Jordan Neely Deserved Better
The houseless and mentally ill community are not as different from you as you are led to believe.
Jordan Neely was killed by an ex-marine named Daniel Penny from Long Island on the F train in New York City, my hometown. He was killed on May 1st in a chokehold, the same way Eric Garner was killed, the same way George Floyd was killed. It’s a terrible way to die, to have life leave you so slowly yet so fast.
Daniel Penny, his murderer, is free as you read this.
Jordan Neely had a long police record that included violence against others, and he also had a mother who was murdered when he was 18 years old. He was a Michael Jackson impersonator. He was houseless and mentally ill in New York City, a place that I know very personally is hard to survive in when you have a little bit of money. I could only imagine surviving there with no shelter. He was killed for being threatening, for being rowdy, and for calling out in hunger. He was killed in many ways for being too loud about the ways our system fails us. What better way to see where America disinvests in its people than to look at a poor, mentally ill, black man?
I’ve been reading the articles about his death and to say the least I am deeply scared at the state of humanity. People are divided over his death and that puzzles me. How can you be divided about this? A man decided Jordan was a threat and much like he was taught in the marines, his solution was to kill him. New York City is not a war zone, Chicago is not a war zone, San Francisco is not a war zone. I won’t even go into the fact that war itself is a human atrocity because I want to stay focused on Jordan right now. But for your information: you cannot just up and kill people because they disrupt you.
Jordan’s death was wrong. That is a fact. People don’t deserve executions for behaving badly. People don’t deserve death for screaming. People don’t deserve death for reminding you that they’ve been forgotten and left behind. I’ll go further: people don’t deserve death for scaring you or even for harming you. You might say that’s easy for me to say, and to you I’ll say you don’t know me as well as you think you do.
I’ve only been not living in my hometown for three years, but one thing I can say is I have seen almost everything you could see on a train. People screaming, drunk, crying, taking shits, throwing things, sleeping, fighting, taking drugs, threatening suicide, begging for money; if you name it I’ve probably seen it. New Yorkers live their lives in a way other people don’t in this country. The city is our stage, with hallmark memories made on certain street corners and train cars. Being late to your graduation because the train stalled and having everyone create a graduation for you, or singing happy birthday to a stranger, or missing your flight because you took the wrong A train. I almost missed a school trip because a man punched another man on the train. Romance happens on the train, friendships are made on buses. New York City is as much about what happens outside of your home as it is what happens inside.
I’ve talked about my life and what it meant for me to grow up low income in NYC. I’ve talked about my family in small snippets. But there is so much I haven’t said about my life and the lives around me, so just know that when I saw the news of Jordan my heart sank. I felt sick all day and I gotta tell y’all I am not the type of person that news impacts me physically like that. Usually I view things in a logical sense of that is unjust, that is right, and that is wrong. But Jordan’s death I took personally, and even as I write this my heart sinks for him, my body is covered with chills, my eyes blurry as I hold back tears because Jordan could have been related to me. And I promise I am not doing that thing where simply because he is black I am claiming him as a person who could have belonged to my family (which would be okay if that’s what I was doing). More-so I am saying Jordan could have been my family member because I’ve had family in the system. I’ve seen firsthand what it means to be left behind by the very systems you hope help you.
When I say the system I specifically mean New York City’s system. Rikers is our infamous jail, I’ve had family there. I’ve had family who are mentally ill be placed in homes for the unwell. I’ve been searched while going to visit them. I’ve had family in domestic violence shelters. I’ve had family who we prefer stay in jail because it curbs their addiction. Some of Jordan’s last words were him preferring jail to the streets. I gotta tell you these stances I take are not because the theory is nice, its because I’ve seen some stuff. And yet, I am shaking as I write this because sometimes I feel like I am exploiting my family’s struggles to make a point, but I think silence holds us back. Because so many of us, so many of you reading this think that the houseless and mentally ill community is a far off problem that needs to be handled.
Many of you with wonderful politics still say things like “They need help.” but what I really want to push you to say is we need help. Because here is the truth:
You are not so far off from a crucial family death that rocks your world so much, you lose stability. You are not so far off from a paycheck or two missed paychecks and then an eviction notice is on your door. You are not so removed from drugs and the possibility of addiction. You are not so far off from one medical emergency that drains your savings. You may think you are different, that you wouldn’t be in that situation. But unless you have heaps of generational wealth coursing through your family, you are closer to a life Jordan Neely lived than the life of the rich.
Jordan Neely deserved more. He deserved help from the system. He deserved attention, he deserved a life that we all do. And the fact that some people think his death was justified because he was disruptive disgusts me. It infuriates me. It makes me so upset, I can come close to crying in anger. Because I don’t think anybody deserves to have life squeezed out of them. How hard is it to help someone? To give them food? To smile at them? To say hello? Or shit, at the very least have the decency to ignore someone if you don’t think they deserve humanity.
But to act, to kill, to hand out a dose of your own version of justice is cruel. It’s deeply cruel. It’s sickening, potentially evil, and it makes me worry. It makes me scared for the people I love, because they are the New Yorkers people like to forget. The ones who won’t perform your version of comfort. They are the OGs, the ones who live their lives as the city permitted them to. But now I worry that they live in a place that would be scared of them, because they are black, because they aren’t rich.
Fighting for houseless and mentally ill people to be treated right is also fighting for you to be treated right. Because we are fighting for simple human needs: food, shelter, access to healthcare. You need that as much as Jordan needed that.
I’ll leave you with this: If someone’s pain causes you discomfort and your first thought is they must be silenced or put away somewhere, instead of being helped, you have a deep problem that needs introspection.
RIP Jordan Neely. I wish life had been sweeter to you.
i love these armchair advocates that probs never rode a subway or dealt with a crazy person yelling at them where you're fearing for your life
Lol ok