Just a quick note — thanks so much for the thoughts flooding in. Some really incredible stuff.
One kind reader did flag one user who left a series of comments minimizing what had happened, attempting to shift the blame, and made me feel pretty gross.
"Did he deserve to be killed? Probably not (we don't KNOW exactly how he was acting, how threatening he was)"
"Flip the script - a white guy getting killed by a black guy doesn't fit the required framing narrative, so it wouldn't be reported or commented on. You can google information about the recent Alabama sweet sixteen shooting (four dead), but not a single mainstream media article about it other than the bare details (four dead, shooters arrested). No social media or commentator outrage either. Why is that?"
That kind of thing.
I refunded and banned them yesterday.
Sidenote: When a user flagged the comment, it turned up in the backend of Webworm for me to “Approve” or “Remove”.
I agreed wholeheartedly with the suggestion — so clicked “Approve”. Which I realise now approved the offensive comment, not the complaint.
LOL. The joys of moderation.
Please be assured I agreed with whoever flagged the comment, had already banned them, and have now removed the comments. Too gross. Not what Webworm is about.
Thank you for writing this. It always makes me feel better to know other people share my anger. Jordan should still be alive. Someone on that train car could have shared their water, food, or money to help him. Some small kindness could have changed his day. And now he's dead because some specially trained cunt murdered him.
Not long before I left NYC I pinned down a homeless man in the Times Square station who was in a light night fight with a white couple. They had made rude comments towards him when he asked for change and he snapped. The two men were tumbling down the stairs and I managed to grab the guy from behind and hold him down on top of me, quietly telling him I was protecting his body and loudly telling the bro and his asshole girl to fuck off. Once he had calmed, I released him, sat with him, put my arm around him when he cried, gave him food and money, and rode the subway with him for about half an hour. The idea of some big marine jumping a skinny black kid and murdering him in a similar situation makes me fucking sick to my stomach.
It is incredible what a display of respect and compassion will do to someone who is enraged at the injustice and disrespect that fate and the world has shown them.
I’ve seen Kiwis in the States be approached by homeless people and put their heads down and flee in fear. Just DON’T. Say Hi. Say ‘I’m sorry - I’ve got no cash on me - but God bless, my friend’. Or - heaven forgive - reach into your pocket, pull out whatever note you first touch, don’t look at the number on it, and hand it over. You’ll miss it far less than they’ll need it. And it is NOT YOUR PLACE to decide whether they’ll ‘just spend it on drugs’ because you never know - they MAY spend it on insulin. Or the guy that allows them to sleep in a safe place. Or bread. Or that bottle of gin that allows them to survive the day without being crushed by their depression. Don’t. Fucking. Judge.
That headline shows how we refuse to treat those in distress first as human beings worthy of love and respect. We judge. We fear.
But for the grace of God, there goes each and every one of us.
Sorry, David. You got me on this one today. I’m fucking riled up.
“ …He was very upset at the time, and most of us just looked at him,” Ms. Thompson recalled. “He said he needed help and kept repeating the words, ‘food, shelter, I need a job.’”
Ms. Thompson saw him again a week later, at about 8 p.m., when she and her 8-year-old son were on a Manhattan-bound F train. She said she gave him some money and he thanked her “for five minutes.”
Mr. Neely seemed tired, Ms. Thompson said, and told her he was embarrassed that he had not showered.”
She showed him compassion and he thanked her for five minutes. What if that Marine had - with the security of his combat training - offered help? A man would not have been murdered. FUCK.
Such a sad story. The one thing I kept thinking reading your “ranting” as you called it, was “So everyone else on the Subway let the “straphanger” kill Jordan Neely?” All of them are accomplices in my book. I would hope I would have stepped up in that instance had I been there. Of course there is such a thing as, “bystander effect” and I understand that happens too. In the past I have made a conscious effort to be the “one” person who steps up and outside their comfort zone which is all it takes to get others to also stand with you.
Related to the comment about the bystander effect - I will recommend the documentary movie The Witness, in which Kitty Genovese’s brother goes back to investigate in more depth about what happened there. He finds a lot of things that contradict the story that’s been used for so many years: https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/witness/
Don't wanna mansplain the NY subway here, so apologies if you're familiar with it - but as someone who lived there for years, it's way more likely nearly everyone on that train knew Mr Neely was not a threat. There's someone like that on damn near every train ride, without exaggeration, and they aren't actually causing problems or being a real threat. The ex-marine is the outlier and the problem.
Mansplain 😅 Thank you, I've never rode the subway but I did ride the tube (London underground)and other than the noise of the train you could hear a pin drop 🤣 Everyone very much kept to themselves.
It beggars belief that the Marine (aka all-American hero) hasn't been charged with anything. A person died by his hands. He may as well just have shot him - it would've taken less physical effort. The US never fails to disgust...
