Justice for Jordan Neely means fighting for housing, care, and dignity for all

NEW YORK, NY–Yesterday, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg announced that his office will charge Daniel Penny with manslaughter for the killing of Jordan Neely. Regardless of whether Bragg secures a conviction in this case, justice for Neely will come from addressing the real problems that led to the murder of an unhoused Black man at the hands of a white vigilante in a train full of onlookers who mostly did not try to intervene to save Neely’s life. Justice means fighting for housing, care, and dignity for all.

Eric Adams, Kathy Hochul, and their billionaire backers have blood on their hands. Jordan Neely’s murder was made possible by the political environment they made: years of austerity budgets, failure to house the tens of thousands of New Yorkers in need, opportunistically inflaming and inflating crime panic at every turn, responding to social needs of all kinds with police terror, relentless anti-homeless rhetoric, and constantly blaming poor Black and brown people for disorder in public space. Justice for Neely will come from adequately housing and caring for everyone in our city—including immigrants and asylum seekers, from whom Adams is currently attempting to strip the legally mandated right to shelter. It will come from protecting the dignity and rights of poor and working-class New Yorkers to access public space and public services without experiencing police or vigilante violence, regardless of whether they have secure housing.

The brutal attack that ended Neely’s life was made possible by both the mass abandonment of millions of New Yorkers to abject poverty and a deeply racist political culture that treats unhoused people as dangerous and expendable. Adams and Hochul have relentlessly fostered this environment. Fighting for justice for Neely and all other poor and working-class New Yorkers means opposing their shared political program, and fighting for a city that offers all of us the resources, care and dignity we deserve.

###

ABOUT NYC-DSA: New York City Democratic Socialists is the local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America—the largest socialist organization in the United States with over 85,000 members. NYC-DSA is run by its 6,000+ members and activists who are working together to build a democratic socialist organization in the five boroughs.