Jonathan Hoffman: Will Tucson be the Minneapolis of the Sun Belt?

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

I was reading an article in The College Fix by a student named Grace Bureau of Gustavus Adolphus College. She is a lifetime resident of Minneapolis, but has decided to leave. “I no longer recognize Minneapolis. I no longer want to live here,” she said.

Minneapolis is similar to Tucson in a number of ways. For example, according to bestplaces.net, Tucson’s median income is $37,249, its median age is 33.4, the median home price is $185,800 and it sports a population of 530,905.

Minneapolis’ median income is $50,767, with a median age of 32.1, home price $270,800 and it has a population of 411,452. Well, I’ll concede that Minneapolis is somewhat more prosperous, but we are in the same ballpark.

More significantly, the Minneapolis City Council consists of 12 members of the Democratic Farmers Labor Party and one member of the Green Party. Tucson’s City Council consists of six Democrats. Both cities have Democratic mayors. The citizenry of both cities is predominantly Democratic, with significant Republican minorities.

Minneapolis is now enduring the aftermath of the trial of Officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd for which Chauvin was found guilty on all three counts.

George Floyd died on May 25, 2020. An eerily similar case occurred in Tucson. On April 21, 2020, Tucsonan Carlos Adrian Ingram-Lopez died in police custody.

The death of Ingram-Lopez inspired protests at the downtown police headquarters, and a march and vigil of hundreds of people honoring his life and mourning his death. There was no rioting or looting.

Ironically, the only vandalism that occurred in Tucson was the smashing of windows downtown around the end of May, 2020, the peak of the nationwide George Floyd riots.

With all the similarities between the two cities, Tucson remains clam while Minneapolis has gone crazy.

Grace Bureau described Minneapolis today:

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“Ten minutes from my house . . . there is still an autonomous zone. Police are not allowed to enter. Residents have died because medical authorities couldn’t get through, and carjackers (of which there are MANY) will speed into the zone to escape officer pursuit.”

“My church — my beloved, tiny, Lutheran church — organized social justice marches for our congregation while refusing to reinstate in-person services (they’re still virtual, by the way).”

“My favorite dinner theater canceled its production of Cinderella because it was ‘too white.’ “

“The ACE Hardware down the street? The one that I used to bike to in the summer? Robbed twice in the past five days.”

“The Walgreens next to my elementary school? Molotov cocktail thrown into it.”

These are the things you don’t read about in the news.

Do I think that Tucson will go down this same path? I think it depends on what we choose.

Christopher F. Rufo, a graduate of Georgetown University and a former Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, pointed out the following:

“Marxist scholars in the West simply adapted their revolutionary theory to the social and racial unrest of the 1960s. Abandoning Marx’s economic dialectic of capitalists and workers, they substituted race for class and sought to create a revolutionary coalition of the dispossessed based on racial and ethnic categories.”

The Marxists of the 1960s failed to hijack the Civil Rights Movement, which succeeded dramatically in ending Jim Crow laws — an example of systemic racism — and denying racism acceptability in the culture.

There are those who wish to destroy our country and replace it. There are also those who sustain our country and continue to make it better. Therein lies our choice.