Opinion: Want To Stop Violence? Address Poverty First – New Haven Independent

by Dave John Cruz-Bustamante | Mar 30, 2021 11:29am

(24) Comments | Post a Comment | E-mail the Author

Posted to: Legal Writes, Opinion

(Opinion) As bodies continue to drop on the streets of New Haven, Connecticut as a result of gun violence, residents, community advocates, the police department, and local politicians scramble desperately to find a short-term band aid to apply to a heavily bleeding wound in the community.

A quick solution to give to neighborhoods heavy with grief, sorrow, and fear: more police and stricter prison punishments.

While police charts on homicide rates and gun violence continue to draw the fretful attention of the media and residents, our system of local politics overlooks the deep-seated roots of crime: poverty.

Increasing the amount of police officers will not decrease crime. It merely increases the amount of noise from the sirens after the fact.

True safety is silent; safety is not derived from armed reactionaries, it is derived from functioning infrastructure, accessible healthcare, stable and healthy climate, funded schools, rehabilitative social services, and interconnected communities.

We can observe this in American suburbs. Rarely do you hear the deafening sirens of police vehicles in the quiet, calm streets of the outskirts of the city.

This true and silent safety observed in the suburbs is not a coincidence. The United States has a long, dark history of denying funding to core governmental services and institutions on the basis of race and class, that continues to this day. The U.S. also has a long history of fighting against radical abolition: abolition of slavery, redlining, segregation, and instead implementing inadequate reforms, mass-producing and distributing nationalistic, feel-good propaganda that waters down its horrors, or outright not addressing misdeeds.

Money is power. Cutting a community off from funding, critical services, and necessities is like cutting the jugular vein of a body: they die. The rumbling stomach of the child, the frail body of the unsheltered, and the unheard cries of the addict breed violence. State violence as a response to need will not silence their rumblings, cries, and pleas. It merely moves them out of the way, out of sight, out of mind, to be heard, instead by the prison inmate or by the graveyard.

The police are used for perpetuating the systems of colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and white supremacy in our society. They were used for capturing enslaved people, union-busting during the Industrial Revolution, enforcing segregation during Jim Crow, brutalizing and intimidating queer and trans people, hosing down Civil Rights activists (some of whom are still alive), playing star actors in the theater that is the War on Drugs, and profiling and imprisoning people of color and the underclass who are surviving on the bare minimum.

How do we expect a group of supposed public servants to protect us, when they have a criminal history that is as long as American history? What is life if one is constantly surveilled? What does it say about our society if one is constantly spat on and looked down upon, with no hope of escape, help, or redemption promised by the nation that we are told are supposed to serve us, when we recite the Pledge of Allegiance?

In the short term, what the oppressed neighborhoods of New Haven need is money with deliberate spending into new preventative services, affordable and quality housing, effective and open education and schools, and youth programs.

Let us end the obsession with wanting to know an individuals reasons for committing crime and the respectability politics when it comes to human lives.

The bottom line is that a) poverty causes violence of all kinds, and b) we can end it.

This message is directed towards the establishment: Mayor Elicker, Governor Lamont, President Biden, Democrats and Republicans, Alderpeople and the Congress.

In the long term, we need the demands for the abolition of police, prisons, and the abolition of the system that forces one to choose between wage slavery and death; inequality and oppression for one for the profits and luxury of others, to triumph.

True equality is not found in becoming the oppressor, but in liberating and humanizing all, and abolishing the hierarchy that creates the oppressor and the oppressed, true meaning is not found in the weekly paycheck, but in community, and true safety is not only found in the silence of the gun, but in the absence of the sirens.

This message can only be rung true and carried out in the eyes, ears, and hands of the worker, the organizer, the oppressed, and The People.

Dave John Cruz-Bustamante is a freshman at Wilbur Cross High School, a coordinator and community organizer at Sunrise Movement New Haven, and the operations apprentice at Citywide Youth Coalition.

