Minneapolis’ soy boy of a mayor, Jacob Frey, proves that no matter how much you abase yourself to the mob, you can never be woke enough.
In a scene reminiscent of a Maoist struggle session, he stood before two black protest organizers Saturday and confessed through a mask into a microphone that he was “coming to grips with my own brokenness.”
But the organizers, standing on a platform above him, weren’t interested in providing therapy for this 38-year-old man-child.
“Yes or no?” asked a woman with a microphone. “Will you commit to defunding the Minneapolis Police Department … We don’t want no more police.”
Poor Frey couldn’t bring himself to say yes, so his fate was sealed.
“Get the f–k out of here!” she snarled, and he was forced into a ritual walk of shame through the jeering crowd as they chanted, “Go home, Jacob!”
The only thing missing was a sign around his neck listing his transgressions.
Frey also made a spectacle of himself in front of hundreds of people in a Minneapolis chapel at a memorial service Thursday for George Floyd, the black man whose death under the knee of a white police officer has sparked nationwide protests.
Kneeling beside Floyd’s golden casket, Frey’s body trembled with great heaving sobs, as people nearby looked on in wonderment.
Someone should tell this half-price Justin Trudeau to stop wallowing in his own brokenness and start repairing his broken city.
There is no patience for self-indulgence amid the ruins. If Minneapolis had a grownup mayor instead of a snowflake, the rioting and looting of the past two weeks might have been nipped in the bud and America spared more pain piled on top of the pandemic.
Instead, the nation suffers due to one man’s inadequacies.
Frey is the perfect representative of a Democratic Party that has moved so far left, it is eating itself alive.
His overwrought gestures are as useless as those of the white women on the streets of Manhattan last week who were tricked by a man claiming to work for Black Lives Matter into getting on their knees and apologizing for their “white privilege.” Five well-meaning women were pranked for his camera, but at least all it cost was their pride.
In Cary, NC, on Saturday, the self-abasement took on religious tones when white people knelt to wash the feet of black protest organizers in a ritual described by a woman with a megaphone as “repentance on behalf of Caucasian people.”
A white foot washer took over the megaphone at one point to say: “It’s our honor to be here on behalf … of all of the white race … repenting for our pride.”
Seriously, the groveling is over the top and does nothing to heal racism in or mend community relations with police. It certainly won’t rebuild those black neighborhoods trashed in Minneapolis.
Identity politics is the disease, not the solution. Dividing people into competing victim groups based on race, gender, sexuality and other superficial characteristics is the opposite of what America needs in order to unify.
If Frey and his ilk stopped obsessing about themselves, they might understand Minneapolis’ unique problems, which revolve around the country’s largest Somali-refugee population, more than half of which lives in poverty and is plagued by gang warfare.
Abolishing the police force and replacing it with flying squads of social workers, as several council members are advocating, would just recreate the anarchy these refugees escaped in the 1990s.
That’s not what the Somali mothers want. They’ve been begging the city not to allow another mall to be built, which, they fear, will just disintegrate into another gang hangout.
Guns and gang warfare in the city of 450,000 make it one of the most dangerous in the country.
In the two weeks since Floyd’s death, 19 people have been shot, only one linked to the protests. That’s business as usual.
Far from too much policing, there has been too little that’s effective, as you can see from crime stories chosen at random from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
Last month, 18-year-old Arionna Buckanaga died in a drive-by shooting.
In March of last year, 17-year-old Abdiwasa Farah was killed when 26 shots were pumped into his car.
In June, Steven Markey, 39, was shot dead by carjackers.
In August, Abdullah Adeed, 40, was shot dead in a home invasion.
In October, Mustafa Ali, 25, was killed in a shootout between rival gangs.
In November, Somali refugee Shirwa Hassan Jibril, 75, was beaten to death after asking a group of men on a bus to quiet down.
Other victims since 2016 include Birdell Beeks, 58, hit by a stray bullet as she sat in her car with her granddaughter, and Le’Vonte King Jason Jones, 2, killed in a van with his father during a drive-by shooting.
Fed-up local businesses have had to pool money for their own security because they’re not being protected by police.
Violence is terrorizing a city that has been under Democratic control for most of the past 50 years. Instead of focusing on keeping residents safe, progressive mayors have attempted to social-engineer police with notions of diversity and “cultural competency.” The result is a demoralized, weak, understaffed police force, with tragic consequences.
A city with such problems needs better policing, not no police. It also deserves a serious person as mayor.
Miranda Devine is a columnist for the New York Post. She is a conservative columnist and writer. Her columns were formerly published d twice weekly in Australian newspapers in Australia. As of early 2020, her columns appear in the New York Post.