NEWNow you can hearken to Fox Information articles!
Seattle, a city in decline, is obsessive about “fairness,” the centerpiece of range, fairness, and inclusion, or DEI. As soon as beautiful and livable, the Emerald Metropolis has misplaced its shine.
The phrase “fairness” looms giant even in Seattle journal, the place I labored as a contract author greater than a decade in the past. Within the present problem, a social justice activist is being celebrated as one in all Seattle’s most influential individuals for her function within the “Defund the Police” movement – whilst homicides elevated by 23% in 2022, in line with information from the Seattle Police Division (SPD).
Below the banner of fairness, the Seattle Metropolis Council in 2021 lower the police finances by practically $35.6 million. At the moment, SPD staffing ranges are at an alarming 30-year low with 400 officers having left prior to now three years.
Boarded up storefronts, non-public safety and homelessness dominate the city panorama. (Elizabeth Economou)
As a Seattle native and daughter of hardworking Greek immigrants, who sacrificed the whole lot for his or her kids, I now not acknowledge the pristine dwelling of my youth.
Issues I took as a right, like security and safety, are now not assured with police emergency response instances reaching new highs.
Smash and grabs happen extra steadily, re-offenders commit crimes with impunity, and soft-on-crime judges endanger public safety. Even one thing as routine as using the bus is now sketchy.
Since getting back from New York Metropolis in 2007, I’ve witnessed Seattle’s regular decline.
As soon as vibrant, downtown, the place I labored in my 20s, has turned dystopian. Boarded up storefronts, non-public safety, and homelessness dominate the city panorama.
There are fewer and fewer locations to collect.
Simply final week, the Nike retailer announced it was closing after 27 years in enterprise, citing a spike in crime. Subsequent month, the theater throughout the road will meet an analogous destiny.
Throughout Seattle, sprawling homeless encampments, blamed on the excessive price of dwelling as an alternative of lenient drug insurance policies and rising psychological sickness – the true culprits – have ravaged neighborhoods, intersections and public parks.
I ponder: How a lot worse can it get?
Fairness is predicated on the false premise of equal outcomes – not equality of alternative or equality underneath the legislation – whereby assets are seized from one group and given to marginalized or most popular teams.
Fairness is why theft in Seattle is now rampant and goes largely unprosecuted.
On the grocery retailer just lately, I noticed laundry detergent, toothpaste and different requirements behind lock and key. (Elizabeth Economou)
On the grocery retailer just lately, I noticed laundry detergent, toothpaste and different requirements behind lock and key.
Well being fairness is why drug habit is being normalized with hurt discount methods, like free needles and free naloxone – medicine that reverses the results of opioid overdose. As a substitute of freebies, the federal government might compel life-saving therapy.
In the summertime, I witnessed a younger man writhing in agony from an obvious drug overdose on the drugstore, the place my husband works as a pharmacist. I couldn’t imagine my eyes.
SEATTLE CHURCHGOERS BECOMING ‘AFRAID’ TO ATTEND SERVICES OVER GROWING HOMELESS CAMP: ‘WE NEED HELP’
A homeless man, 24, smokes fentanyl on March 12, 2022, in Seattle.
(John Moore/Getty Photos)
The opposite day on the publish workplace parking zone, an addict was getting excessive, as I emerged from my automotive. Drug paraphernalia strewn about.
Inherently Marxist, fairness breeds distress, not hope.
At the moment, 70% of all overdose deaths are “pushed by fentanyl,” in line with Public Well being Seattle & King County’s 2022 Overdose Report.
Issues have gotten so dire the medical expert’s workplace is fighting retailer useless our bodies, mentioned Seattle-King County Well being Director Dr. Faisal Khan, just lately.
Nonetheless, “disparities and “systemic racism,” are being cited for the disproportionate variety of overdose deaths amongst individuals of coloration in King County not radical well being fairness insurance policies.
“These disparities replicate the affect of systemic racism on danger elements for drug-related harms, together with intergenerational trauma, inequitable entry to assets, and incarceration,” in line with Public Well being Insider, a publication by well being consultants at Public Well being Seattle & King County.
Curiously, even well being care supply amenities, it appears, are on board with fairness messaging.
A rainbow sticker filled with mixed symbolism, together with a clenched fist signaling resistance, is prominently displayed within the window of a major care clinic in an upscale Seattle neighborhood.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE OPINION NEWSLETTER
It’s unsettling that Windfall Swedish, Western Washington’s largest well being care supply system, is participating in divisive id politics, when doing so seems to contradict the Hippocratic Oath’s crucial: “Do No Hurt?” Media@swedish.org declined to remark.
A rainbow sticker filled with mixed symbolism is prominently displayed within the window of a major care clinic in an upscale Seattle neighborhood. (Elizabeth Economou)
Past well being fairness and fairness in policing, Seattle.gov, the official web site for the town, additionally cites workforce fairness and digital fairness. Transportation fairness and gender fairness. Environmental fairness and humanities fairness. Even hashish fairness. It goes on and on.
In “Fairness: When the Left Goes Too Far,” scientific psychologist and writer Jordan Peterson claims that fairness is “inexcusable, each morally and virtually,” as “it identifies perpetrators who should be punished, and victims who should be coddled and guarded.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Equally, fairness in Seattle has gone too far; overdose deaths pushed by fentanyl is one indication. The rising murder charge is one other. City decline and human struggling are directly rampant and heartbreaking.
I don’t need to go away Seattle. It’s my dwelling. However the metropolis’s obsession with fairness is making life much less protected for everybody underneath the false premise of equal outcomes.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM ELIZABETH ECONOMOU
