Since the appalling act of violence took place on May 1, I have not been able to stop thinking about what happened to Jordan Neely. On May 1, the 30-year-old NYC local was choked to death by a 24-year-old former Marine, Daniel Penny, on a subway ride. The cause of death, “compression of neck”, was confirmed by the Chief Medical Examiner of New York two days later. According to the man who took the video, Juan Vazquez, Neely had been erratically yelling: "He said he had no food, he had no drink, that he was tired and doesn't care if he goes to jail," Juan Vazquez said, adding that Neely did not attack anyone, but Penny approached him after he threw his jacket to the ground.”
To make matters worse, the undeniable and unjustifiable murder in cold blood has been vigorously defended by both the right-wing and corporate media, who have tried to defend Penny’s actions by stressing that Neely was a “criminal” and had a history of run-ins with the law, including a supposed arrest warrant for a felony. But this analysis completely ignores Neely's humanity and is heavily biased in favor of capital and laws created specifically by the ruling class to prey on the working class. I do not at all expect this legal system to charge Penny appropriately, never mind bring justice. True justice would not only entail that Neely was still alive, but that he had been properly cared for to begin with. By virtue of being a human, he was entitled to a place to live, mental healthcare, and other necessities. Even if Neely was in the wrong, at worst verbal harassing people, that in no way gave Penny the right to become "judge, jury, and executioner." Not unlike law enforcement, Penny escalated a very minor situation into a deadly crime scene.
Neely was truly struggling long before his murder. In 2007 at the age of fourteen, his stepdad murdered his mother, which left him without socioeconomic support, thus rendering him homeless. Mental health issues exploded from the traumatic event and the following instability—he developed mental ailments including depression and schizophrenia. These issues were not treated, as the for-profit healthcare system predictably leaves people like Neely to fend for themselves. Still, Neely found an outlet for his mental anguish and socioeconomic insecurity as an impressive Michael Jackson impersonator, often performing in NYC subways.
Needless to say, Neely was a human being who had feelings and needs. Furthermore, homeless people like him should not have no expectation of “behaving normally” or nicely to everyone around them. The homeless have been subjected to the worst state brutality and austerity politics that have created their materially deprived condition, while mostly affluent New Yorkers on their way to work or home ignore their existence at best, if not make it even more miserable via harassment, violence, or calling the cops. The American empire chooses violence, whether at home (i.e. militarizing police, criminalizing poverty despite being responsible for creating it) or abroad (military industrial complex-fueled lobbying to start and expand wars), instead of the people's say and needs. The homeless and impoverished are systematically criminalized to fuel the prison industrial complex's patterns of neoslavery and abuse. Neely’s unfettered rage at the system, displayed during the video, was well-warranted and righteous anger considering his situation. Homeless people should not be expected to be “pleasant” when they are fighting for survival every single day. We should unconditionally be meeting their human needs instead of vilifying, incarcerating, berating, and murdering them.
Coverage by for-profit media has in every case I have come across so far ignored the systemic factors that led to Neely being homeless and destitute in the first place. How did he, like so many other fellow New Yorkers and Americans, end up in that kind of position? Eric Adams, the Democratic NYC mayor, has pushed for many policies that have negatively impacted those like Neely. As a former cop himself, he has aggressively increased both the funding and presence of cops in the streets of the Big Apple. Encouraged by the mayor, NYPD frequently engages in arrests regarding trivial offenses (which may include loitering, petty theft, and sleeping in subway cars). He has sharply increased the police presence in subways, even as transit crimes decline nearly 8% from last year. These charges almost exclusively target the most desperate people, especially the homeless. Not to mention that excessive NYPD funding is the people's tax money, which would be far better spent materially improving lives instead of displaying state force and violence. Unsurprisingly, homelessness primarily affects already marginalized groups; of those in NYC homeless shelters, 58% are Black and 31% are Latino. Under his administration, the NYPD has made hundreds of sweeps of homeless camps, disturbing their places of residence and frequently stealing their personal property, from IDs to money. Adams and Co. attempt to push the homeless out of sight of the city and its neoliberal investors for largely optical reasons, but refuse to help them. In fact, Adams has made the situation of the NYC homeless worse. Adams removed $615 million from New York City's Department of Homeless Services—20% of its entire budget. He has also lead the charge on more austerity policies, defunding public libraries and other public services that could benefit the impoverished and homeless. Vilification of the homeless from Adams, corporate media, reactionaries, and the state is not only ill-spirited, it is blatantly incorrect. Homeless people are much more likely to be victims of violent assault than perpetrators, which should come at no surprise considering their constantly exposed position on the margins of society. The murder rate of the homeless has also skyrocketed 300% from 2018 to 2021. Mayor Adams has rubbed in the salt specifically concerning Neely by attempting to deflect rightful blame intended for Penny. Despite how corporate (including liberal) media tries to spin the mayor, Adams has not helped the homeless and the poor of NYC. He has actively made their lives worse. Mayor Adams and his wealthy supporters are enemies of the working class, especially the homeless.
