Shivanthi Sathanandan is a vice chairwoman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Alpha News reports that in June of 2020, she was strongly in support of dismantling the Minneapolis police department. In a social media post, she thanked two city council members for their radical leadership toward that end, adding, “We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department. Say it with me.”
Tuesday evening, she was assaulted and carjacked in front of her children in the driveway of her Minneapolis home. In a Facebook post, she included a picture of her bloody face with the following text:
Four very young men, all carrying guns, beat me violently down to the ground in front of our kids. The young men held our neighbors up at gunpoint when they ran over and tried to help me. All in broad daylight.
Look at my face in the picture. This is the face of a mother who just had the sh$t beaten out of her. A mother whose only thought was, ‘let me run far enough and fight hard enough so that my kids have a chance to get away.’ This is the face of a mother who just listened to her four-year-old daughter screaming non-stop, her seven-year-old son wailing for someone to come help because bad guys are murdering his Mama in the backyard, her neighbors screaming in outrage … all while being beaten with guns and kicks and fists.
And I have rage. These men knew what they were doing. I have NO DOUBT they have done this before. Yet they are still on OUR STREETS. Killing mothers. Giving babies psychological trauma that a lifetime of therapy cannot erase. With no hesitation and no remorse.
We need to get illegal guns off of our streets, catch these young people who are running wild creating chaos across our city and HOLD THEM IN CUSTODY AND PROSECUTE THEM, Look at my face. REMEMBER ME when you are thinking about supporting letting juveniles and young people out of custody to roam our streets instead of HOLDING THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS.
Sathanandan’s SUV was recovered. Police have no descriptions of the attackers.
For those who are waiting for me to say that elections have consequences, to ask what she thought was going to happen, or to make a joke about her being “mugged by reality,” it is going to be a long wait.
I am a husband, a father, and a grandfather. I often lie awake at night worried about that exact scenario or one just like it. I think about it when my wife leaves for work. I think about it, knowing my grandkids are walking to school. Last month, my wife was driving home from work. During the night, there was a rave close enough that the employees at her place of business could hear it. When she left, people were drag racing up and down the street. One car pulled up alongside her and paced her, almost running her off the road at one point. I was at home and had no idea this was going on, and despite the previous party and the drag racing, there was not a patrol car in sight. Were they carjackers? Was it a rapist? Some raver high on God knows what? Stupid kids out joyriding? We will never know, and I shudder to think what might have happened to my wife had they succeeded in stopping her. It makes me sick to know that this happened to Sathanandan and her children, even if she despises my politics or even me. It is going to be a long road back for the family. Their trauma is more than just physical. I wish her the best in her recovery.
Related: Over 60 Domestic Terrorists Face RICO Charges Over Protests Against ‘Cop City’
In past posts, I have written about some of the criminal cases I covered as a reporter. In one of those cases, a man followed a young woman home from a bar and savagely beat and raped her. Despite his long record of violence and sexual assaults, the judge released him until his trial. The criminal promptly shot a man and fled the state in a stolen car. The point is that we have police and, for that matter, prisons for good reasons. Yes, someone may indeed become penitent while behind bars and seek to improve their life. But many others are imprisoned for the simple reason that they need to be kept away from society. And frankly, people who beat a woman half to death in front of her kids, hold the neighbors at gunpoint, and steal a vehicle need to be kept away from society. Period.
One of the key takeaways to the Genesis account of creation is that more often than not, people are not inherently good. Given the right set of circumstances and opportunities, many people become selfish, impulsive, reckless, and even dangerous. Good behavior is learned and it is reinforced by laws that have penalties. Remove those things, and you have a recipe for disaster. If something like this hasn’t touched your life yet, it will. And that’s not a warning, it’s a promise.
The terrifying truth is that it will probably take many more of these kinds of incidents to change people’s minds. And not all of those incidents will end with a beating and carjacking. Some will result in fatalities. Sadly, when enough people are tired of living in fear, then something will change. Then maybe people will look beyond Soros’ campaign donations, impassioned rhetoric, and political ideations and realize that society does not function without laws. The fact is that Sathanandan didn’t deserve to have this happen to her. And there is no reason why it could not have been prevented.
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