That's a big problem for those of us still here that would prefer enforcement; our fellow-minded voters have (probably rightly) chosen defect and left the city, rather than stay to vote for change. Suburb living also has twice the greenhouse gas impact as well.
I don't know, Sawant got way less than was expected in the primaries (36.7% [1]), and I think a lot of folks are in the Sawant or anti-Sawant camp whereby all on the non-Sawant primary votes will consolidate to Orion.
Or people blew off the primaries sure that she'd take the general. ️
Those of us still here that prefer empathy would rather you follow your 'fellow-minded' folks and just leave.
Seattle's had this tension between the left and the liberals for a century. Traditionally you lived on the outskirts. You're welcome to go back if the city offends your sensibilities.
"Empathy" is unfortunately becoming code word for "caring to a specific group of people but not others". It's almost never used for "the ability to understand and care about the feelings of people in general".
The people who aren't living in the street but are victims of these petty crimes or have their own quality of life drastically reduced because of all this still matter. And I don't think the solution is to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. Especially since even the reasonably well off (dare I say, what's left of the "middle class") frequently has it worse in the US than random people do in other first world countries.
Does there need to be a line drawn here? I don’t think there is a contradiction between empathy and enforcement. For example, I would really like an end to the bike and package theft and I think it is reasonable to enforce laws against it. Do you disagree?
In the world we live in, yes I disagree. Our criminal justice system further entrenches these problems. Before you claim that these petty crimes don't apply, the majority of folks in jail and prison are there on probation/parole violations, and these petty crimes are all jailable/revokable offenses for folks on paper.
In America, we put the already marginalized in jail and prison which only further entrenches their marginalization. Empathy means breaking that cycle.
Fear-based rhetoric around crime is not empathy. In fact, it's the exact opposite. And it's rampant in this thread.
>the majority of folks in jail and prison are there on probation/parole violations
This is a funny way of saying they're back in prison for more serious original crimes after failing to rehabilitate during the second chance they were already given in the form of probation/parole.
Repeatedly letting criminals free to walk the streets and commit more crimes is not empathy, it is folly. Empathy is protecting the neighborhoods which aren't rich enough to be insulated from these bad actors.
> Repeatedly letting criminals free to walk the streets
That's a funny way of implying that everyone that the justice system imprisons are criminals in a world where we imprison 22% of the global incarcerated population despite accounting for 4% of the global total population[1].
Fear-based rhetoric around crime and the people who commit crimes* is not empathy.
My empathy is reserved for victims. I don't see how siding with antisocial actors and taking a permissive stance on crime is supposed to improve society. I literally can't understand the mindset of such a belief other by applying hipster contrarianism to morality.
My empathy is reserved for victims of the prison industrial complex (that includes your concept of victims, btw). I do see how your sort of hardline dehumanization of undesirables...sorry, 'tough on crime'...approach in the latter half of the 20th century has resulted in many of the problems being discussed in this thread.
I'm a felon that committed a crime and violated my probation a year after my original sentencing (I've since discharged my sentence). My crime was almost killing my passengers and myself in a drunken single-vehicle collision when I was 19. My violation was being a drunk passenger on my 21st birthday, after the designated driver was pulled over for simple lane violations (right/left turns into far lanes). They were let go with a warning, and I was taken to jail. If I didn't come from the privileged background I do, I could very well still be in prison today.
I'm a contrarian hipster, don't get me wrong, but I come by this empathy honestly. I empathize with your fear too, but I'm telling you to get over it because it only makes the problems you fear worse.
Is it empathy that leaves the mentally unwell and drug addicted to rot in the street, harass and endanger passersby, and commit petty crimes with impunity?
I didn't think empathy had much to do with the tough on crime policies that are bearing this fruit today, or the dehumanizing rhetoric rampant in this thread that justifies doubling down on those failed policies.
Time and time again, fear leads to bad counterproductive policies with debateably good intentions.
I'm ignoring the meaningless/unspoken distinction between compassion and empathy in your comment.
Though it's changed recently (and even more recently is swinging back to historical usage), historically the word liberals referred to folks that are generally corporate/free-trade friendly (Reagan famously claimed something to the effect of, 'I'm a liberal, an 18th century liberal'). They also pay lip service to personal freedoms, but that tends to be through the lens of white men being the only people deserving of those, and they're generally against freedom of migration. Or rather that they care about free-trade more than free-migration because it advantages them more, despite the societal benefits of one relying on the other.
In Seattle, the leftists are the AnSyn folks at the unsanctioned May Day celebration, or the WTO protesters two decades back. Further back, they're the folks organizing the general strike[1]. The liberals are the folks that put their No Re-zoning sign next to their BLM sign in the window of their Ballard home. Or more charitably, the folks that see Gates and Bezos as shining examples of what our city is capable of.
In case you need it in song form, this is a song written by a leftist[2].
