There are moments in politics that strip away all the carefully crafted messaging and reveal exactly what a movement truly values. Democrats love to portray themselves as caring about people, supporters of victims, defenders of the little guy and democracy — all that jazz. Yet, any chance they get to prove their humanity, they fail, and fail miserably.
Whether it’s their opposition to the Laken Riley Act, their shameful responses to the murder of Sheridan Gorman, or the countless other examples where victims don’t fit their preferred narrative, anything resembling common human decency goes out the window.
Last year, Iryna Zarutska, who fled a war zone in Ukraine, built a new life in America, and was brutally murdered by a career criminal who never should have been on the streets. Her accused killer, Decarlos Brown Jr., 34, had prior convictions for larceny, breaking and entering, and armed robbery, and served five years in prison. He shouldn’t have been on the streets.
Now, an artist tried to honor her memory — and a Democratic mayor wants it gone. The question worth asking: what kind of person looks at that tribute and sees a problem?
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley apparently does.
Local artist Ian Gaudreau had just started painting a mural of Iryna Zarutska on the exterior wall of a downtown Providence nightclub when Smiley's office came calling, demanding that it come down immediately. Gaudreau says he never intended the tribute to be political. He wanted to honor a refugee who fled to America only to be stabbed to death in an unprovoked attack.
Smiley's response to all of that? Tear down the mural.
His stated reasoning was breathtaking. "The murder of the individual depicted in this mural was a devastating tragedy, but the misguided, isolating intent of those funding murals like the one across the county is divisive and does not represent Providence," Smiley said.
He couldn’t even say her name.
Iryna Zarustka mural in Providence, RI, is being removed following protest of it by Mayor Brett Smiley.
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 31, 2026
The artist of the mural says owners of the business (The Dark Lady) in the building the mural is on asked that it be removed.
Would they had asked if it was of George Floyd? pic.twitter.com/pytE3CTsSb
I wonder if he would have said the same thing about a mural of George Floyd? Okay, I don’t wonder. I know he wouldn’t have had a problem with it.
ICYMI: Need More Proof That Fact Checkers Are Garbage?
In 2020, the left went into overdrive canonizing Floyd as a hero. He became the subject of murals and statues. He was made out to be a near-saintly political symbol. Cities across America rushed to immortalize him. Businesses were looted and burned in his name, resulting in billions in property damage. Democrats treated opposition to any of it as a moral failure.
But one mural of Iryna Zarutzka? That’s divisive?
The difference, of course, is narrative utility. Floyd's death, however disputed the circumstances, fit a story the left wanted to tell. Zarutska's murder does not. A career criminal with a rap sheet a mile long, released under no-cash bail policies, killing an innocent immigrant woman on public transit — that story cuts directly against everything progressive criminal justice reform promised to deliver. So the left's instinct is to make it disappear.
Iryna Zarutska survived a war and became the victim of leftist policies in America. Only a Democrat would consider honoring her to be divisive.