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Its time for New Haven to step up and like Oakland, CA give everyone at the poverty level $2,500 a month until they reach the $50,000 a year threshold. Tax the wealthy of New Haven to make this happen. Raise the mill rate by 35 points. Make the police drive to crime scenes with their sirens off. Extend the school day by three hours and hire the necessary support staff. Build community centers is all the neighborhoods of New Haven. Legalize drugs and subsidize them. Take all cars off the roads of New Haven, and give a bicycle to all residents. Free healthcare for everyone. Then if youre not happy, youll be banished to the suburbs where no one will give you anything, thats the way its been forever.

Its hard to dispute (though some commenters will try) the proposal that the best and most lasting treatment for violent crime is some combination of lifting people out of poverty / reducing inequality, limiting easy access to guns, and reuniting families. (I include reuniting families because clearly locking people up at lower rates has had a beneficial effector, for the skeptics out there, no discernible effecton youth arrests and violent crime.)

That said, you should provide some good evidence to accompany a statement like, Increasing the amount of police officers will not decrease crime. The data shows otherwise.

P.S. OhHum: Watch out, youre straying into #accidentallyleftwing territory with your proposals to legalize drugs and give everyone free healthcare! Which you clearly view as satirical but which several other countries have done very successfully. (You may have heard of a little place called the Netherlands?) Of course Im sure you have some kind of reverse-American-exceptionalist/defeatist reasoning for why that just wouldnt work in this country, and I wont make you repeat it because Im sure Ive heard it before.

Omg is this what we are teaching these kids in school! Poverty does not make people criminal unless they were already predisposed to it. I suggest you study some real history like Cambodias Pol Pot, Chinas Mao and the Soviet Unions Stalin to get a glimpse of what is real oppression.

tell me, where does personal responsibility for your own destiny and those you may bring into the world with your partner come into play here? just another progressive manifesto from a young person brainwashed with this garbage.

@ethanjrtIm very serious about what I wrote above. I would like New Haven to try all the things I mentioned and more. I think New Haven should give the experiment a 2 to 3 three year chance to work. Hell, Im not by any means rich, but Id be happy to give my share to the City to do it. Truth be told I guess that Id benefit from it.

So at an estimate of 50 k families in New Haven at 2500.00 per month we need 15 million per year. How many rich people live in New Haven ( FYI the median income is 24,400.) The numbers clearly work

There was a time, in the not too distant past when the formula for getting out of poverty, or at least out of the lower class, was hard work. By hard work, I mean one or two-stepping stone jobs, save a little money, learn some skills and put yourself in a position for the next job up the ladder. Sometimes, maybe more often than I care to remember, the ladder was very tall and took a long time to reach the next rung. Success was a little bit of luck and a whole lot of planning and self-motivation, but available to any and all who could keep their eyes on whatever prize they considered a success. I firmly believe that poverty is a way of life that doesnt have to be permanent or fatal or imposed. Sometimes the next step is all you can reach for yourself in spite of trying really hard. So then, you are laying the groundwork for your children, so they can have a better life. It takes only one to instill in a family or an individual the idea that in America, anything is possible. America may not be color-blind, but as corny as it sounds, in America, anything is possible. Long-term handouts, money received but not earned, demonizing entire institutions and entire groups like the police because of a few bad actors is wrong-headed, naive, and dangerous. Mr. Cruz-Busamante sounds like an intelligent young man who seems ready to make something of himself. He also sounds wrong-headed and naive. He seems unaware of the old axiom, Do it the old-fashioned way, earn it.

Im very serious about what I wrote above. I would like New Haven to try all the things I mentioned and more. I think New Haven should give the experiment a 2 to 3 three year chance to work. Hell, Im not by any means rich, but Id be happy to give my share to the City to do it. Truth be told I guess that Id benefit from it.

