(David Ryder/REUTERS)

Discovery Institute Research Fellow (I am a Senior Fellow for the DI) Christopher F. Rufo has a blockbuster exposé in City Journal about the interconnected causes of Seattle’s homelessness catastrophe.

Rufo points his finger at four interconnected strains of cultural liberalism that enable the cancerous spread of squatter homeless tent encampments. From“Seattle Under Seige:”

The real battle isn’t being waged in the tents, under the bridges, or in the corridors of City Hall but in the realm of ideas, where, for now, four ideological power centers frame Seattle’s homelessness debate. I’ll identify them as the socialists, the compassion brigades, the homeless-industrial complex, and the addiction evangelists. Together, they have dominated the local policy discussion, diverted hundreds of millions of dollars toward favored projects, and converted many well-intentioned voters to the politics of unlimited compassion.

Having lived in and around San Francisco from 1992 until last year, the first three types were familiar to me. But “addiction evangelists?” Rufo explains:

In a sense, the addiction evangelists are the intellectual heirs of the 1960s counterculture: whereas the beats and hippies rejected bourgeois values but largely confined their efforts to culture—music, literature, photography, and poetry—the addiction evangelists have a more audacious goal: to capture political power and elevate addicts and street people into a protected class. They don’t want society simply to accept their choices; they want society to pay for them. Their leading proponent is Shilo Murphy, a heroin and cocaine addict who runs the People’s Harm Reduction Alliance…For Murphy, the goal is not prevention, recovery, or rehabilitation—but normalization of addiction and dedicated public funding for the consumption of heroin, meth, and crack cocaine… Incredibly, Murphy has become a player in Seattle politics. The city provides funding for his organization, and King County has recruited him to serve on its opioid task force. His unabashedly pro-addiction campaign is winning: he was one of the key proponents for “safe-injection sites” and recently announced a new heroin-on-wheels project, in which People’s Harm Reduction Alliance vans will roam the city and help addicts shoot up, under a nurse’s supervision. While the official philosophy of Murphy’s organization is “harm reduction,” the real goal seems to be public support for addiction.

I have long believed that certain factions on the left support — even celebrate — social dysfunction. The appearance of “addiction evangelists” would certainly fit that bill and be wholly in keeping with strong contemporary cultural currents that validate and enable unhealthy lifestyles.


Our cities’ futures depend on preventing “Seattle” from spreading. Rufo’s piece is a deeply considered exploration of the causes and effective solutions to a growing American crisis. It’s well worth your time and pondering.