A socialist lawmaker in New York City has claimed “biological need” gives shoplifters the right to steal from store shelves.
State Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, who describes herself as a “neighborhood organizer” and “democratic socialist,” made her comments on Thursday outside Manhattan Criminal Court, the New York Post reported Saturday.
She was joined by members of Court Watch NYC, which claimed they monitored hundreds of arraignments for several days and found half of those cases were misdemeanors.
Gallagher said:
Most of what we saw were crimes of poverty-people who are stealing things like toothpaste, people who were stealing things like, you know, soap. And that means if you’re stealing those things, you need them. And we are choosing to protect billion-dollar companies, like CVS and Walgreens, over the people who are struggling to get by. So I would say that the true crime is that there is such incredible wealth disparity in this city that there are people who can be thrown in jail simply for having a biological need.
Gallagher said she is fighting to “pass things like treatment not jail and that we hold the line on the incredible criminal justice reforms that we have done over the last 10 and 20 years that are constantly being threatened by right-wing media who are looking to fear monger about people who are actually just in absolute dire straits.”
Social media users were quick to push back on Gallagher’s comments, with one person writing, “The entire foundation for a civilized society rests on private property, ownership, and not stealing. If you legalized stealing, society would literally crumble overnight. Stealing should face SEVERE punishment.”
WATCH:
“You know what else separates people from their jobs? Rampant shoplifting. Our nearest pharmacy closed due to unchecked shoplifting. All of those employees lost their jobs. Now all the elderly people in my neighborhood have lost their closest pharmacy. Last year I witnessed a guy clear out every toothbrush and every tube of toothpaste at my local CVS. He wasn’t doing that for his oral health. He was doing it to resell,” another user commented.
Meanwhile, Reps. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) and Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) are warning that socialist ideas are gaining traction among young people across America, their comments coming as the November midterms approach, Breitbart News reported Friday:
Malliotakis argued that socialist systems begin by gradually expanding government power through measures such as price controls and restrictions on individual freedoms.
“It is sort of the baby steps where they begin to implement changes. They begin to take away freedoms. They begin to ration things, to implement price controls that are very destructive to the economy,” she said.
…
Tenney described her own experiences in Yugoslavia, saying she saw dramatic changes from her time there in the 1980s to what she has seen since. She recalled experiencing shortages while living there.
“There wasn’t anything on the shelves,” Tenney said. “I mean, you had to wait in line for bread, and everybody just figured that was part of it.”
Breitbart News reported this week that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has been moving toward taking over the Democratic Party.
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