Yeah I couldn't believe that the powers that be can't even bring themselves to charge him with manslaughter! If you genuinely swallow the story that Jordan was dangerous and this man was 'restraining' him...then wouldn't you still have to admit that he'd 'unintentionally' killed someone? If that's not thegood definition of manslaughter then what the fuck is that term even for? It says it in the name. Slaughter of a man. How can a person be killed by the hand of another and it not be EITHER murder OR manslaughter?
charged with mans laughter then plead down to some sort of aggravated assault. It isnt murder because it would be hard to establish intention I would guess. But still: the poor bastard died and he just walks? That seems wrong. At least a judge should have decided that after a trial.....
I'm not a legal expert, but I am somewhat of a jiu jitsu expert as I've trained it obsessively for about a decade. IMO, this marine should be charged to the full extent possible. As a marine, he's definitely received a bit of hand to hand combat training, including being taught about chokes. He would know that 15 minutes in a choke is going to kill someone. When properly applied it only takes a few seconds for someone to lose consciousness.
He could've easily used the choke to just restrain Neely if he wanted to. Even if he felt the need to put him to sleep, he could've done so and then let go of the choke, while maintaining control.
If you hold a choke for 15 minutes, you're trying to kill someone. No if's and's or but's.
Being Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand has meant that I've been acutely aware of this kind of 'reporting' since forever. Police 10-7 was always quite the parade of 'dangerous brown men and women' of whom you should be alert and afraid. Newspaper and television reporting - the suspect is either 'a man' or 'a Māori or Pacific Islander man'. The same goes for 'single mother', 'prostitute' (now the more respectful but not less categorising 'sex worker', where they had likely asked for whatever happened to them (what were they wearing???) - probably due to a sense of despair as a result of their own slutty behaviour. Inversely, 'much loved mother-of-two' is meant to invoke a bigger sense of outrage or sadness from the reader. THEY HAD SO MUCH TO LIVE FOR.
Isn't it gross that even the term 'single mother' is interpreted negatively, as if she is somehow at fault for her circumstances (how dare she reproduce out of wedlock!) instead of the correct and compassionate interpretation which should be "what a wahine toa she must be to have probably had some prick walk out on her and leave her to battle society and capitalism alone to raise her kids"
He nui te aroha ki a koe. I'm not a single mother, just an unmarried one, and the amount of grief that society still gives me (and I'm white, so it is pretty low-key) is frankly shocking, I can't even begin to imagine how horrible people must be to all the single ladies out there trying to raise children, especially when the people commenting are subconsciously clocking the skin colour of those people as they judge them. It reminds me of that song by Clean Bandit feat. Anne-Marie.
I'm married but kept my birth name and man the struggle that was and is. the right to be considered my own person is still a huge thing in NZ (law and society ) I'm single when I pay taxes yet when I need Government help I am adjunct to my husband??
haha this has become quite a tangent from the article...but an interesting discussion so I shall continue it...
I can assure you that there is absolutely no difference with respect to de facto vs married when it comes to anything like this. Wouldn't that be a fantastic kick back for de facto couples if the government was so old-school they didn't recognise the relationship and I could claim my income alone is my household income and get more childcare assistance for our son? I guess this was sort of the point made in that Detail ep (link above) ... the system is only too ready to come down hard on women receiving the DBP back in the day if they dared to have a male friend pop over for a sleep over, and yet I bet they were simultaneously set up so that an unmarried woman couldn't get anything should her partner die or something.
Read the link - it seems that outrage came, slower than expected but it has come.
"NYC is not Gotham. We must not become a city where a mentally ill human being can be choked to death by a vigilante without consequence. Or where the killer is justified & cheered,"
So glad that shit is off the air now! I could never watch it because of the rampant racism and classism (is that a word?). I found it too distressing to watch people being judged and ridiculed during stressful situations which usually arose because our majority white male police officers target mainly young brown men and poor white folk driving old bangers.
Reminds me of another misleading New York Times headline from last year , when the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was murdered in the West Bank by the IDF. Initial headline was "Shireen Abu Akleh, Trailblazing Palestinian Journalist, Dies at 51". No mention at all that she was killed, just "dies", like it could have been from cancer or something.
Incredibly thought provoking article, I think the NYTimes has become so terribly fearful of being criticized that they now use passive language in almost any situation even when doing so is irresponsible journalism.
I have lived in NYC for almost 10 years and take the subway alone regularly at all times of the day and night. I have witnessed such behaviour from mentally ill and homeless people first hand and although it can often be alarming I have never felt in physical danger. Were I a former Marine, presumably with combat training, I would imagine I would see such a person as even less of a threat.
These people are usually desperate and even those I have seen behave “aggressively” are usually very quick to calm down if they are lucky enough to get a few dollars for food or shelter and I have even had conversations with a few of them. We’re all human beings, and some of us are luckier than others and could do with being reminded of that from time to time.
Thanks for the insight into your NY time, Donal. As you say things can get unhinged and even scary at times I imagine (I have felt scared on the subway) but the jump from that to a 15 minute chokehold while everyone watches is just... no words.
I grew up in Chicago and also experienced mentally ill and homeless people on the subway - I never really felt threatened, especially if there were a lot of people around. It doesn't sound like Jordan was putting himself or others in danger. I don't understand why violence was chosen rather than kindness. Like you said, giving someone a couple or dollars or even just talking to them to show them compassion will usually de-escalate the problem. Very sad.
