, but not at the level of injustice as when cops assault someone who really isn’t a criminal, but merely of low social status, which also happens. The fact that cops still enjoy qualified immunity, and many police unions defend bad police as a show of their power, offends the public.
The next phase of the cycle is when opportunistic organizations appeal to the sympathies of disgruntled citizens and well meaning activists to channel their frustrations into fundraising for nebulous purposes, which is sometimes grifted by the organizers. Protests also follow, which lead to opportunistic violence by criminals who show up to loot or riot, as well as occasional police provocateurs, sometimes acting as agents of the state, but also independently.
The collateral damage from protests then angers the law abiding citizenry even more than the inciting police brutality, and leads to public support for enhanced police powers and more restrictive gun laws. What gets lost in the noise is that small numbers of sociopaths are amplifying public anxiety for their own benefit. Profiteering activist organizations and police union leaders feed each other, to the detriment of social harmony. A perpetual cycle.
I recently watched a news story from Houston in which a Mexican business owner was the victim of an attempted robbery by two black criminals. He happened to be armed, and immediately shot both of them. The cops arrived to collect the assailants, and that was the end of that. No drama, no race riot. Most people are not blind to this concept of street justice, whatever they may espouse at cocktail parties. Unlike what happened last year in New York, when a Dominican immigrant clerk stabbed a customer who was assaulting him violently. The cops arrested the clerk, and the DA was going to prosecute him, before a loud public outcry.
Unfortunately, our conception of broad qualified immunity for the police, and absolute immunity for prosecutors, even in egregious cases of willful misconduct [and there have been many], prevents sensible justice in cases of police abuse and wrongful conviction. If, after the Rodney King beating, the cops involved had merely been prosecuted for going above and beyond the call of duty, it would not have turned into a conflagration that engulfed the city. That happened because of the siege mentality of the LAPD, not uncommon in big-city police departments, which view citizens as either sheep to be fleeced or predators to be annihilated.
The state, broadly speaking, gaslights its own citizens with this artificial duality. “We cannot guarantee your safety, and we are not legally obligated to protect you; nevermind the oath of office, that’s just a marketing slogan. However, if you try to arm yourself for your own protection, we will vigorously prosecute you people to remind you that we own the monopoly on violence. We cannot allow vigilante gangs to roam the streets. And we’re short of cash, so expect more speed traps and camera tickets next year.”
Then there are politicians who claim to campaign against crime by cracking down on gun ownership. But as the bumper sticker says, “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” Disarming the majority of law-abiding gun owners does nothing to reduce gun ownership in the criminal population, and strengthens the state monopoly on violence, which they clearly demonstrate they cannot be trusted with. Even in the most optimistic scenario, they can’t be everywhere at once, and so cannot respond to any crime in progress as quickly as an armed citizen in the vicinity. The intended victim of the crime is ideally the first responder. There are no reliable statistics on how often gun-toting citizens prevent crimes by merely showing their weapon, because they are seldom reported, for obvious reasons. For those of you who are going to reply with “Oh, so you advocate a return to the wild west, with gun battles in saloons?!?”, I’m going to preemptively answer that by pointing out that we don’t have public debates about taking away everyone’s right to drive every time there’s a drunk driving fatality, or when terrorists drive cars into crowds.
The other type of gaslighting is when groups like BLM are caught embezzling donor funds, which I guess everyone thought would be given to legal aid firms that advocate on behalf of victims of police abuse and wrongful conviction. Well, that didn’t happen, and the BLM response was crickets. Now some BLM groups are inciting animosity by choosing to publicly support terrorists who killed Israeli civilians. Is that what we call social justice, or mere selfish opportunism which detracts from their so called mission of community organizing? What could be more blatantly antisocial than this kind of hypocrisy?
So these polar extremes of toxic populism are always playing off each other to create chaos and confusion, and they are able to do so because most people now live in large and diverse cities that comprise many different kinds of ethnic groups and lack the sort of tribal cohesion humans evolved to understand. Thus there are avenues for profiteering on both ends of the spectrum, always at the expense of the general public, who want less crime, but also don’t want to be abused by their supposed defenders.
