Jordan Neely’s death is inspiring protests like nothing New York has seen since George Floyd
OPINION: A group named Warriors In the Garden is helping organize a lot of the resistance.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
The killing of Jordan Neely has plunged New York City into protests that have a ferocity not seen since the protests about George Floyd’s death back in 2020. People are protesting in the streets and in the subway stations. Days ago people climbed down onto the subway tracks and stopped the trains from running. This is a sort of civil disobedience that many of us saw when Black Lives Matter marchers shut down highways. They’re stopping the gears of society from turning to show that their plea is too important to just let everyone go on.
Unlike more polite forms of protest, like marching on the sidewalk, civil disobedience demands that the system respond because it has been halted. The civil rights legend Bayard Rustin spoke of needing “angelic troublemakers” who could help make the gears of the machine stop. “The only weapon we have is our bodies,” Rustin famously said. “And we have to tuck them in places so wheels don’t turn.” This is the thought process behind shutting down highways or subway trains.
One of the groups that’s organizing protests is Warriors In the Garden, which started back during the George Floyd protests and was featured on “This American Life.” I spoke with two of the Warriors’ leaders Dwreck Ingram and Kiara Williams.
The following is an edited transcript of that conversation:
Toure: Why do you think this particular story has struck such a nerve that we have days of protesting?
Ingram: Jordan’s story meets at the crossroads of him being Black and him suffering from mental health issues. He was also autistic. He was an orphan. He was poor. He was unhoused, and so many people resonate with at least a part of his story. And then you add a white vigilante on top of that and him dying and that death and that murder being watched by a car full of New Yorkers and nobody doing anything… I think that says a lot about New York City and unhoused people being invisible.
Williams: And also about Black lives not being as valued. Another aspect of this is seeing the video of him being choked to death. That brought everybody back to 2020 and George Floyd.
Toure: Why did you have people go onto the train tracks?
Ingram: We stormed the tracks for a very specific reason. We were inspired by the day of outrage in 1987. [On that day, hundreds of protesters stood on the subway tracks, stopping trains, in response to the killings of several Black New Yorkers.] We saw how demonstrators and our elders came together to try to have a financial impact on the city. So we decided maybe it’s not enough to just march. We wanna do something a bit more strategic and a bit different. We wanted to move a bit differently, and that’s why we took a different approach instead of just doing a formal march.
Toure: Did you make a material difference in the subway?
Ingram: Absolutely. We held both trains, the Q and the F train, for over an hour.
Williams: That’s also a direct hit to the MTA for their silence. Because their silence is complicity. These things are happening on their subways, and we know they side with the NYPD and not the people who pay for the train to go.
Toure: As New Yorkers, we know New York Mayor Eric Adams has made it a priority to remove the sight of homeless people from the subway over the last year. We’ve seen the flooding of officers on platforms as if middle class people just eyeballing homeless people is the biggest problem in the city.
Ingram: Yeah, Eric Adams also targeted a lot of homeless encampments. So, not only was he targeting homeless people in the subway, he was targeting people who set up homes on the street because they can’t afford to live and pay $3,000 a month for an apartment that’s a box. We’re seeing a criminalization of poverty, and they’ve been reducing resources, mental health resources, while there’s been an increase in those who are unhoused.
Toure: Part of what comes up for me in this situation is that Neely is not a perfect victim, right? He perhaps was being aggressive that day. He has this arrest record. Now, many of those arrests are fare evasion and disorderly conduct, and who knows what that really means. But it’s like Black people need to be perfect victims or there’s a lot of noise in the situation and…
Ingram: We don’t believe that there is such a thing as a perfect victim. We believe every life has value no matter who you are and what’s your place in life. It doesn’t matter if you have access to resources or privilege or don’t or if you’re on the margins.
Williams: Jordan was failed by the systems – given his background and his mom being murdered and him being put into foster care and then him having to figure out how to live on his own at a young age and dancing on the subway to make money.
Ingram: Jordan wasn’t killed with a knife or a gun. He was killed with someone’s bare hands as other people watched on and other individuals held him down. And I think there’s been a a shift societally where people who devalue Black bodies have become more and more brazen in expressing that.
Toure: What do y’all want to happen out of all this?
Williams: The obvious is Daniel Penny [the man who held Neely in the chokehold that ended his life] being held accountable. But the other side of it is the budget. Mayor Eric Adams has made budget cuts to mental health resources. So we need a reallocation of those funds into services for our people to get them the help that they need.
Toure: You guys definitely want Perry held accountable, like, let’s arrest him, have a trial, have an investigation. If they find that he’s not guilty, then so be it. But we have to at least…
Ingram: There’s no, “so be it.” He’s guilty. I’m sorry. There’s no, “so be it.” And we hope that they don’t play around with the laws of the system, especially in New York City because if he’s found not guilty, I don’t know how this is gonna look after.
Williams: He was a trained Marine putting a powerless person in a chokehold. That was murder. We have to call it what it is.
Toure: Are you planning more protests?
Ingram: Yes we have 15 actions planned throughout the month of May all focused on bringing attention to what happened to Jordan and seeking justice for him.
Touré is a host and Creative Director at theGrio. He is the host of the podcast “Toure Show” and the podcast docuseries “Who Was Prince?” He is also the author of seven books including the Prince biography “Nothing Compares 2 U “and the ebook “The Ivy League Counterfeiter. “Look out for his upcoming podcast “Being Black In the 80s.“
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