Major Retailers Leaving So-Called "Progressive" Cities

Businesses are closing because of crime in Democrat-run cities, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) noted Wednesday, pointing to three examples.

“New York City. Portland. San Francisco. All seeing businesses close down because of crime. All run by Democrats,” Jordan tweeted, linking to news of how, and why, a major retailer closed a San Francisco outlet this week.

Policies have consequences. So do elections.

Be informed, not misled.

Rep. Jim Jordan tweeted:

"New York City. Portland. San Francisco. 

All seeing businesses close down because of crime. 

All run by Democrats."

New York City. Portland. San Francisco.

All seeing businesses close down because of crime.

All run by Democrats.

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) April 12, 2023

NBC News reported this week that a flagship Whole Foods Market location in San Francisco has been closed until the store can ensure its employees' safety. 

Some say it will never open again.

And, they’re not alone. Other retailers in the city are also closing due to rising crime. For example, despite increased security, theft at Walmart and Walgreens stores in San Francisco has skyrocketed, forcing store closures.

“If New York City is the ‘safest big city in America,’ then why are so many people leaving?” Rep. Jordan asked in a follow-up tweet on Thursday.

There were 100 people murdered in New York City in the first 99 days of 2023, according to data published by the New York Police Department. During that same period, there were 408 crime complaints for alleged rapes, 4,102 for alleged robberies, and 6,742 for alleged felony assaults.

Indeed, as Rep. Jordan claimed, Americans are fleeing Democrat-run cities. And states.

Every one of the 10 cities anchoring a metropolitan area with the most homebuyers looking to relocate rather than enter, has a leftist mayor, results of a migration study conducted by Redfin.com reveals.

Two of the cities cited by Jordan, San Francisco and New York City, are number one and number three, respectively, among cities with the highest net outflow of homebuyers. According to the study, Los Angeles, California, has the second-highest net outflow.

San Francisco is run by Democrat Mayor London Breed, while Democrat Eric Adams is the mayor of New York City.

KPTV 12 in Portland reported, "Walmart’s departure from Portland shines a light on rampant property crime."

It’s a problem that’s not secret to many business owners around the Eastport Plaza in Southeast Portland.

FOX 12 spoke to multiple local business owners and they all point to crime as the main reason many are leaving Southeast 82nd Avenue, including Walmart. Though a spokesperson for Walmart told FOX 12 last week there is no single reason for a decision to close a store, other business owners said they’re dealing with similar problems as Walmart: vandalism and shoplifting. Darrel Hanson has owned his muffler shop on Southeast 82nd Avenue for nearly four decades. He said he’s watched the surrounding neighborhood decline in recent years.

“The whole 82nd area has changed in the last 20 years, especially in the last 10 years,” Hanson said. “Each year it keeps going down and down and down. More crime, garbage, homeless people, drugs and nobody wants to help.”

He wasn't shocked when he heard Walmart pulling out of his neighborhood a few blocks away.

“It hurts this community when they leave,” Hanson said. “A lot of people depend on that store.”

He blames the out-of-control crime in the area for Walmart’s exit. He said he’s watched fellow small businesses close and friends leave Southeast 82nd Avenue.

“I have a lot of friends, a lot of friends I deal with before said, ‘I’m leaving Portland.’ Well, they left,” Hanson said. “That’s like Walmart, they left.”

KPTV 12 said this: 

The Eastport Plaza sits in the Lents Neighborhood in Southeast Portland. According to Portland Police crime data, between Jan. 2022 and 2023, there were 147 burglaries, 634 personal property thefts, 424 car thefts, 53 robberies, and three stolen property offenses. This is just what’s reported to the police. Hanson said some fellow business owners don’t even call when something happens to their property.

An example can be seen on the north side of the Eastport Plaza. The U.S. Post Office has every window covered with plywood to hide broken windows. Those who use the post office told FOX 12 it’s been like that for weeks.  Hanson said the vandalism at the post office is just one case after months of ongoing property crime.

“We’re basically going through hell and we’re going through really sad times,” Hanson said. “We have no support, no backup.”

Hanson said he’s hoping something changes in the neighborhood surrounding his business; that hope in the local business community is running out.

Secular so-called progressive ideas always lead to hopelessness. 

Myron Magnet wrote a piece a while back for City Journal suggesting we stop using the word "progressive" to define the Left.

Political Leftists call themselves “progressives” as a form of self-praise, an assertion that their politics represent a higher consciousness than the prejudices of the mob of unthinking deplorables and will lead mankind to a sunny upland where human nature will transcend its baser impulses, and peace and harmony will reign. Conservatives should not indulge them in this self-deception. We should stop using “progressive” as a synonym for the noun “Lefty” or the adjective “left-wing.”

Magnet says the label "progressive" springs from the thought of philosopher Hegel whose writings greatly influenced Woodrow Wilson.

For Hegel, history moves from lower stages of human consciousness to higher, until finally, it will purportedly reach its goal, man’s full realization of human freedom, both in the sense of understanding it and achieving it. History has a forward trajectory, an arc, whose shape and direction our first professor-president believed he could discern more clearly than the non-Ivy League masses. Hence his impatience with the Founding Fathers’ ideal of self-government. How could the half-educated masses understand justice as well as the highly educated judges and skilled administrators he believed should run the nation’s affairs? How foolish of the Constitution’s framers, he thought, to believe that the people themselves could know what was good for them!

He concludes: 

Progressive? Hardly. I’ll leave it to you to think up the proper label for mobs who threaten to break into conservative pundits’ homes or hound Trump administration officials out of restaurants, for “activists” who verbally abuse a Fox News host or a reader of the New Criterion on the subway. For now, I’ll stick with “Lefty.”

So-called "progressivism" is a religion without a savior or any means of redemption.

Its tenants are reminders of past sins with no possibility of forgiveness or restoration.

Judeo-Christian values and principles are the bedrock upon which this country was founded. The leftist, cultural Marxist ideologies that have infiltrated our country have created a cloud of hopelessness, anxiety, and despair---and have created an enemy within that is to be feared far more than the enemy outside the gates.

Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Faithful. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.