If Adams really wanted to help the homeless, he would resolve the conditions that lead to that deplorable outcome. The foremost reason for homelessness in New York City and the United States is the lack of affordable housing. But this is not because there is a lack of space, quite the contrary. In NYC alone, there are at least 240,000 vacant apartments, more than enough to house all 91,000 homeless people. This trend is largely similar across the nation. Why are these apartments not being used to house people who clearly need it? Landlords (whether they are individuals, real estate conglomerates, or venture capital/investment firms like Blackrock) have bought up these complexes en masse in the hopes that by holding apartments hostage and artificially creating scarcity, they can drive up housing prices and make an excellent long-term return on investment. Real estate, is after all, a finite resource. Landlords play a parasitic role in society. Not only do they not perform significant labor, if any labor at all. Through the process described above, they make housing much more expensive than it should be and exert dictatorial control over the housing market, which inevitably leaves many Americans housing insecure, if not homeless or inhabiting substandard housing. Landlords show no care to the plight of the working class, who are left worse off by this situation, as the bottom line of neoliberalism always outweighs concerns such as morality and compassion. It does not have to be this way. In the late USSR, rent was capped at 3% of monthly family income, as housing was treated as a social good for the Soviet people, not a commodity as here in the United States. This was by far the lowest rent on the planet, allowing families more freedom to buy more of other necessities, because they did not have to constantly worry about paying for housing. In fact, from the mid-1960's to the mid-1980's, the Soviet Union secured the housing needs of its people by building more apartment units during the period than any other nation.
To worsen matters in the Big Apple, last year's "official" end of the COVID-19 pandemic meant the end of emergency rental assistance programs, which had helped keep many New Yorkers in their apartments during the layoffs and socioeconomic fallout that accompanied the pandemic. Over 100,000 of them were evicted by their landlords in 2022 alone, causing a massive spike in people living on the streets. A homeless woman in NYC made it clear what she needs: “An apartment,” she replied, emphatically. “We don’t need any more of these f--king rich people high rises in the sky. We don’t need tenement crap holes. We need housing.” NYC theoretically has the opportunity to set a remarkable precedent in the US by seizing the assets of these exploitative landlords and providing affordable housing to the people, but I am afraid that this will not be happening anytime soon. Neely's demise would have not happened in the first place—homelessness, the alleged harassment, busking, and of course, murder—had policies been implemented that put the people first, not capitalist profits.
Let's walk in the shoes of the destitute for a brief moment and ask ourselves a few questions about the trivial offenses mentioned earlier that further address the systems at play. Why do people sleep in subway cars? Because they are homeless and have no place to rest their head; they certainly are not choosing to sleep in such a harsh environment. Why do people engage in petty theft? They need food or other necessities, and they are willing to risk prosecution to immediately provide for themselves and their families. They are faced with two terrible choices—to starve or to loot and risk criminal charges—and they make the best decision that provides for their material needs. Why do destitute people loiter in public or private spaces? Again, they may have no other place to rest. Perhaps they are waiting on someone to pick them up, because their impoverishment means that they lack reasonable access to transportation. Worse, perhaps they have nowhere to go because they are part of capitalism's crucial reserve army of labor. This term refers to the condition of artificial unemployment for a large chunk at the bottom of capitalist society, which drives down the cost of labor, thereby increasing the profit margins of the ruling class while increasing the desperation of all in the working class as they clamor for limited jobs.
