Some worry that New York City’s crackdown on unsafe cyclists leaves them facing greater consequences than drivers, even though cars cause more fatalities.

Some worry that New York City’s crackdown on unsafe cyclists leaves them facing greater consequences than drivers, even though cars cause more fatalities.

  • DrunkEngineer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    59·
    3 days ago

    Commenters here are missing the reason police are issuing court summons:

    Some advocates for delivery workers say that the increased scrutiny of cyclists weighs especially heavily on an already vulnerable group. Many people who ride electric bikes in New York are undocumented migrants working for restaurants and food delivery apps, said Ligia Guallpa, the executive director of Los Deliveristas Unidos, which represents delivery workers. The crackdown on electric bikes and scooters comes in the midst of the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement of immigration law.

    Sal Cohen is among the immigrants who received a pink court summons connected to the increased enforcement effort. Originally from Turkey, and in the United States on a conditional green card, Mr. Cohen had not heard about the push when he rolled through a red light at the intersection of Grand Street and Union Avenue in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood on his way home from the gym this month.

    A squad car pulled up alongside him and he was issued a summons.

    A week and a half later, Mr. Cohen, 28, stood in line outside Courtroom No. 3, on the 16th floor of the municipal building, worried that ICE agents might appear.

    “I’m here legally, but you never know,” he said. “I’m nervous.”

      • Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
        16·
        2 days ago

        Everyone should read the words of one of Nixon’s top aides regarding why they started the war on drugs:

        “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper’s writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.

        “You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

        Source

        And yet the wikipedia entry for the war on drugs starts like this:

        The war on drugs is a global anti-narcotics campaign led by the United States federal government, including drug prohibition, foreign assistance, military intervention, and counterterrorism, with the aim of reducing the illegal drug trade in the US.

        Emphasis added. I would say that is flat out false. It may be the openly stated aim, but it is not the true aim, and they’ve admitted it. Just another reminder that these fascists know exactly what the fuck they’re doing and that wikipedia is subject to propaganda influences.