Urban progressives are blasting the unsafe cities THEY created

The capital of the most powerful and prosperous country that ever walked the earth is an uncomfortable – even uninhabitable – place to call home.

Over the past decade, Washington, DC has transformed from a beautiful, bustling, and vibrant metropolis into a city that often feels like a replica of Batman’s Gotham.

Between 2013 and 2019, DC recorded between 104 and 166 homicides per year.

In the three full years since then, 198, 223 and 203 murders have been recorded.

This year it is well on its way to bearing 256 testimonies.

All of this has been accompanied by a nationwide increase in crime rates.

The capital has already far surpassed the staggering number of car thefts that took place there last year.

Worse still, only 80 arrests have been made in connection with the 606 car thefts in 2023.

The outlook is so bleak that Trayon White Sr., a Democratic councilman who originally voted to lower penalties for a number of serious infractions – including auto theft and armed auto theft – is now calling for the National Guard to intervene in the carnage.

Imagine telling someone in June 2020, amid the gnashing of teeth that accompanied Sen. Tom Cotton’s call for the National Guard to be deployed, that Democrats would pine for a little over three years later.

“I’m sick of burying our kids,” White told the press this week.

“We feel too comfortable with the state of our city. We must take action to gain control and protect our residents.”

The violence and the liberal counter-reactions are almost impossible to cope with in the capital.

Oakland is on track to double the number of assaults in the city and triple the number of auto thefts by 2019.

Its NAACP chapter has not minced words to assign blame for this sad state of affairs.

“Failed leadership, including the movement to strip police of funds, our District Attorney’s unwillingness to indict and prosecute people who murder and commit life-threatening serious crimes, and the proliferation of anti-police rhetoric have given Oakland’s criminals a heyday ‘ the progressive group claimed in a letter.

“People are leaving Oakland in droves. They are afraid to leave their homes to go to work, to shop or to eat.”

That spring, even Al Sharpton — he of “No Justice, No Peace!” fame — angered his fellow progressives for their reluctance to take the crime epidemic seriously.

“Anyone who tells you they’re progressive but doesn’t care about dealing with violent crime, that’s not,” Sharpton explained.

“You are labeled as progressive, but your actions are regressive.”

All of this follows the rise of Eric Adams to the Gracie Mansion due to his hard-line anti-crime image in 2021 and San Francisco’s ouster of progressive prosecutor Chesa Boudin last year.

As London Breed, the heartbreaking Liberal Mayor of the Golden City, famously put it in late 2021, it is time for “the rule of the criminals who are destroying our city” to end.

Both she and law enforcement needed to be “less tolerant of all the bullshit that has destroyed our city,” she said.

Hear hear.

Breed’s progressive cohorts may realize too late that rampant lawlessness is rendering America’s cities unrecognizable, but their change of heart should be celebrated nonetheless.

The harsh truth is that in most cases, Democrats must — at least in the short term — lay the groundwork for an urban revitalization because urban voters don’t even give Republican candidates a second look.

So city dwellers should be optimistic that progressives are getting a firmer grip on reality when it comes to the state of their streets – but cautiously.

As Mayor Adams has shown, there are limits to the power of harsh words.

Polls last month found that 70% of New Yorkers are still “very” or “somewhat” concerned that they could soon be the name behind another crime statistic.

Almost a tenth of the city say they have been attacked or robbed at some point in the past 12 months.

So by all means give the new liberal crime gangs a round of applause for their stated intentions.

But don’t let them off the hook if their actions ultimately don’t reflect their rhetoric.

Isaac Schorr is an employee at Mediaite.