This past weekend, twenty CEOs from big box retailers sent a letter to Congress, asking for help in combatting the rampant theft that is plaguing their stores.
While it’s refreshing to finally see these companies speaking up, it’s hard to ignore the irony of their circumstances. After all, a little over a year ago many of these retailers were sending out emails to their customers that echoed the far-left rallying cries of progressives. No one asked for Best Buy or Ulta to weigh in on social issues, but they were more than happy to virtue-signal anyway.
Plenty of the stores that signed on to this letter have openly supported the Black Lives Matter movement. To understand what that means, you have to understand the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. One of the founders of BLM described the group’s creators as “trained Marxists.” In June 2020, Alicia Garza, one of the three founders, excused the violence and destruction caused by the riots.
“We don’t have time to finger-wag at protesters about property,” Garza said. “That can be rebuilt. Target will reopen. The stores will reopen.”
The socially aware CEOs didn’t let the red flags stop them. Instead, they appeased the alligator with empty woke statements. Now that the “undocumented shopping” is affecting these companies’ bottom lines, they are fed up. So they are asking the same people who fanned the flames to help them put out the fire.
Unfortunately for these companies, many Democratic politicians aren’t concerned about crime. Instead, prominent voices on the left are still promoting asinine ideas like defunding the police and bail reform.
In San Francisco, thanks to Proposition 47, thefts under $950 are labeled misdemeanors rather than felonies. In November, after a Louis Vuitton in Union Square was ransacked, Mayor London Breed offered her solution: “We’re going to be making some changes to Union Square and how cars are able to access. There will be limited access in terms of when you come to this area.” Why focus on prosecuting criminals when you can focus on parking?
While some leaders offer pathetic band-aid solutions, others prefer to deny, deny, deny.
During a Zoom chat in June, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez downplayed crime in New York City: “But I also want to make sure that this hysteria, you know, that this doesn’t drive a hysteria and that we look at these numbers in context so that we can make responsible decisions about what to allocate in that context.” We wouldn’t want to drive a hysteria, says the woman who thinks the world will end in ten years.
Recently, in an interview with the Washington Times, Ocasio-Cortez discussed whether smash-and-grab robberies are a real issue. She specifically tried to discredit Walgreens’ claims about theft in their stores. “[A] lot of these allegations of organized retail theft are not actually panning out,” she said. “I believe it’s a Walgreens in California cited it, but the data didn’t back it up.”
Spoiler alert: the data most certainly backs up Walgreens. The retail pharmacy responded to the socialist’s comments and assured her that organized retail crime was “one of the top challenges facing” the chain. Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t want voters concerned about lawlessness in big cities because it is a direct result of progressive policies in action. Instead she would rather her followers be in a constant state of panic about eliminating cow farts and January 6.
Even the A+ gaslighting is losing its luster as time and crime go on. So White House press secretary Jen Psaki is trying a new tactic: the blame game. In the Biden administration, there are three reliable options when it comes to passing the buck.
- Blame Trump
- Blame climate change
- Blame Covid-19
As of late, Psaki has been leaning heavily on number three.
In one particularly nutty exchange, Fox News’s Peter Doocy asked Psaki to double down on Biden’s belief that crime is spiking because of the pandemic.
“When a huge group of criminals organizes themselves and they want to go loot a store, a CVS, a Nordstrom, a Home Depot, until the shelves are clean, do you think that’s because of the pandemic?” Doocy said.
Unfazed by her own lunacy, Psaki shot back, “I think a root cause in a lot of communities is the pandemic.”
Stealing thousands of dollars of handbags from a Nordstrom is a side effect of Covid-19? Following the science gets trickier by the day.
The truth is that Democrats have no intention of acknowledging this crime wave. They will continue to theorize about root causes and question the legitimacy of the data. They will respond to the letter from retailers the same way the retailers responded to the “peaceful protests” — with platitudes and empty gestures.
If these companies didn’t understand “get woke, go broke” before, they certainly do now.
