This is another followup to the Battle of the Karens.
From the New York Post:
Civic association calls on de Blasio to ban Central Park ‘Karen’ for life
The woman shown in a now-viral video calling the cops on a black man in Central Park after he asked her to keep her dog on a leash should be permanently banned from the green space, a neighborhood activist said Tuesday.
Michael Fischer, president of the Central Park Civic Association, called Amy Cooper’s actions in the widely shared video “a disgusting display of intolerance” that should “never, ever be accepted in the City’s public domain like Central Park.”
“The Central Park Civic Association condemns this behavior and is calling on Mayor [Bill] de Blasio to impose a lifetime ban on this lady for her deliberate, racial misleading of law enforcement and violating behavioral guidelines set so that all can enjoy our city’s most famous park,” Fischer said.
The NYPD is not charging this woman with a crime so a member of the Central Park Civic Association wants the Mayor to declare this woman guilty and punish her for life by banning her from a public place she pays for with her tax dollars.
Bills of attainder are expressly forbidden by the Constitution. The legislature or executive cannot establish guilt and impose punishment independent of the judiciary.
But here we are in 2020. A viral video of a Karen pissing match has led to a call for one of our most sacred protections in the Constitution being thrown away.
I’ve seen what comes next, struggle sessions.
Honestly, this story has me so mad that I am ready to start ventilating people.
I’m not defending what this woman said. What I’m saying is that a few seconds of cellphone video, edited by one party to remove him being a provocative asshole, has cost this woman her job, made her name into a hashtag, has gotten several public officials to condemn her by name, and is getting her harassed ceaselessly online.
How will this woman every find a job ever again? Who will hire her and risk the wrath of the Twitter mob? Her life is over.
Miguel warns about the dangers of lynch mobs. I’d argue that these are worse. A lifetime of unemployment because of a viral video is a death sentence. At the height of lynching, a lynch mob may have been a few dozen to a hundred people. Even the New Orleans lynch mob of 1891 was only a thousand people.
Today’s Twitter lynch mobs number in the millions, and they are from all over the world.
There is no escaping them. You can’t outrun a global group. You can’t change your name and hide when they will track you down with facial recognition and metadata.
I believe that every person who joins an internet lynch mob should be treated like people who join an actual lynch mob. If you destroy a person’s life online, you should face the consequences in the meat space.
Maybe one day I will take my children to see the plaque at the mass grave of Twitter uses who harassed a woman to death over a few seconds of deceptively edited viral video, as a warning not to join the internet dog pile.
Update:
NYC Human Rights Commission Opens Investigation Into Viral Central Park Confrontation
“At a time when the devastating impacts of racism in Black communities have been made so painfully clear—from racial disparities in COVID-19 outcomes, to harassment of essential workers on the frontlines—it is appalling to see these types of ugly threats directed at one New Yorker by another,” said Sapna Raj, deputy commissioner of the Law Enforcement Bureau at the NYC Commission on Human Rights. “Efforts to intimidate black people by threatening to call law enforcement draw on a long, violent and painful history, and they are unacceptable.”
The NYC Commission on Human Rights has the authority to fine people who violate the law and can award damages to victims, including for emotional distress.
COVID affects black people more so this woman has to pay for her outburst.
This woman will suffer for the COVID crisis in NYC more than Cuomo and de Blasio combined.
And what crime did she commit? The NYPD didn’t arrest her. Her threat to call the police was overblown but arguably not a false report given what the man dad trying to bait her dog.
The video drew swift reaction and condemnation from elected officials.
“The video out of Central Park is racism, plain and simple,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Twitter. “She called the police because he was a black man. Even though she was the one breaking the rules, she decided he was the criminal and we know why. This kind of hatred has no place in our city.”
The Mayor of New York City called her a racist and says she has no place in the city.
“This apology is totally inadequate,” posted Mark Levine, whose district covers the Upper West Side, Washington Heights, and West Harlem near the section of Central Park where the encounter took place. “She was attempting to weaponize the race of Mr. Cooper.”
This is a New York City Councilmember.
What act of genocide did this woman commit?
Who did she murder?
Thugs beat the piss out Jews randomly on the streets of NYC for months and nobody said shit.
This was two Karens in a pissing match and politicians are talking like she lead a new Tuskegee experiment.
This is so fucking unbelievable it’s making my head swim.
This woman’s life is over.
I do believe death is still worse. It is kinda permanent
I want to see the life of some of these people years later because I suspect the unemployment and destitution that comes from this is equally permanent.
Calling this a “struggle session” is hitting the nail on the head.
I expressed that opinion on a certain social media page and got this as a response:
Internet NPC: or maybe it forces people to quit being shitty. I get your point of single sided editing, but, there are shitty people on real life. Maybe knowing that consequences like this could exist, people will think twice about being wrong towards each other.
Divemedic: No it won’t, because treating people like that is just as bad. The only thing social media has done is to turn being shitty to each other into a populist endeavor.
NPC: if someone is treating me wrongfully and I whip out my phone to record it, I’m just as bad? So to be clear, I’m just as bad as the person I’m recording if in recording them spouting racial slurs and trying to provoke someone? The people recording the cops killing people are just as bad as those ending one’s life?
IT’S CALLED HOLDING PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS AND REMOVING THE ABILITY FOR THESE THINGS TO HAPPEN BEHIND CLOSED DOORS.
I am not just as bad as the afformentioned people because the consequences for their actions kick in. Lack of accountability is why people act like shit.
This has turned “being shitty” forva few seconds into permanent unemployment or underemployment and poverty.
This has nothing to do with stopping shittyness. This has to do with the “the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.”
The thing about an in-person lynch mob with a noose is, you can shoot a few of the, er, lovechildren. An on-line lynch mob wielding unconstrained social (or, rather, anti-social) pressure? No defense admissible nor possible.
Unless we come up with some MAD scheme whereby anyone participating in such a mob is mobbed in turn, but I suspect that many of the participants have (for one reason or another) no concerns about their own future employability.