More on Feminists’ Response to the Central Park Attacks: Central Park II, Part Four

By Nicholas Stix
June 22, 2000

(This isn’t about the brutal, racist, April 19, 1989 black and Hispanic mob attacks and robberies of whites, and rape of a white woman in Central Park; it’s about the brutal, racist, June 11, 2000 black and Hispanic mob attacks, robberies and rapes of white women in Central Park.)


Central Park II, Part Four

NOW President Patricia Ireland released a statement arguing,

"A woman should not have to plead with local law enforcement to be protected from vicious, gender-based violence. The recent horrendous attacks in New York City's Central Park and the reports of outrageous police indifference must spur political action. Congress must pass the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act to extend hate crimes protection to women and pass the reauthorization and expansion of the Violence Against Women Act.

"The Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act would improve access to federal resources to assist local and state law enforcement officials in better investigating and prosecuting bias-related crimes. It would also extend coverage to gender, sexual orientation and disability, and eliminate the requirement that the victim be engaged in a federally protected activity such as voting. The Violence Against Women Act would fund training for police and other law enforcement and court personnel, among other things.

"Conservative members of Congress are sitting in Washington tossing around rhetoric while everyday women across the country face gender-based violence," Ireland said. "The Central Park attacks have received national attention, but the problem remains."

"Perhaps with enhanced resources and training, police on the scene in Central Park would have been better equipped to respond immediately to allegations of sexual assaults in progress."

So, the answer is to burn the Constitution, and make sexual attacks on women (but NOT sexual attacks on men) federal "hate crimes." Since the Central Park attackers were all black and Hispanic, and blacks and Hispanics are in practice routinely exempted from prosecution under hate crimes statutes, Ireland's demands would have had no effect on the Central Park attackers. (Her incongruous reaction is reminiscent of Vice-President Gore's recent announcement that the shooting of seven youngsters by the son of a gang enforcer in the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., showed the need for mandating trigger locks on all guns.) Indeed, it was the pressure exerted by groups like NOW, in concert with minority politicians, against enforcing existing laws against black and Hispanic lawbreakers, that caused the fear and institutionalized restraint of police in Central Park. Police let the mob "vent," to avoid the sort of racial confrontations that NOW and its feminist allies have always supported. Thus, it is NOW and other feminist organizations who bear a large part of the responsibility for what transpired in Central Park.

The only point I can see in Ireland's proposal is as a source for soft, federal patronage jobs for middle-class women -- "training."

I sought to broach these issues with the folks at NOW. Val Henning, of NOW's press office, told me that, "The only people at NOW allowed to speak for the organization are those elected by the people" -- President Patricia Ireland, and executive vice-presidents Kim Gandy and Karen Johnson. Henning, who was unfailingly polite, then called back, asking "what constituency does Toogood Reports serve?" I answered, "I really wouldn't know," thinking to myself that I had always written for an "audience" of everyone who could read the language I was writing in at the moment, not for a "constituency."

That was the last I heard from NOW.

At NOW's protest last Sunday, its leaders heaped scorn on the NYPD. Of course, the cops did it. They put guns to those young black and Hispanic men's heads, and forced them to attack all those white women. Most feminists have damned the NYPD for its inadequate response to the wilding. But for the last couple of years, whenever black activists damned the NYPD for being too aggressive, New York feminists either dutifully performed their role as black supremacists' amen corner, or at the very least maintained a respectful silence.