On the morning of May 17, subway commuters weaving through Manhattan’s bustling Broadway-Lafayette station received a message impossible to avoid. Activists covered the tiled wall between the Downtown and Downtown B/D/F/M train platforms with red paint and the words ‘JUSTICE FOR JORDAN NEELY’ and ‘ERIC ADAMS YOU HAVE TO BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS,” according to photos shared on Twitter and by the local publication hell gate.
A few weeks prior, the Subway Junction was the site of the murder of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man known for his friendly personality and spirited performances on the Michael Jackson Subway. On May 1, while aboard the F train, another subway passenger and former sailor named Daniel Penny placed Neely in a fatal chokehold that led to his death. Last week Penny was charged with second degree manslaughter.
By 11 a.m. the message had been washed away and only the red paint remained. Officers standing near the remnants of paint refused to speak to Hyperallergicbut said the painting “has been there for days”.
Since Neely’s murder, the station at the intersection of NoHo and SoHo has become a center of action protesting the city’s racist criminalization of its homeless residents and commemorating Neely. The crimson display, reminiscent of a brutal crime scene, was accompanied by a letter to “cop mayor” Eric Adams which called for “vigilante violence” and structural imbalances of power and wealth in the political and social landscape of the city. city.
“We are tired of the attacks on the working class, the baiting of crime, the austerity budgets, the endless demonization of the most vulnerable people in our society,” the letter read. “It was not a single tragedy – we are in crisis. Which side are you on?”
Speaking anonymously, activists said hell gate journalists that the whole intervention took “less than five minutes to execute” and that the painting was meant to continue to critique Adams’ treatment of homeless communities in the city and broader social stigmas surrounding race and mental illness.
“This isn’t just about an incident of racism, and it’s certainly not just about Jordan Neely ‘having a mental episode’. This is about organized abandonment, systemic neglect,” they wrote. they stated.