There was a brief glimmer of alternatives to the current systemic dysfunction during the 2020 protests, when there were a handful of news stories of ad hoc community militias that arose to defend their neighborhoods from potential rioters. Mixed racial coalitions consisting mainly of military veterans who knew how to handle weapons and had combat experience which made them a bit less reactive than the average citizen. This could be a way forward to reducing crime, as well as taking back state power that behaves irresponsibly. If there are volunteer fire departments that do their jobs without controversy, can’t there be volunteer police forces as well? Not to drive around writing traffic tickets, but foot patrols of crime ridden streets to enforce decorum. Activists who continue to insist that “decorum” will lead to Clockwork Orange gangs of menacing jackbooted thugs never seem to have any better ideas. There are no perfect implementations of citizen militias, but getting people involved in making their communities safe is an obvious place to begin.
Militias, who would not enjoy immunity from prosecution if they abused citizens, in cooperation with police and prosecutors who should also have diminished immunity from bad behavior [at the local level, which is doable with direct involvement], might be a path toward reconciliation and depolarization. This polarization between citizens and the legal system is an inevitable result of disconnection between police and their ostensible clients. In too many cities, the public has become sheeple; a source of revenue and endless complaints that police are using either too much or too little force in handling the criminal element. Direct cooperation dramatically reduces this toxic separation of the polis from the police, and leads to a more harmonious society. Wyatt Cenac did a good investigation of the subject on his show Problem Areas, even before all the protests. And Detroit DUST, a private police agency, offers some timeless lessons for community engagement that have been forgotten. There are a handful of useful examples which might be beacons of hope, if people knew about them. But if it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead.
Maybe I should write my own article at this point…
Perhaps because those urban areas are vastly cheaper, usually to the point of being the only option, contrary to the author’s CEO friend, most people, progressives included, are not rich. In my experience people will generally live in the best area they can afford – I rarely if ever have seen someone slumming it for political reasons. Guess what – if a person, regardless of politics, can afford Carrol Gardens, or Park Slope to Bed Sty…that’s where you ‘ll find them! The edgier areas are often more exciting, vibey esp. to young people looking for life rather than safety (bars, independents, streets and parks rather than box stores and corporates in the burbs). Moreover if you buy there, you can make huge amounts of money – when I moved to NY in 2009 a Fort Green townhouse was $300k, now $3 million and above.
It is common to have an exaggerated fear of living on the other side of the tracks – and some people are minded to push through that. A couple of family members, visiting Europe from the American suburbs, were too scared to wander the streets (of Brussels, London), or take a bus – the fear was deep in those ones! Finally, and contrary to popular fear, the reality is that you are more likely to be harmed by people you know, family friends, than street strangers. Things happen on Elm Street too.
“contrary to popular fear, the reality is that you are more likely to be harmed by people you know, family friends, than street strangers.”
This is like Anti-Logic that should qualify as the left’s favorite term “disinformation.” You’re going to have tens of thousands more interactions with family and friends than any one stranger. It’s a comically absurd analogy that’s so devoid of context that its completely invalid.
It’s not logic/reasoning, but fact. Whatever the number of hours spent with each – which you clearly can have no real handle on – the people to fear are not necessarily who you assume them to be. Just as flying is safer than driving, people fear the former way more because it is alien to them, and they relax into the conceit that they’re in control if behind the wheel.
Fact my bahookie. Just because it’s more likely overall that violent crime occurs between people who know each other, this doesn’t mean that some middle class twit living in an area with high levels of violent crime is more at risk from their family or other middle class twits than the criminals in the area where they live.
“Just because…..”
but I didn’t claim that Alphonse. You are strawmannning.
Lol it’s a comically pointless analogy. People are 25x more likely to drown in a bathtub than be mauled by a shark. So why not jump out and swim around a Great White feeding frenzy! Don’t be a hostage to conventional reasoning!