There is no law preventing you from paying more in taxes. There is no law preventing you from just picking a family and send them money monthly. Let us know how it works out in two or three years.

As the idiom goes. put your money where your mouth is.

Peace

owen@large wrote:

Do it the old-fashioned way, earn it

Im not saying this is definitely you, but I tend to see this sentiment coming from people who havent internalized some pertinent realities:- In the past 20 years, the cost of the median home has increased about 25% relative to median income.- In the past 30 years, the real cost of higher education, adjusted for inflation, has more than doubled.- In the past 50 years, the average person has received almost none of the benefits of technological improvements (increased productivity), the wage-to-GDP ratio has plummeted about 20%, and economic growth has accrued almost exclusively to the very wealthy (see Chart 4).

@ethanjrt: Hey, thanks for your post. Listen My grandparents came to America, with no money, no English, no welfare, no gov handouts, but they but worked their asses off, very long days and with very little pay. Their dream of success wasnt for them, but for their children, These children made their way by becoming simple lower-middle-class citizens, becoming nurses, teachers, and plumbers. They were able to save a bit and send me and my bro to college. All through school we worked part-time jobs, as did most of my friends. Many of my friends (of several different colors and backgrounds), some of who were even poorer than my family, were able to find their own successes. I wasnt able to buy my own house until I was forty-three, and a small house it was. But, and this is very important - you dont have to buy a house to consider yourself successful. You dont necessarily have to go to Uni to make the grade. You just have to decide what you need to live comfortably, independently, and be thankful for a country that really does allow you to be whatever it is you want to be.

Im sorry, but Im not a believer in these unproven left wing theories that poverty creates criminals. P.J.Barnums statement that one is born every minute is much closer to the truth. That said, the way to reduce violent crime is to have, and enforce, a strict Three Counts and Youre Out Law. That way the innocent are protected from the guilty. By all accounts, New Havens present crime wave is due to the temporary release of the incarcerated so they dont catch Covid.

Whalley wrote:

By all accounts, New Havens present crime wave is due to the temporary release of the incarcerated so they dont catch Covid.

By whose accounts, exactly?

Have you tried charting 2016-20 urban crime rates by state against prison release metrics? No?

If youre not a believer in unproven theories, maybe dont offer them so freely

Thank you Bohica and Whalley!!!!! Poverty doesnt create criminals!!!!!

Dear Whalley- the issue is violence; poverty may correlate in some cases of violence but it is not a sure cause. There are endless stories of middle and upper and celebrities who are violent with their spouses and children and others. I think this proves my point.

Dear ethanjrt- there will never be a study to show the connection between released felons and our crime wave of 2020-2021 but it would be interesting to look into it.

@ pass the blame

As I said Im willing to do my share. But if WEre going to do this, everyone who grosses more than $50,000 a year is going to have to feel the pain. When we begin to share the wealth it necessitates sharing the pain also. Dig in brothers and sisters, we can only do this together. Those days of $3.75 artichokes, $8.00 craft beer, $3.50 lattes, and $2.50 croissants are over. Its back to Maxwell House and Budweiser.

I completely left out the temporary visitors at Yale. Well have to put a 5% luxury tax on tuition paid to the University. If they happen to be on a scholarship, etc. theyll pay on 5% on its worth.

Dear OhHum I disagree with your part 1. It is not for me to be punished because others were not fiscally responsibleeither in govt or in personal lives. Why should I share my little wealth because you didnt do the smart choosing in your life?

As to the expensive items you mention- I never did that and thats why I am OK in spite of having low paying jobs for most of my working life. Others might have learned that lesson earlier instead of trying to punish me for learning it in time. That is unjust! And it is mere class envy of the worst kind/

As I said Im willing to do my share. But if WEre going to do this, everyone who grosses more than $50,000 a year is going to have to feel the pain. When we begin to share the wealth it necessitates sharing the pain also. Dig in brothers and sisters, we can only do this together. Those days of $3.75 artichokes, $8.00 craft beer, $3.50 lattes, and $2.50 croissants are over. Its back to Maxwell House and Budweiser.

