One month after California Gov. Gavin Newsom promised to crack down on San Francisco's open-air drug markets, a Gen Z activist says far-left politics have made the city a "fourth world country within a first world country."
"We are witnessing the collapse of the Paris of the West and potentially the decline of Western civilization, with San Francisco being the first domino," Darren Mark Stallcup told Fox News.
Stallcup documents the drug and homeless crises in San Francisco — which he refers to as a "fentanyl genocide" — on Twitter. His videos show tent-lined streets, people appearing to overdose or behave erratically under the influence of drugs, violent altercations, crime and more.
"When I go out every morning and count the bodies, when I'm documenting the fentanyl genocide happening in our community," Stallcup said, "my goal is to show the world what's really happening on the streets of San Francisco."
Overdose deaths have soared across California and in the Golden City, where 647 people died from drug overdoses last year. San Francisco is on pace to surpass that figure again this year.
WATCH MORE FOX NEWS DIGITAL ORIGINALS HERE
"We have a beautiful city," the 26-year-old Bay Area native said. "Generations of people, good men and women, built this city. Generations of blood, sweat and tears. And I hate to see it all crumble in a decade just because people can't stop voting for this chaos."
"San Francisco is the most liberal city in all of the United States of America," he added. "We have leaned so far left that the only direction to go now, I believe, is towards the right."
Newsom directed the National Guard and California Highway Patrol to help combat San Francisco's fentanyl trafficking crisis in late April. But despite police arresting 16 people last week for public intoxication, a city supervisor recently told a local TV station he's not seeing a difference.
"We're in a situation right now where we're seeing a level of drug use and drug dealing that's unprecedented," Matt Dorsey of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors told ABC7.
Stallcup said he often witnesses crime and has even had to fight off burglars. He's disturbed by an increase in missing person fliers posted around the Tenderloin neighborhood where he lives, and stories of women selling sex in exchange for fentanyl.
"I want women and children to be safe again," Stallcup said. "Children are having to walk to school and having to navigate the trenches of San Francisco, tripping over bodies, fecal matter, needles, crack pipes, you name it. These sidewalks are haunted with the spirits of lost souls."
Tens of thousands of residents fled San Francisco County in recent years, leading to a 7.5% population drop between 2020 and 2022. While the flow has slowed since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the county still lost 9,421 residents last year, according to the Census Bureau.
Although Stallcup recently started crowdfunding in an attempt to move out of the city's notorious Tenderloin neighborhood, he says he's not willing to leave the city altogether.
"I feel as if my voice is important because there are a lot of far-left voters in San Francisco, whereas I might potentially be the last Republican in San Francisco," he said. "I can't abandon ship."
"They think this chaos is freedom and liberty," he added. "I see it as the death of freedom and liberty. We cannot vote the same."
To hear more from Stallcup, click here.
