Virtue-signaling was so much easier before they actually got everything they voted for.
The East Village neighborhood of lower Manhattan is made of people who are sure that they are your intellectual and moral superiors. They would never, ever voted for someone with an R behind his name. They despise the ridiculous Trump, with all his loutish bluster. They are patrons of the arts, and in many cases artists themselves. They appreciate the finer things in life.
They care deeply for those who are less fortunate than themselves, even to the point of voting for politicians who would make sure that America’s borders are just fictional lines on maps, and who oppose any efforts to detain and deport the criminals among the migrants who have taken advantage of those fictional borders. They know that those migrants are in many cases non-white and non-Christians, and thus morally superior, as they themselves think they are, to the vast majority of Americans.
And so the residents of the East Village, secure in their superior intellect and dedication to social justice, were delighted to see Zohran Mamdani become mayor of New York City. They voted for him in droves, with fully 70% of the East Village electorate happily pulling the lever for the Communist Twelver Shi’ite candidate.
And now, as authoritarians so often do, Mamdani is punishing them for their heartfelt support. Mamdani is a Twelver Shi’ite, and so he is likely aware that one of the twentieth century’s foremost Twelvers, the Ayatollah Khomeini, made Marxists regret their political choices long before Zohran Mamdani became the fresh new face of the far left. Khomeini, when he was working to overthrow the shah of Iran, enjoyed the enthusiastic support of Iran’s Communists, who were secure in the certainty that Khomeini would reward them, once he was in power by making them part of his ruling coalition.
Instead, there was no coalition at all, and Khomeini threw his bewildered Communist supporters into prison, and had them murdered. Mamdani doesn’t plan to throw his Commie supporters in the East Village into Riker’s Island just yet. As a matter of fact, he is closing Riker’s, so as to inflict more misery on law-abiding New Yorkers. And he has found another way to punish the East Village: he is building a homeless shelter there, so as to flood the area with dangerous, often insane and criminal elements. The haven of smug leftists will be smug no more.
That is, unless East Villagers themselves succeed in stopping their beloved mayor’s plan. The New York Post reported Wednesday that “the city’s controversial plan to relocate hundreds of homeless men into the East Village was temporarily halted by a state judge Wednesday after concerned residents sued Mayor Zohran Mamdani to stop it.” That’s right. Just six months ago, they loved Mamdani with starry-eyed intensity; now, as the reality of leftism threatens to unfold before their eyes, they are suing him.
At the very least, Mamdani’s plans have been postponed: “The order issued by Manhattan Judge Sabrina Kraus likely will stop the city from opening the intake shelter along Third Street on May 1 as planned. Kraus agreed to set a May 7 date for city officials and the East Villagers to appear in court to hash out their disagreements.”
The new homeless shelter, along with another one planned in the Bowery, “would have effectively replaced the notorious Bellevue homeless shelter that the Mamdani administration plans to close by the end of the month.” But then the Village Organization for the Integrity of Community Engagement sued, “contending city officials rushed through the process.” They claim that Mamdani “underhandedly declared an ‘emergency’ to close the 250-person Bellevue shelter,” and that “officials also ignored their own laws and codes, such as planning to put hundreds of people in an East Village building with strict occupancy limits.”
All this is just legal cover for the fact that the leftist East Villagers simply don’t want the effects of leftism that close to them. VOICE’s attorney Steven A. Engel applauded the court’s decision in a statement that made that clear: “We are pleased that the Court recognized that a full hearing was needed before the City makes such a consequential decision as opening a citywide homeless adult male intake center on a crowded residential street in the East Village.”
Right. Anywhere else, and East Village leftists will vote for it enthusiastically. But in their neighborhood? That simply won’t do. Leftism is what leftists do to other people. They have no intention of suffering its effects themselves.
Article posted with permission from Robert Spencer