If you feel so strongly about your idea why not do YOUR share right now! You can run the pilot study with YOUR money for 2-3 years and let us know how it works out.

As the saying goes: put YOUR money where YOUR mouth is. Socialism is great until you run out of other peoples money.

peace out

CityYankee wrote:

there will never be a study to show the connection between released felons and our crime wave of 2020-2021 but it would be interesting to look into it.

Well then boy do I have some news that will surprise and delight you:

The rate at which those released from detention are rebooked into jail following release is one possible measure of the public safety risk of jail releases. To date, 30-, 60-, 90-, and 180-day rebooking rates among those released during the pandemic have remained 13% - 33% below pre-pandemic rebooking rates. To the extent that rebooking rates measure the average public safety risk of releasing individuals from jail, this risk remains lower now than prior to the pandemic.

This is preliminary and indirect data, of course. There will be plenty more studies but it will likely take 1-2 more years for really good data to become available. The one major area of research thats explicitly punished in the U.S. is gun violence, though that may be changingTBD. Other crime & prison policy is still fair game AFAIK.

Dear Pass the Blame- I think the more modern saying today is, Put MY MONEY where YOUR MOUTH is. Everyone is so generous with other peoples money; arent they?

Most of us have lived very frugally and worked very hard now ; they want to punish us for that. People will leave the state before they let that happen, if pushed hard enough. It wont be easy but we may not have much choice

It is not for me to be punished because others were not fiscally responsibleeither in govt or in personal lives. Why should I share my little wealth because you didnt do the smart choosing in your life?

@ CityYankee, this assumes that everyone currently experiencing poverty is there entirely through direct faults of their own, and as the author says, we know this to be untrue. Data can clearly show us that numerous historical events, such as excluding agricultural and domestic workers in the first minimum wage laws in the 1930s, redlining in the 1950s, and the War on Drugs in the 1990s made it so that only some of us were even able to do the smart choosing you allude to. Those who did not have the choice to become a homeowner, or go to college, or save for retirement so that they could alleviate the need for their children to care for them in old age, those people became trapped in a cycle of poverty where they were not able to make the steps up the ladder that we think of as living the American dream.

Became trapped: meaning it happened to them. They did not cause it.

Hey thank you, ethanjrt. Glad to hear there is some data. lets calculate how many rearrests there would have been had the police not had their hands tied

CityYankee, none of the data in the link I shared covers the period since CTs new police accountability law was partially implemented, so that would be a moot point. (Plus, the most sweeping provisions, on use of force, have been delayed to next year.) I cant speak to new laws in other states specifically, but I am fairly confident that the vast majority of states did not implement significant new police accountability measures during the period covered by this data.

Theres clearly a bit of a fixation on police accountability legislation in your mind (and the minds of some other NHI commenters), even when it cant possibly have any relevance to the period thats being discussed because there was no overlap between the two. But repeatedly crime on police accountability laws doesnt make your argument strongerit just makes you wrong more often.

When the economy was good pre pandemic New Haven had some of the lowest crime rates in decades. Then the pandemic hit, the economy tanked with massive job losses for many lower wage workers, and the world broke out in social unrest, prisoners were released with little prospects for supporting themselves, schools went remote, many parks and playgrounds were closed, people were stuck inside with each other for months while trying to survive, anxiety and depression rates rose, and substance abuse rates rose up. It has been a perfect storm of poverty and lack of constructive things to do. Historically when the economy tanks, and prohibition reigns, and jobs are lost, and pandemics hit, crime goes up. When the economy bounces back, and jobs become plentiful, and prohibition ends, and the formerly incarcerated get employed, and pandemics end, then crime goes down.

Here is the original post:

Opinion: Want To Stop Violence? Address Poverty First - New Haven Independent