It’s hard to think of a recent political movement that has posed a greater threat to black lives than the campaign to defund police forces. Perhaps that’s why the movement’s most famous champion suddenly seems less marketable. As violence has surged in cities that sought to rein in police forces, even celebrities and Wall Street financial houses have been passing on the latest deal from Colin Kaepernick.
Mr. Kaepernick has a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) called Mission Advancement Corp. , which went public in March, raised $345 million and went hunting for a private company to buy. But the Journal’s Liz Hoffman
and Andrew Beaton report that the SPAC’s deal to buy lender Change Co. has collapsed. The Journal reporters note:
When SPACs make an acquisition, they typically also raise new money
from private investors, which validates the transaction and gives the company cash to fund its growth.
But it seems there wasn’t a lot of new money to be found for Mr. Kaepernick’s
latest venture. Some celebrities agreed to make small commitments. The Journal reporters note:
But big names on Wall Street, including BlackRock Inc., Fidelity
Investments and T. Rowe Price Group Inc., which are among the most
active SPAC investors, said no, according to the people familiar with
the matter and documents reviewed by the Journal. The three declined to comment.
Serena Williams’s venture fund passed, according to those documents.
So did Oprah Winfrey’s money manager. Nike and venture firm Andreesen Horowitz, whose co-founder is listed on Mission’s website as an adviser, also looked at the deal and didn’t commit, the documents say...
“There is a real question about whether there is [a] halo effect that translates into investor dollars,” [Change Co. founder Steven Sugarman] wrote in an email this month to Mission executives. “We need to question that assumption.”
Perhaps because the fundraising was disappointing, the Change Co. was especially eager for Mr. Kaepernick to help promote the company on television, but it appears that he was a disappointment in that department, too. According to the Journal report:
Mr. Kaepernick balked at requests from Change Co. executives that he
sit for an appearance with George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America” and declined to participate in interviews as part of the
rollout, according to an internal document.
This makes sense. Who would want to do live television interviews after helping to launch such a destructive movement? Mr. Kaepernick began his protests in 2016 while a member of the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League. In August of that year, Mr. Kaepermick told the NFL: “I am
not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color... There are bodies in the street and people
getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
Mr. Kaepernick became perhaps the country’s most prominent advocate for abolishing police forces. Tragically, politicians who then sought to reduce policing have presided over historic levels of bodies in the street.
In San Francisco where Mr. Kaepernick’s movement became famous and where homicides have been on the rise, even radical politicians are now trying to combat the lawlessness they once enabled. On Friday Wilson Walker of the city’s KPIX-TV reported:
After hours of debate, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted overwhelmingly early Friday to approve Mayor London Breed’s proposed
state of emergency for the city’s crime and drug-ridden Tenderloin District.
The most contentious facet of the plan was a dramatic increase in the
number of police officers patrolling the neighborhood, but when the
final vote took place eight of 10 supervisors present were in favor of
the plan.
Janie Har of the Associated Press added:
Advocates for the homeless and substance users urged supervisors to
reject the emergency order because Mayor London Breed has also pledged
to flood the district with police to halt crime... The order itself
does not call for increased police and police Chief Bill Scott assured supervisors that officers have no intention of locking up people just because they are addicted to drugs. Still, he said police can’t simply ignore what’s happening in a neighborhood where children are scared to
go outside and people are injecting poisonous drugs.
“We’re out there to help,” Scott said. “We’re not out there to turn a
blind eye to people killing themselves on the street.”
In announcing the emergency declaration last week, the mayor said it
was time to be “less tolerant of all the bull— that has destroyed our city.” On social media this week, she said people openly using drugs
will be given treatment and other service options.
“But if they refuse, we’re not going to allow them to continue using on the street,” she said on social media this week. “The families in the neighborhood deserve better.”
They sure do. Speaking of San Francisco lawlessness and KPIX, regular readers
will recall the recent coverage from the station’s Betty Yu outside a Safeway
supermarket in the city’s Castro neighborhood. That’s when a masked interview
subject assessed the store’s new security measures:
I think that they’re not very good because I’ve personally been able to shoplift here with relative ease.
Ms. Yu was back out on the streets on Christmas night and tweeted about an alleged attack on her camera operator:
I was doing an interview outside the Metreon in SF tonight. I heard a
man heckling us, before he swung at my photog. He knocked the camera to
the ground. We’re okay, but rattled.
San Francisco residents have endured a surge in more violent crimes during the era of trendy anti-police politics—and those residents include associates
of KPIX, which reported last week:
Two suspects have been arrested and a third has been identified and was being sought in the shooting death of TV news security guard and former police officer Kevin Nishita, Oakland Chief of Police LeRonne L.
Armstrong announced Wednesday.
Before even knowing the destruction that would follow in the wake of Mr. Kaepernick’s national anthem protests, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called them “dumb and disrespectful” in a 2016 interview with
Katie Couric.
In October of this year came news from the Daily Mail’s Daniel Bates that Ginsburg had been even more critical of the protests, but the extent of her criticism was hidden by Ms. Couric at the time. Mr. Bates reported:
Ginsburg went on to say that such protests show a ‘contempt for a government that has made it possible for their parents and grandparents
to live a decent life.’
She said: ‘Which they probably could not have lived in the places they came from...as they became older they realize that this was youthful
folly. And that’s why education is important.’
The greatest public service Mr. Kaepernick can offer now is not another Wall Street or Hollywood deal to capitalize on his public persona but rather a renunciation of his calls for police abolition.
No one is asking him to embrace the full Ginsburg and declare himself a disrespectful ignoramus. But he could do a lot of good by acknowledging that all lives benefit from lawful police protection.
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