Remember when San Francisco was a world-class city, a world-class tourist destination, a place California, and the USA could be proud of?
It wasn’t that long ago. But it isn’t now.
Christopher F. Rufo, Ryan Thorpe and Jonathan Choe’s article for city-journal.org paints a horrific picture of San Francisco’s downfall. Here is how it begins:
It’s 3 a.m. in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, and an all-night, drug-fueled party has been raging for hours. The sidewalks are littered with trash and human feces. Addicts huddle in the alleys, inhaling fentanyl fumes through plastic straws; others are slumped over, barely conscious. Makeshift homeless encampments line block after block.
Dealers are everywhere. On the street corners, groups of men dressed in dark hoodies and face masks sell drugs. These are the “Hondos,” migrants from Honduras who have taken over the San Francisco drug trade. Night after night, they turn the Tenderloin into a lucrative, open-air drug market.
For this City Journal investigation, we spent three days and nights in the Tenderloin, talking to addicts, journalists, cops, and the dealers themselves. We discovered that the city’s progressive policies have allowed foreign drug gangs to take over an entire neighborhood in downtown San Francisco, poisoning the down-and-out and bringing Third World conditions to one of America’s wealthiest cities.
How ugly is that?
Later on in the article we have the following explanation of how things got that way. Its first paragraphL
Why is this happening? In short, because of San Francisco’s “progressive” policies. For years, the city has prioritized its “sanctuary” law that makes deportations more difficult; relaxed drug enforcement, limiting arrests of dealers and users; and embraced “housing first” policies, which make cleaning up homeless encampments and coercing addicts into treatment nearly impossible. This crisis didn’t come from nowhere. It is the predictable result of deliberate choices.
In other words, this is the consequence of policy.
And who has been in charge of San Francisco, and of California, in these years? If you’re talking party, the word “Democrat” rings out loud and clear. If you’re talking individuals, there are a good many. But the name “Gavin Newsom” – who has been both the two-time Mayor of San Francisco and the two-time Governor of California – rings out the loudest and clearest.
It would be nice if some – maybe all – of our mainstream media would have the honesty to talk about this. But, at least as things are now, that is little other than a wistful dream.
Maybe someday…………………
