Early yesterday morning, December 5, an autonomous group of activists boarded the F train at the Broadway-Lafayette Street/Bleeker Street subway station in Manhattan to replace the advertisements plastered throughout the car with one message: “Here is a man lynched.”
The protesters’ wording refers to a banner that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) hung outside its New York office between 1920 and 1938 to protest the lynching of African Americans. It draws attention to Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old black man without a home and Michael Jackson impersonator who was killed on May 1, 2023, during a six-minute chokehold by Daniel Penny, a Marine veteran from Long Island who was 24 at the time. Penny arrested Neely from behind on an F train between the Second Avenue and Broadway-Lafayette Street/Bleeker Street stops after Neely allegedly made several threatening comments, acted erratically and threw objects at other passengers.
The guerrilla action on the F train on Thursday morning comes days after closing arguments in Penny’s trial. He was charged with second-degree manslaughter and negligent homicide. As of today, December 6, the judge dismissed the second-degree manslaughter charge, for which Penny faced up to 15 years in prison, after the jury deadlocked twice. That leaves only the lesser charge of negligent homicide, which carries a maximum of four years, and only if the judge decides to convict him.
Cynthia Harris, a forensic pathologist with the city Office of Chief Medical Examiner who performed the autopsy on Neely, concluded that Penny’s chokehold was responsible before his death. Another one forensic pathologist hired by Penny’s lawyers testified that Neely’s death was caused by “the combined effects of the sickle cell crisis, the schizophrenia, the struggle and restraint and the synthetic marijuana” in his system.
The murder of Jordan Neely led to dozens of protests, interventions and marches through New York City in the year and a half leading up to the trial. A lot of demonstrators And some politicians considered it a modern-day lynching, calling for Penny to be charged with murder. The NAACP called Penny’s actions “inhuman vigilante”, a post shared by the Black lives matter organization too.
The autonomous group could not be reached for comment, but shared a press release distributed by independent journalist Talia JaneWHO documented the actionwith input from several anonymous participants.
“New York must ensure that its public spaces are free from the racist state violence and racist interpersonal violence that defines so much of the lives of Black and brown people in this city,” said one participant from Brooklyn, according to the press release. “Jordan Neely was lynched on the F train. Regardless of what the court or jury will say about the case, we took action today to mark this train car as a place of mourning, a place of sorrow and a place of anger against a city and a country that sees certain lives as wronged. more valuable than others.”
“Jordan Neely died at the hands of a state that insists that black and brown and poor and disabled people — except for an elite few — are dispensable,” said one participant from the Bronx quoted in the press release. “Jordan deserved care. All New Yorkers deserve care.”
