A gaggle of the usual suspects brought a bit of anarchy to the Upper East Side Saturday, hopping down to subway tracks to protest the demise of an afflicted fellow not one of them gave a damn about when he was alive.
But what makes the chokehold death of Jordan Neely — a sometimes-violent, regularly menacing subway presence with severe mental-health issues — stand out so much that it provokes progressive tantrums?
After all, as the estimable Nicole Gelinas detailed in these pages last week, 27 others have met violent ends in the subway system since 2020 without generating a ripple of interest among New York’s anarcho-activists.
Neely’s demise, however, checks too many boxes to be ignored:
- The deceased was black. The fellow said to be responsible is white. How can the lefties resist a hanging curveball like that?
- Daniel Penny, Neely’s alleged killer, is a Marine Corps veteran; this presents a rare opportunity to discredit one of America’s most honorable institutions.
- The city medical examiner has ruled Neely’s death a “homicide” — which is not a synonym for “murder,” but hardly anybody knows that, so for propaganda purposes, it might just as well be.
- And, finally, portraying Neely’s death as the racist act of a trained killer deflects attention from the real issue: a subway system rendered chaotic by official policies that tolerate — if not encourage — erratic, sometimes lethal, behavior.
Of course, it doesn’t help that Albany has neutered the state’s penal code on the theory that true “justice” resides in allowing criminals to go about their business as long as too much blood isn’t involved.
Now the cry is “Justice for Jordan Neely.”
There is no room for vigilantism, declare the same politicians who stood smugly silent as Herald Square Macy’s was being looted during the 2020 George Floyd rioting.
And they’re right, of course. Even Bernie Goetz says so.
But let’s be real: Subway chaos, punctuated by random acts of violence, over time will generate violent responses.
This may not be tolerable, but it is inevitable.
Thus the proper response is to calm the chaos, not to take a knee to Saturday’s subway track rats and their allies in public office.
They want power, not justice, and never forget that.
