Another Charlotte Train Stabbing

Yesterday I talked about the peculiar pattern that's connected quasi-political violence over the past 18 months. But also yesterday, we saw the latest in an entirely different class of crime, seemingly random but horrific attacks on otherwise anonymouis citizens by repeat offenders on public transit.

A man is in custody after a reported stabbing on the Charlotte Area Transit System Blue Line light rail early Friday evening, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police said.

Medic confirmed it responded around 5 p.m. near the stop along North Brevard Street and East 25th Street. One person was being treated for serious injuries, according to the agency. On Saturday morning, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department confirmed detectives identified 33-year-old Oscar Solarzano as a suspect.

. . . Court records indicate Solarzano was intoxicated on the light rail train and challenged the victim to a fight, and was shouting at others prior to the stabbing. His address was listed as an address matching the Roof Above shelter. Court documents noted that no bond was set for him, saying he is in the country illegally and "has been deported previously."

The link, from the Charlotte NBC affiliate, typically has little else to say about Solarzano. The Department of Homeland Security fills in the blanks:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security today announced U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has lodged an arrest detainer for Oscar Gerardo Solorzano-Garcia, a criminal illegal alien from Honduras, who is charged with first degree murder after he stabbed a male victim with a large knife on a light rail train in Charlotte, NC.

Solorzano-Garcia’s criminal history includes prior arrests for aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, destroying evidence, resisting arrest, using a false ID, and convictions for robbery and illegally re-entry.

. . . This criminal illegal alien was issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge in 2018 and removed by the Trump Administration on March 9, 2018. He was apprehended illegally crossing the border again in 2021 and was again removed. He entered the country illegally for a third time at an unknown date and location.

This incident comes disturbingly soon after the August stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on another Charlotte light rail train by another career criminal. About the only difference is that Solorzano is also an illegal migrant, while Zarutska's assailanbt, Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr, is native-born.

But there are other similarities. Both Solorzano and Brown are full-fledged members of Marx's Lumpenproletariat, career street criminals, with the notable issue that illegal migrants, a problem that was less visible in Marx's time, now make up a significant portion of the underclass. But let's look at the victims: we can say almost by definition that people who ride public transit are from the traditional working class, commuting to work or school. If they could afford to drive, they probably would.

Let's look at the circumstances, too. Public transit is a place where the working class and the Lumpenproletariat routinely come together. The working class are riding to and from work; the Lumpenproletariat don't have jobs; they're riding to have a place to sleep or nod off, they're staying warm and staying out of the rain, or they're looking for working-class victims. They're also riding without tickets.

The working class on public transit is also a captive audience. On one hand, they've got to go to work; they've got to ride in the first place, and if there's a problem, they probably don't have time to get off the train and wait for another -- and between stations, they're stuck no matter what. It looks like neither of the Charlotte victims had any chance just to get off the train.

Another peculiarity is that the attackers seem to be angry, and they're acting out. These cases of horrific attacks on public transit, in places like Chicago and New York as well as Charlotte, involve what homicide detectives call "overkill", which is normally a sign of intense anger and resentment. A hit man does just enough to get the job done; repeated stabbings are a sign of something much more personal, something you'd expect from angry spouses, family members, or intimate partners, not strangers.

So what we're seeing in public transit attacks is a repeated pattern of class conflict, members of the Lumpenproletariat acting out in homicidal, vengeful rage against total strangers from the working class. About all we can conclude at this point is that Marx was correct in observing that the Lumpenproletariat can never be an ally of the working class -- in fact, their hatred of the working class seems to be an essential factor.

But the next puzzle that falls out of this whole set of circumstances is that the urban elites, certainly in the biggest cities, but also in Charlotte (population 943,000) enable this situation. They do this by lenient treatment of repeat offenders and by not enforcing fares on public transit, especially subways and light rail. A bus driver collects the fare and can refuse to move the bus if the rider refuses to pay. On a light rail or subway train, the motorman doesn't collect the fare, and riders can simply get on with impunity.

By declaring sanctuary cities, urban elites open just another front in a war against the working class. Although Charlotte isn't a "sanctuary city", it's a "certified welcoming city", which means about the same thing. North Carolina law requires cities to cooperate with ICE detainers, but the Department of Homeland Security notes in the link above that North Carolina cities have failed to honor 1400 detainers.

The urban elites are simply refusing to protect their hardest-working citizens, and in fact, via publc transit, they're actively setting up circumstances that make it easy for them to be attacked by the mentally disturbed and the career criminal class.