Re-read my original post – it basically states that people chose to live in rough area because – 1) it’s cheap 2) they find it more interesting 3) they may make a lot of money. As a last point I claimed that people tend to have an elevated fear of that and those which they don’t know, and cited the solid finding that you are likely to be harmed by people who are known to you (rather than the randoms cited in the article). I’m wondering why this riles you so much. My guess is that it challenges an opportunity to have a stereotyped moan about progressives, viz, ‘Q: why do progressives live in dangerous areas?’ A: ‘because they are ‘middle class twits; woke idiots’, etc. Don’t be hostage to the conventional game of ‘ain’t it awful’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnHHWY9KjF0
No one who makes a lot off money lives in the ‘hood.
meaning….? I know several people who bought in dangerous areas and made a terrific amount of money. Were they ‘rich’ – no; are they rich now, yes. The areas under discussion in the article are not ‘Compton’ type areas – I imagine those are a step too far even for’ libtards’ – but areas of NY and SF that are gentrifying/used to be ‘hoods’.
I spent a significant period of life intermingling with progressives. What you’re describing is Bucktown, Wicker Park and Logan Square of Chicago where disportionately white, eclectic bourgeois hipster communities effectively colonize low income areas because it’s cheap. This group overwhelmingly supports social justice causes.
So what you get with these groups is a contradiction that leads to cognitive dissonance. On one hand, they need a place to live and want it to be exciting. On the other hand, they either feel guilty or know the perception that their mass migration to the area inflates the cost of living for existing residents who are disproportionately poor and minority. So they advocate naive policies of absolute behavioral toleration to compensate for their sins of gentrification. That means advocating lax enforcement of loitering, petty theft and open air drug use while being openly hostile to the police as a Virtue Signal.
Any non-ideologue analyzing the situation from an empirical lens can tell you that these policies embolden the most violent criminal elements of society and create a culture of tent city squatters that feel entitled to dominate the public square. This is not some “Anti-Woke Theory” its the Correspondence Theory of Truth. Progressive policies inflate the cost of living and exacerbate the Inequality they claim to despise and as atonement they deny law enforcement the ability to police the conditions they’ve exacerbated.
So law abiding long-time residents get the worst of both worlds. They get the increased cost of living with petty crime conditions that can no longer be enforced by
the police.
Nice summary. I’d only add that it’s, I think, a little more case-by-case. Eg not all progressives feel that guilt; or respond to it by lax policing – quite often the opposite – they feel that they are bringing up, regenerating the area, and may be strong advocates for more policing. Not all progressives are naive woke idiots.
checked out the video, Dominic! Bit corny, but you know what? It’s helped me today. I need to stop a lot of my moaning! I’ve lived in areas that were considered poor and dangerous and agree with your description that most people there are okay and just want to get on with their lives like everybody else.
Drivel. I’ve never been harmed by my family, but did get a doing off some bouncers in an ‘edgy’ nightclub in the 90s. If you open your door in the middle of the night in a high crime area, your mother in law or cousin won’t come in and murder you.
ah, that’s settled then. Sorry, didn’t realise something had happened to you.
The worst part was the bollocking I got from my fearsome boss when I turned up for work on the Monday with a black eye. It did teach me a lesson in being aware of your surroundings and thinking before opening your mouth in certain situations.
there’s another reason to live there – gritty lessons, if it doesn’t kill you.
Ah yes, never mind the murder and robbery, feel the vibes. I suppose that’s the problem, things are edgy, exciting and vibey until some deranged drug addict sticks something sharp into your guts. Then the corporate safety of the burbs (booo) starts looking a little more attractive.
As someone who was raised in the most violent district in Western Europe at the time, I can assure you the vibes are few and far between.
The areas the author is writing about are the ‘gentrifying’ districts of SF, NY and other American cities – they are exciting, vibey, not just depressed & violent, which is what attracts people. I’m also pretty sure, the progs in question understand the dangers, and the dead, stabbed ones are nevertheless very lucky. Are you perhaps an advocate of safetyism?
The areas the author is writing about do not sound like the kind of area you live in. Europe doesn’t do poor and vibey.
BTW, why do you feel the need to challenge my post (and ignore the other points, cost & potential profit) ? They’re a fairly straightforward answer.
Absolutely correct, about more likely being murdered by family, friends. Eg, my wife’s son was murdered in his home by his wife.