New York’s Global Citizen Festival — a glitzy concert to raise money for the poor worldwide — has morphed into a messy, destructive affair that did $620,000 in damage last year to Central Park’s jewel, the Great Lawn.
Set aside the glaring hypocrisy of a global charity trashing a green space, year after year: Why won’t the city stand up for itself?
City Councilwoman Gale Brewer has had enough; she wants the disorderly spectacle moved from the Great Lawn to another location. State Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal agrees.
Good.
The park is the city’s backyard and should be kept in prime condition, and there’s no reason to let some star-studded orgy of self-congratulation keep on tearing up the turf.
But where is this tender concern when it comes to a vastly bigger park problem — namely the fact that crime is skyrocketing there?
The park’s seen a 222% — yes, you read that right — increase in robberies over the same period in 2023, NYPD data shows.
Felony assaults have doubled.
Yet in a recent City Council meeting Brewer suggested that as a solution the city give the young illegal immigrants playing a huge role in the the crime spike “something to do . . . between now and when school starts.”
There’s some casual racism here: Brewer clearly assumes that migrants revert to criminality the second they aren’t distracted enough.
But more broadly, what on earth is she even talking about?
Indeed, judged by the lights of that ideology, why is messing up a Central Park lawn bad enough to demand any action at all?
The left expects New Yorkers to tolerate all kinds of social decay.
Like random lunatics roaming the subway and assaulting and murdering straphangers as part of the cost of living in the city.
Gothamites are told, over and over, that crime is not a problem and that policing it is white supremacy.
They are vilified as racists for daring to suggest too many illegal immigrants have arrived here, and to object to their tax dollars being spent on their food and shelter.
But a bunch of concertgoers ruining a lawn in Central Park?
That’s a bridge too far! Time to restore public order!
The selectivity liberal Dems show in picking and choosing what public chaos to really get their dander up over about really does speak volumes.