Woke Wakeup
Adams’ war on crime is about class, not color
WOKENESS is on the wane. After a series of horrific murders culminating in the Friday killing of rookie police officer Jason Rivera, New Yorkers are demanding Mayor Adams make good on his promise to make the city safe again — and Monday he unveiled his plan to do so.
Vowing to “deploy more officers on the streets and in the subways,” Adams will go after gang members taking advantage of Raise the Age legislation to skirt gun-possession charges. “When it comes to guns, we must make sure there are consequences,” he said — an indirect shot at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who’s promised less prosecution.
And he’ll reinstitute a version of the anti-gun unit Mayor Bill de Blasio disbanded in the “Defund the Police” craze after George Floyd’s killing, with officers in unmarked cars but wearing NYPD-labeled gear.
With headlines constantly calling this unit “controversial” — The New York Times went so far as to ask: “Can Adams Rebuild, and Rein In, a Notorious NYPD Unit?” — the liberal media are working hard to turn this progressive loss into a tale of racism. But like so much when it comes to wokeness, this story is actually about class.
Adams, a former NYPD captain who pushed for reforms, insisted last year that “the prerequisite for prosperity is public safety.” That message won him the lion’s share of black votes in the Democratic primary — a whopping 63%. Adams beat Defund-the-Police-and-“create trauma-informed care in our schools” Maya Wiley and wealthy hotspot favorite Kathryn Garcia handily in Brooklyn and The Bronx, including in public-housing units.
Adams won by making crime his campaign’s center. Some voters worried a lot about the historic increase in violence heading into the primaries: Just 53% of New Yorkers without college degrees felt safe walking around their neighborhoods — compared with 72% of those with college degrees. And when asked how to deal with the surge in shootings and violent crime, college-educated voters were significantly more likely to select the “Defund the Police” option than those without degrees.
Meanwhile, the same progressive Manhattanites who rejected Adams elected a district attorney who vowed not to prosecute crime. DA Alvin Bragg represents the views of this liberal elite. He made good on his promise his first week with an infamous memo ordering prosecutors to stop seeking prison sentences for armed robberies, drug dealing and even gun possession and resisting arrest. It’s one thing to say we don’t want young black men stopped because of the color of their skin. It’s quite another to tell working-class women their jobs now involve being threatened with a knife and having the criminal walk free.
As is so often the case with today’s overeducated white progressives, the price of the policies that make them feel righteous is paid by the most vulnerable — poor and working-class people of color who have to live with the consequences.
Progressive newspapers catering to highly educated elites like the New York Times want you to believe that these tensions “reflect a broader political argument between centrist Democrats across the nation looking to soothe voters worried about crime and a movement of progressive prosecutors that has pushed for more lenient policies to make the justice system more fair and less biased.”
The truth is almost the exact opposite: This fight is as much about class as it is about crime because the two are deeply connected. Believing the nonsense spewed by the Times, that allowing lawbreakers to victimize poor people of color repeatedly makes the “justice system more fair and less biased,” a Brahmin left is voting to send career criminals back onto the streets, where they act with ratified impunity. It not only allows crime to proliferate but forecloses on the possibility for needed police reform.
With newly installed Bragg and Adams, New York was heading for a class showdown over crime. But after the spate of tragic killings — of Kristal Bayron-Nieves, Michelle Go, Roland Hueston and Jason Rivera — even Bragg is backtracking somewhat. “If you’re walking around Manhattan with a gun, you’re going to be prosecuted and we’re going to hold you accountable,” he said Monday.
Our crime struggle has huge implications beyond Gotham. The disconnect between Bragg and Adams reflects the larger divide in the Democratic Party, between white progressives and moderate people of color, and whether progressives’ right to their feelings of virtue will outweigh the right of poor people of color to lives unmolested by crime.
Batya Ungar-Sargon is the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek and the author of “Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy.”