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New Yorkers got a double jolt of much-needed good news this week.
First, Manhattan’s limp-on-crime DA Alvin Bragg dropped his absurd murder case against bodega hero Jose Alba. The hardworking 61-year-old bodega clerk was violently attacked by a macho thug who was angry that his girlfriend hadn’t gotten a free bag of chips. While getting beaten up, Alba grabbed a knife and stabbed his assailant in an obvious case of self-defense, killing him.
“Obvious,” that is, to everyone but Bragg, who charged Alba with murder. In the fantasy world of the police-defunding, violence-interrupting, restorative justice-seeking progressive left, being assaulted should be an opportunity to reflect upon one’s own privileged status. A moment to consider all the ways in which your attacker has suffered deprivation, and how you have failed to show effective allyship.
The outcry about Alba’s charges was significant, and even Mayor Adams said that Bragg’s decision sent a terrible message to law-abiding New Yorkers. Putting pressure on Bragg appears to have worked, or at least he realized that no Manhattan jury was going to convict Jose Alba for defending himself.
The other ray of sunshine this week came when Bill de Blasio, widely considered New York’s worst mayor in living memory, pulled out of the race to represent lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn in the newly-formed 10th Congressional District. Terrible poll numbers, driven by the universal recognition that de Blasio is personally responsible for the city’s rising tide of crime, garbage, menace and disorder, led him to realize that, as much as he loves being an elected official, the mutuality just ain’t there.
It might seem that de Blasio’s withdrawal from the field is a leading indicator that New York’s prog contingent is on the run, and taking its destructive bag of tricks with it. Unfortunately, that’s not quite yet the case, as the other leading candidates make de Blasio seem like a sensible centrist.
Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou is at the head of the pack — if you care to believe a poll by the Working Families Party, which has endorsed her. Niou is a hard-left legislator who voted in favor of bail reform and strongly supports defunding the NYPD. When cops rode the subway after the funeral of murdered fellow officer Jason Rivera, Niou absurdly called it a “frightening show of intimidation.”
Last week, Niou, in exchange for a nod from the inaptly-named group “The Jewish Vote” — which exclusively endorses supporters of the anti-Semitic “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” campaign against Israel — announced that she, too, favors the program and its goal to wipe Israel from the map. But then she cowardly insisted that she supports the “right to protest,” and only favors BDS in that sense.
If Niou wanted to say she supports the First Amendment, she could have just said it. But she didn’t. She supports an objectively anti-Semitic movement.
Councilmember Carlina Rivera is also a leading candidate for the seat. Rivera was a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America, which touted her 2017 Council election as a victory for the revolution. Rivera voted against the city budget in 2020 because it only cut $1 billion from the NYPD — not enough, according to her. Asked about her dedication to socialism, Rivera now pretends not to understand the question.
Daniel Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who lives in a $22 million apartment, worked with Alvin Bragg under US Attorney Preet Bharara. Goldman cites his criminal-justice experience, but he has been a strong supporter of Bragg and was a major donor to his campaign. Goldman has made it clear that he favors the same flaccid approach to fighting crime that has already made New York dirtier and more dangerous.
Non-crazy New Yorkers who would prefer to see their city avoid its plunge into madness must make their voices heard. We shouted loudly that Jose Alba was a hero, not a murderer, and Alvin Bragg heard us. Let’s keep up the pressure. And at the same time, let’s reject candidates for chaos like Niou, Rivera, and Goldman, and take a good look instead at Maud Maron and Brian Robinson, qualified aspirants for the same office who have a sane perspective on issues like crime, education, and quality of street life that matter to ordinary people. The future of the city depends on normal people speaking up.
Seth Barron (@sethbarronnyc) is managing editor of The American Mind and the author of “The Last Days of New York” (Humanix).
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