Another day, another Black man murdered in the white supremacist, settler-colonial U.S. Empire, this time in New York City.
In the afternoon of Tuesday, May 2, 2023 — one day after International Workers Day — a white supremacist murdered Jordan Neely, a homeless Black man known locally as a street performer, particularly for his Michael Jackson impersonation. The murder was not carried out under cover of darkness, nor even under color of law.
No, the murderer was not a cop — as is usually the case — but, according to reports, a former U.S. Marine acting in his “civilian capacity” as a deputy pig. The method of killing was not a gun, but a strangulation by choke-hold.
The NYC murder comes almost three years after the murder-by-suffocation of George Floyd at the hands of four Minneapolis police officers, and almost nine years after the murder-by-strangulation of Eric Garner, who was choked to death by several NYPD pigs, while repeatedly crying out the now-infamous phrase, “I can’t breathe!”
NYPD officers took the murderer into custody for questioning and light refreshments — such are the “perks” offered by the white-terror police to a white man who murders Black people. Recognizing the civilian-fascist terrorist as one of their own, the pigs at the New York Police Department released him the next morning without charges — signaling to other would-be deputy fascists that they have free reign to murder Black civilians at will.
In fact, a wave of white terror has swept the U.S. Empire of late. In “defense” of private property and “decorum,” vigilante white men across the Empire have deputized themselves to maim and murder Black and other oppressed people. To be merely suspected of petty theft, trespassing, loitering, or indecency — in this case, to be homeless and in need of help — by the wrong sort of white man often amounts to a death sentence.
A harrowing video of the murder was uploaded to Facebook, and has circulated on social media and via news outlets: The victim flails, attempting to break free of the murderer’s hold. But he is prevented from escaping by two other men, who help the white vigilante hold him down — one Black man, who restrains the victim’s arms by grabbing his wrists, and one white man, who applies pressure to the victim’s shoulder. After several minutes, the victim loses consciousness. Onlooking passengers verbally reassure themselves that he has merely fainted, and will be alright.
In fact, tragically, the victim has suffered brain death. Soon after the incident, he will be pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, after attempts to revive him fail.
Derek Chauvin suffocated George Floyd to death by kneeling on his neck for eight brutal minutes. Yesterday’s killer, reportedly a Marine who has yet to be identified by the NYPD, kept Jordan Neely in a murderous chokehold for nearly fifteen minutes. This was no desperate act of self-defense or “heroism.” It was a cold-blooded murder, executed by a trained marine who’s served in this country’s imperialist armed forces.
In the moments just before the murder, the victim, a 30-year-old, unarmed, emotionally distressed, and apparently homeless Black man, was begging for food and other material aid. He exclaimed to fellow subway passengers, “I don’t have food, I don’t have water, and I’m fed up.” In his anguish, he expressed a thought that many unhoused persons have after suffering years of deprivation and despair: “I don’t mind going to jail and getting life in prison. I’m ready to die.”
A witness, Juan Alberto Vazquez, the freelance citizen journalist responsible for filming the murder and uploading the video to his Facebook page, Luces de Nueva York (“New York Lights”), confirmed that the victim did not attempt to touch or otherwise harm anyone. Vazquez recounted in an interview that the victim boarded the northbound F-train in a state of psychological distress, and began “yelling” at other passengers for help. The situation became tense, and likely uncomfortable, but not violent.
That is, until the white vigilante-murderer decided that the punishment for being homeless and distressed in public was summary execution. The murderer then lunged at the victim, tackled him to the floor, wrapped his arms around the victim’s throat, and squeezed.
Perhaps the vigilante-murderer believed himself a “defender” of the “peace.” Perhaps he just wanted the thrill of murdering a defenseless Black person. It doesn’t matter — murder is murder.
Whatever the case, a pattern is emerging in this year’s wave of vigilante violence: confrontations over property. A homeless person expressed his desperation in a public space, and in so doing created a “disturbance” sufficient to be considered a “threat.”
Shockingly, none of the other train passengers intervened to help the victim. Instead, they sat by and watched as the life was slowly choked out of him. The only two passengers who intervened did so to aid and abet the murderer.
Jordan Neely paid for this bystander inaction with his life.
Even more alarming is how common such white-vigilante murders of Black people are across the U.S. Empire — a country in which the Jim Crow regime and other forms of racist apartheid have ostensibly long-since been abolished.
Little more than two weeks have passed since the attempted murder of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl at the hands of an armed white man. Ralph was unarmed, and his only “crime,” as is well-known, was accidentally going to the wrong address to pick up his little siblings from a friend’s house.
The incident provoked outrage in Kansas City, Missouri, not least because the would-be child-killer, Andrew Lester, was released without charges by police within 24 hours of the attempted murder. Kansas City police eventually arrested Lester and charged him with multiple counts of assault — but only after the Black community of Kansas City and their allies poured out into the streets, demanding justice, over the following days.
Thankfully, Ralph survived. He was soon discharged from the hospital to recuperate at home in the care of his family, and is expected to make a full recovery, despite having suffered a bullet-wound to the forehead.
But how did Ralph survive? When he fled Lester, bleeding from his head, he was barely able to walk, let alone run; he was screaming for help, but he was in an unfamiliar neighborhood, and there was little he could do. Police had sent out a public warning that a shooting had occurred, and instructed residents not to leave their homes. Most neighbors, obeying the cops, ignored Ralph’s pleas for help — until, at last, two neighbors intervened, providing Ralph, who had collapsed near their house, with first aid, and calling an ambulance for him. It is only thanks to this relatively small act of basic neighborly decency and kindness — of solidarity — that Ralph survived and is expected to recover in full.
Sadly, Jordan Neely was not so “fortunate.” This time, the murderer was successful — exactly because not a single passenger in that train car did the right thing.
All the victim in this case would have needed to survive was for a few people to break the vigilante-murderer’s grip on him. If only someone had pulled the murderer’s arms off of the victim’s neck, and attended to the victim to ensure he wasn’t injured, then he most likely would have survived. And, if only someone — optimally, a mental health professional trained to respond to such cases without involving the police, and as an alternative to police violence — had talked with the man, whose only “crime” was being homeless and desperate for aid, then he might have gotten the help he needed.
Instead, another Black person is dead — and, at least for the present, his white murderer has walked free, under the blue aegis of the colonialist police.
Only in the following days will we know whether the civilian-fascist, white supremacist, deputy-pig terrorist murderer will be charged by his badged, blue-uniformed brothers-in-arms for his crimes. If he is brought to any semblance of “justice,” it will be so only because the Black community and their allies in New York City, joined in solidarity by masses across the country, rise up in outrage and demand justice now. And if, on the other hand, the vigilante-murderer is allowed to walk free, we will then have a clear sign that the state-terrorist pigs in the NYPD know that they can deputize lynch-mobs with impunity.
Justice and peace, in other words, are in our hands — in the hands of the working-poor and oppressed masses of this country. So, too, are the very lives of our brothers and sisters.
The duty of the cops is not to “protect and serve” the people, but to terrorize, brutalize, incarcerate, and repress us.
Only we, the oppressed, can keep our brothers and sisters safe. Only we, the oppressed, can be our siblings’ keepers.