These harsh consequences also make the desperate underclass (disproportionately black, brown, disabled, indigenous, LGBTQ+, mentally ill, and so on) most easy to coerce into taking the most dangerous and underpaid jobs, while simultaneously losing even further socioeconomic power as capitalists outpace them via exponential profit accumulation. There have never been enough jobs under capitalism to provide meaningful work to everyone. Despite extremely dishonest gloating about "low" unemployment from every successive federal administration, the carefully selected, woefully inaccurate measure does not factors such as underemployment (including those who work limited hours at inadequate wages via the gig economy or service industry) and those who are not "actively looking for work" (likely because they have given up on finding a job even after prolonged efforts), not to mention the numerous jobs that do not provide a living wage. Corporations routinely do everything in their power to push costs onto others, whether the workers themselves or the government. The plight of workers at Disneyland is a prime example of corporate greed that is native to capitalism.
By killing an impoverished (and homeless) Black man in public sight, Penny's actions represent yet another modern incarnation of the race-fueled lynchings of African-Americans during Jim Crow era. "It reignites the terror in the souls of Black folks when we witness these killings of our people without trial, without jury, without adjudication," said Grant, adding "this vigilante activity is really a reminder of the dangerous conditions that Black Americans exist in now." It should come as no surprise that Penny was formerly a willing participant in an organization that inflicts state-sponsored violence both domestically and abroad—the armed forces. As a former Marine, Penny is a natural product of the bloody American empire that requires the devaluing of human life to carry out its gruesome functions. Because the New York Police Department (NYPD) protected him—refusing to arrest after only brief detainment and questioning, and delaying the release of Penny's identity—he has been allowed ample time to undo (if not delete) all his potentially problematic and damning representations on social media and such. If American mainstream media (including the New York Daily News and ABC7 in this case) were fair in this case, they would at least focus equal scrutiny on Penny's background instead of only critiquing that of Neely. What does his social media look like? Criminal history? What are the odds that he has openly supported violent and reactionary/white chauvinist ideology? Even if there was no material thereof to consider, his violent murder of another human being must not be tolerated in the slightest. If it was not already known, after May 1 Penny is now undoubtedly a menace to anyone around him, especially impoverished people of color. Despite my firm criticism of the current for-profit, deeply rotten prison industrial complex and its locking up of millions for petty and manufactured crimes, I acknowledge that there are still people who must be contained for the rest of society. Penny is one of those people who must always be imprisoned and prevented from further murders. If the American state insists on keeping the death penalty around, it should at least be reserved for homicidal maniacs like Penny.
Crippling poverty naturally leads to mental illness and desperation, and even suicidal ideation as evident in the case of Neely. Poverty should be completely unacceptable in the wealthiest nation in history. But this is a necessity of capitalist operations—massive inequality and the creation of an underclass who exist solely to drive down the cost of labor for capitalists and provide a desperate group of laborers who are coerced into doing the most dehumanizing and dangerous jobs. Radically concentrated levels of wealth in the hands of a very few in the ruling class inevitably means that swathes of Americans have been left to fend for themselves. Neely's situation is the reality for millions of Americans. We are far closer to being homeless and mentally ill than to becoming a billionaire, or even a millionaire. Remember that the next time someone tells you you are just a “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” or that you just need to “work harder” to get by. Neely did not create this situation for himself. He was a product of a horrific system that values profit accumulation over providing for the needs of the people, especially the most vulnerable. He is not by any means solely to blame for his actions, and his death was more than preventable. We must overthrow the oppressive systems that lead people into positions like that of Neely—impoverished, broken, hopeless—and stop trying to justify or “reform” them.
I will end with a timely and beautifully-worded Twitter thread that conveys both the under-appreciated humanity of Neely and the reality that we share far more in common with him and his situation than we could imagine.
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