Authored by Stacey Lennox via PJMedia.com,
In an interview with Vogue Magazine, San Francisco Mayor London Breed discussed a range of issues. When asked about the current cultural moment, she said that she was overwhelmed by the response from people who are not black to the Black Lives Matter movement. However, she also expressed frustration with so-called “white allies.”
When she was asked if she had any critiques of the current demonstrations, she responded:
I have a real problem with the takeover of the movement by white people.
I want people to respect the opinions and feelings of Black people and allow us to decide what is in our best interest. I talk about the plan to reduce the police budget and reallocate those resources to the African American community, and a large number of non-Blacks reached out to tell me what I should do for the Black community. Then, they say what their community deserves because of their challenges as well. That really bothered me. The Black community [of San Francisco] is capable of speaking for ourselves and deciding what’s in our best interest.
Then she answered a question as to whether for not she felt that the concerns of San Francisco’s black residents were being heard. Breed’s response was sharp criticism of the progressive movement:
What’s happening in San Francisco now, and has for so many years, is you have a progressive movement made up of people who are mostly white and feel that they know what’s in the best interest of Black people.
I’m over that.
I think it’s important that we support and respect the Black people here enough to know that we have a mind of our own. Because half the policies pushed in San Francisco are “progressive policies” that don’t work for Black people. Because, if they did, why are things far worse for Black people here? In San Francisco, a city where less than 5 to 6% of the population is African American and yet we are disproportionately overrepresented in everything that’s bad: high school dropouts, arrests, homelessness. You name it.
Thank you, Mayor Breed! Though it could be just as easily argued that progressive policies are bad for everyone. She presides over a city that had more drug addicts than high school students in January of 2019. It also spawned the Snapcrap app that tracked public defecation.
The city also has one of the most progressive district attorneys in the country. Raised by domestic terrorists Bill Ayes and Bernadette Dorn, Chesa Boudin refuses to prosecute nearly all non-violent crimes. It is so bad Fox News Host Tucker Carlson did a series on San Francisco called American Dystopia:
With Breed’s criticism of progressive policies, it becomes necessary to wonder why she is embracing one of the worst ideas the woke left has come up with. She is actively diverting money away from the police department to invest in black communities.
A majority of black Americans do not support this idea. Overall support has been dropping as violence in many cities has escalated.
Breed’s rhetoric is pretty astonishing, given she leads a city where the black population has been declining for decades. According to the New York Times, black residents used to make up one in seven residents in San Francisco in 1970. Today it has fallen to one in 20 with the majority living in public housing.
Another consequence of progressive policies is skyrocketing rent and lack of affordable housing. While Breed has tried to remedy some of that by adding low-income units and shelter beds, it is like putting a band-aid on an injury that requires a tourniquet.
According to the website RENTCafe, the average rent in San Francisco is $3,629, with an average apartment size of 747 square feet. This amount is more than twice the national average of $1,468. This is an astounding price to live among piles of poop, strewn dirty needles, and unaddressed non-violent crime.
To the activists that have been critical of her leadership, Breed had a few words when she was asked if she was misunderstood:
Yes, but I don’t care that I am by people who have privilege. Let me be clear: In most cases, they’ve never had to live like I’ve had to live. I had to live in a public housing development that they wouldn’t have even dared set foot in. This is over 20 years, not just two years, of my life. I’ve been working in the trenches for my community my entire life.
And none of these people have been in the trenches when we were dealing with issues of police brutality on a regular basis. Almost every day you’re hearing that someone that you loved was killed. I think part of it is, my experience is what determines how I make decisions. The good news is the people who know me and love me from the neighborhood I grew up in, they understand why I do what I do. They’re not “activists,” but they love and they trust me.
Here’s hoping her neighborhood encompassed half the city. Her comments are not likely to be popular with the woke white progressives who follow the Robin Di Angelo school of thinking.
Only they know what is best, and Mayor Breed isn’t listening.