On 25 September we will pause as a nation in honor of the National Day of Reminder of Victims of Murder. It is a solemn day – a day to think about the stolen lives, the families crushed and the communities signed forever by violent crime.
But memory without action is hollow. If we really honor victims, we must also face the uncomfortable truth: for too long disguised policy as proponents of “social justice”, criminals have placed over victims and elections have literally become a matter of life and death.
We warned of this in 2017, when progressive public prosecutors who was financed by George Soros began to reform justice systems throughout America under the flag of ‘reform’. They promised honesty. What they delivered was bloodshed. The American people now see the devastating costs of these reckless experiments: families who are burying loved ones who still have to live.
A memorial dedicated to the 23-year-old Ukrainian Iryna Zarutska on the East/West Blvd Lightrail station in Charlotte North Carolina, on September 11, 2025. (Peter Zay/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Look no further than Charlotte, North Carolina, when the world witnessed pure horror and the murder of Iryna Zarutska. Or for the tragic murder of Laeken Riley, a young nurse student whose promising life was stolen. These names join a long list of victims who have paid the price for policy that codes criminals instead of protecting the innocent.
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We have seen the consequences up close. We have worked with grieving families throughout the country who are not only robbed of their loved ones, but also of justice. In New York we walked past Victor Maldonado after the meaningless murder of his son, Jonathan.
Jonathan was a director for the shares of a ride and did a fair job to take care of his family, while making sure that others return home safely. His life was demolished by a repeated drunk driver who had been arrested several times and was released over and over again under bail reform, even after he was tampered with his monitoring device. Despite each warning board, the system let him run free – and Jonathan paid his life only a few days after the New York bail reform was in force.
Jonathan’s story is not unique. It is part of a disturbing pattern. Families suffer from coast to coast because politicians chose ideology over safety. They gamble with public security by dismantling accountability, emptying prisons and apologizing repeated perpetrators. Every release, every “second chance” to be given to a predator, is another victim who is waiting to happen.
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Some of the victims and families with which we collaborate have been in this fight for more than 40 years. Take Barbara Connelly, executive director of Long Island NY Metro Area Parents and other survivors of the murdered victims Outreach Support Group, for example.
Barbara became a pioneer in the movement movement of the victims after her 15-year-old son, Jimmy, was murdered. His murderer was not only released from prison, but also of conditional supervision. Can you imagine it? Someone can kill a child in cool blood and then walk one day free, live life as if nothing happened – while a mother like Barbara is left to pick up the pieces.
Barbara buried her baby and then had to fight for the most fundamental rights, rights that someone with common sense would assume that victims already had. And now, after decades of progress, Barbara notices that she is fighting the same fight again.
What makes this moment even more sad is the corrupt indifference to the human life that our society has infected. People actually take to the streets to protest for the release of cold -blooded murderers such as Luigi Mangione. We do not see crowds for victims, not for grieving families, but for terrorists, rapists and murderers – even cheering from organizations such as Hamas.
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How are we so much lost that evil is celebrated while innocence is forgotten? This moral inversion tears over the soul of our nation.
As a nation we mourn together again. We look in real time the pain of Erika Kirk after witnessing the murder of her husband, Charlie Kirk. She is not alone in her grief. Millions of Americans who have followed Charlie’s work feel this loss deep because we know it didn’t have to happen. The pain of his family is now a national wound, and with horrible clarity it underlines the price that we all pay when society refuses to take evil seriously.
President Donald Trump has been one of the few leaders who want to call this crisis what it is: a tragedy to be prevented caused by failed policy. He has shown a commitment to stop the bloodshed with the most basic, commonsse principle: locking up the bad guys. Safe communities start accountability. Justice cannot exist if criminals know that they will have no real consequences.
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For the congress, for state laws and to every governor in America: victims and survivors argue with you. Adopt our agenda that is not built on ideology, but on the experienced experiences of families who have buried their loved ones. We do not speak out of theory – we speak from the grave of our children, spouses and parents. Survivors of victims of murder cases have the costs of failure and we know what needs to be done.
I know this pain personally. In 2005 my friend and his best friend were murdered. They did not receive the justice they deserved and that wound never healed. Tens of years later, every time I hear about a different pointless murder, another family that joins this unwanted brotherhood of grief, I am brought back to that cold January of loss and heartache. The pain is worse when I discover that the murderer was someone who chose the government to release – someone who should have been behind bars.
That is why this day matters. The National Memorial Day for Murder victims must be more than symbolic. It must be a turning point. We owe it to Iryna Zarutska to Laeken Riley, to Jonathan Maldonado, to Jimmy van Barbara Connelly, to Charlie Kirk, and to every victim whose name was etched in a tombstone too quickly. We owe it to their families, who will never be the same.
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It is time to choose victims over criminals. It’s time to listen to survivors. It is time to refuse the failed social experiments that our cities have changed in danger zones. And it is time for leaders at every level to follow President Trump’s leadership and to take the commonsense step that can save countless lives: locking up the predators and protect the innocent.
Because memory means nothing if we keep repeating the same mistakes.
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