Given that I remain a happy resident of a small rural community in Alaska, it's still something of a curiosity that I'm still writing about the state of America's urban areas and Democrat/leftist (but I repeat myself) jurisdictions. If you've been reading my work over the last few years, you know I grew up in a rural community in Iowa and am now a content rural dweller myself. I have little time for cities, despite having lived in them for four decades. I find them unpleasant; crowded, noisy, and, to be honest, they reek of car exhaust. I like the clean country air of the Susitna Valley, and if that means I have to put up with the occasional pause to let a porcupine cross the driveway before walking to the office, that's fine.
So, why am I still worried about America's cities? Because our cities are the beating hearts of our nation. Much of the country's economic activity happens there. Urban areas host much of the country's industry and academia. What's more, our cities used to be the pride of the nation, but that's less the case now. Too many of our nation's cities, large and small, are beset with repeat criminals, and in some cases, those crooks are the people who are supposed to be protecting the people.
Case in point: Los Angeles, California, where radical leftist groups are trying to install radical leftist judges, the goal being to eliminate incarceration.
It's been tried before, by other means.
In 1970, a 17-year-old black militant pulled a gun from beneath his coat at the Marin County Hall of Justice. He took control of Courtroom 3, distributing weapons bought by Angela Davis to three inmates, including one on trial for assaulting a prison guard. They took the judge, prosecutor, and three jurors hostage. An hour later, the judge and three of the perpetrators were dead.
The vigilantes failed to break the legal system. But today, a new crop of radicals in California is pursuing that goal by other means. These activists hope to infiltrate the judiciary and use the levers of power to upend American justice.
Never let it be said that the far-left is completely incapable of learning. Now they are co-opting the system, instead of trying to overthrow it. One group in the LA area is called "La Defensa," one of their goals is to eliminate incarceration — yes, really — and they are backing judges who may just help them with that. Their membership reads like a laundry list of loony-left causes.
Los Angeles County is the seat of the revolution. Across two recent election cycles, hard-left activists spent nearly $1 million on a slate of judicial candidates, electing three judges committed to remaking the county’s criminal-justice system. For the ideologues behind the campaign, this is the opening move in what they hope will be a national takeover of the judiciary.
One architect of the takeover is La Defensa, a “femme-led” advocacy organization whose founders want to end incarceration in Los Angeles County. The group says that it “belong[s] to” several “communities,” namely “Chicanx, queer, immigrant, undocumented, working class people with incarcerated loved ones.”
So, yes, wackadoodle. But that doesn't mean we can't take them seriously. Remember, this is the city that elected the incompetent Karen Bass as mayor, and which seems poised to re-elect her. Too many of the rationale, reasonable people have fled the City of Angels, which seems now to be becoming the City of Lunatics; and those lunatics are in charge of the asylum.
Here's the onion:
La Defensa was founded in 2020 by current L.A. council member Eunisses Hernandez and Ivette Alé-Ferlito, both of whom want to abolish prisons.
“Electing progressive judges serves as a harm-reduction measure that disrupts power, it can only be effective as part of a broader abolitionist strategy,” Alé-Ferlito wrote in 2023. “It will take collective action to end incarceration in all its forms.”
Now, only a leftist could be so disconnected from reality as to call abolishing prisons a "harm-reduction measure." Think on that for a moment. These people want to abolish prisons. They say so. We should believe them. And there is no world so bat-guano crazy in which this would be anything but a disaster. What do they propose we do with murderers, rapists, armed robbers? Fine them? Make them an appointment with a social worker and let them back out on the streets? What effect, do you suppose, will this have on already-rising crime rates? What massive influxes of hardened, violent criminals will flood to LA, knowing that their risks are low?
Before we dismiss La Defensa as a bunch of cranks, we should take note that they may be a bunch of cranks, but they are a well-funded bunch of cranks.
The group is becoming a powerhouse. Its political arm, Justice PAC, has received high-dollar donations from Liz Simons, heiress to Renaissance Technology founder Jim Simons’s fortune, and Patty Quillin, the wife of Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings. La Defensa is linked to the Soros-funded Tides Advocacy network.
And they aren't buying luxury real estate with that funding, either, unlike some activist groups I could name.
La Defensa’s PAC spent at least $910,000 on judicial candidates from 2022 through 2024. Their donations helped elect three former public defenders: George Turner Jr., Ericka Wiley, and Holly Hancock. The new judges’ backgrounds and ideologies open a window onto La Defensa’s vision for the future of L.A. County’s justice system and beyond.
That's the goal of La Defensa and other such groups. And, if you think this is an issue limited to Los Angeles, think again; abolition of prisons is a key platform plank of the Democratic Socialists of America, who day by day are gaining an ever-louder voice in the Democrat Party.
This is a serious issue. In Los Angeles, which is increasingly being abandoned to the far left, La Defensa has already realized some success. If they can win any ground here, who's to say that they can't do so elsewhere, in places like, say, Portland, Oregon, which would appear to be fertile ground for just this kind of lunacy?
There's a very real threat here. And, given the current political situation in too many of our major cities, it won't be easy to fix. And if endangered Los Angelenos appeal to their impeccably coiffed governor for help, they're unlikely to find much assistance there.
Much in the once-Golden State depends on who wins the gubernatorial election. Cross your fingers, and if you're in California, vote.
