If Seattle is our model, this is where we're going
As the San Jose City Council veers left, Critical Race Theory concepts gain political traction, and local DA's continue to refuse to prosecute lawbreakers, many progressives look towards the Emerald City of Seattle as an example of what this New Social Justice Paradise might look like. Yeow. Christopher Ruffo provides a description of the Seattle debacle in City Journal.
American cities are entering a period of chaos. Protests and riots have dominated headlines, but beneath the surface, activists are launching an unprecedented campaign to overthrow the traditional justice system and replace it with a new model based on a radical conception of social justice.
In Seattle, where this campaign may be most advanced, activists have crafted a narrative about police brutality, mass incarceration, and punitive justice that leads to a natural sequence of solutions: “abolish the police,” “divest from prisons,” and “defund the courts.” Over the past three decades, the city’s radical-progressives have seized control of municipal government—with the notable exception of the criminal-justice system, which they see as the final obstacle to total control. If they can dismantle it, activists believe, they can bring about their transformation of society.
The city’s political establishment has joined the campaign to “deconstruct justice.” Since the outbreak of the George Floyd–related protests starting in late May, elected officials in Seattle and King County have announced their intentions to defund the Seattle Police Department, permanently close the county’s largest jail, and gut the municipal court system. They believe that, when the oppression of the justice system is lifted, a new society can be shaped through criminal diversion, psychotherapy, and harm reduction.
The theoretical underpinnings of this movement can be traced back to the academic currents of “critical race theory,” long pervasive in university humanities departments, which holds that all legal structures—and society generally—can be understood as a function of embedded racism. The law is shot through with white supremacy, critical race theorists believe, which must be rigorously identified and dismantled if true justice is to be achieved. In recent years, critical race theory has expanded beyond the academy and become a force in progressive politics.
For today’s radical-progressives, the nation’s traditional institutions are little more than vestiges of white supremacy, capitalist exploitation, and colonialist domination. Seen in this light, the recent unrest in America’s progressive cities becomes clear: the chaos is the necessary price—and the accelerant—for the revolution. During the recent occupation of Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, self-described “abolitionist” Nikkita Oliver translated the sentiments of the graduate seminar into the language of the streets, calling for the overthrow of “racialized capitalism” and “patriarchy, white supremacy, and classism.” Motivated by such goals, mobs have seized control of police precincts.
If radicals are successful in moving Seattle toward police abolition, the results will be catastrophic. The city is coming apart. Crime has exploded in the downtown corridor, businesses have barricaded their windows, and citizens fear that the city will collapse into anarchy. Yet the activists and political class are moving forward with their experiment at astonishing speed. Nearly every week, they offer new proposals for transforming the constituent parts of the criminal-justice system. “Burn it down” has evolved from a street slogan into a political platform.
Read the whole thing here.
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Photo by Prachatai.