I am always amazed at newspapers’ habit of framing cyclist deaths, every time a car driver plows into a cyclist and kills them, by stating “a cyclist collided with a car...”. As opposed to “A car driver did not look properly...” or “A driver was texting when they...” or “Poor road layout obscured a driver view of a cyclist and they...”. Framing is everything, yet somehow in my mind I still pretend news is ‘factual news’
Great insight into cycling death reporting. You're bang on.
The general attitude in NZ to cyclists and public transport is so incredibly skewed in general - and a lot of the reporting is not helping (some is, I am just talking in huge generalisations here!)
Yes! This always annoys me too and I think it's really reflective of how a lot of people feel about cyclists (annoying, arrogant, shouldn't be on our roads, was probably their fault anyway etc etc)
Jane Gilmore runs a project called FixedIt on FB, which addresses the headline issue for male violence towards women and children. Headlines frame violent men as responding to challenging circumstances and their female victims as inhuman or making bad choices.
David’s article about the way NYT framed the murder immediately brought Jane Gilmore and her “Fixed It!” Project to mind. I googled it, and saw that she has now written a book. Women, and men of colour are consistently reduced to passive beings to whom bad things “just happen” in the media.
Wait - he's not being charged even though he spent FIFTEEN MINUTES murdering someone whose only crime was being inconvenient during their ride home?
If you're wondering what stage of evolution we're in, looks like we are still in the 'chimp kills the weak and ill because it may be contagious' stage.
I'm pleased you chose chimpanzees as your comparison. Like us, they are super-violent great apes, unlike our other cousins, bonobo, gorillas and orangutans. What a shame that we aren't more like the peaceful, vegan mountain gorilla.
USA seems to be full of super-violent people at the moment. I can't help wondering why Chicago is totally different from Toronto, only a handful of miles away.
That's definitely part of the problem, prioritizing the comfort of the privileged over the needs of others. That's such a hubristic line of thinking, though: Nearly all of us are merely one or two major losses away from being Jordan ourselves. We could all become ill, disabled, homeless, etc. in an instant. You never think it could be you until, suddenly, it *is* you.
I agree. It’s humans disassociating at our finest and a massive part of individualistic societies. Putting a marker between us and them. Making ourselves feel better by convincing ourselves “they” don’t deserve help.
It's true. They're always doing sweeps and trashing unhoused people's few belongings as if that's going to make them go away because they're seen as a problem and not people who need help.
"Man dies after another inexcusable use of the passive voice."
This cowardice is something the news media desperately needs to face up to. It lies at the heart of journalism's supposed mission, which is to *tell the truth.* Using the passive voice in this way distorts and destroys truth; it evades both responsibility and reality.
I have so many thoughts and emotions here. Heartbroken for poor Jordan and absolutely enraged over every other detail of this. Most folks I know (myself included) have some kind of mental health issue. The general public fails to realize that could easily be someone they know in that situation that needs assistance and instead turn a blind eye to it and pretend its not even happening. And a poor man was murdered because of it 😥. I hope there is some kind of larger outrage over this and justice will be served for poor Jordan.
What you call "ranting" is what we are all here for, David, and we love you for it. A gentle voice of reason in an otherwise chaotic world ❤️❤️❤️.
Thanks, Jo. It took me awhile to come back and read comments on this one as I was still seething about it all. But reading them has been, as usual, very therapeutic.
So a train load of people watched on as an innocent man was slowly choked to death by some strap-hanging bystander. But the victim is the one who is "unhinged" and "violent". Yeah, fk that
I remember being in a psych class at Uni 20 years ago and the task we were given was to pull apart a news story - written that year - that was a similar thing. Thankfully the man (brown, homeless, mental health issues) wasn’t killed BUT the tone, the lack of empathy for his humanity was the same. It’s disgusting and infuriating.
It really does. I was reading a story today about a man and woman on trial for murdering a woman in Chch in the 90s and the woman on trial was referred to as an ex-stripper. The man on trial had no such qualification. Just his name. 😤
And that has similarities in the denigrating way that those in opposition are currently framing trans issues, as we talked about in the post last month. That framing is likely meant to project a “this is all right and good” to try and frame the discussion.
Just a quick note — thanks so much for the thoughts flooding in. Some really incredible stuff.
One kind reader did flag one user who left a series of comments minimizing what had happened, attempting to shift the blame, and made me feel pretty gross.
"Did he deserve to be killed? Probably not (we don't KNOW exactly how he was acting, how threatening he was)"
"Flip the script - a white guy getting killed by a black guy doesn't fit the required framing narrative, so it wouldn't be reported or commented on. You can google information about the recent Alabama sweet sixteen shooting (four dead), but not a single mainstream media article about it other than the bare details (four dead, shooters arrested). No social media or commentator outrage either. Why is that?"
That kind of thing.
I refunded and banned them yesterday.
Sidenote: When a user flagged the comment, it turned up in the backend of Webworm for me to “Approve” or “Remove”.
I agreed wholeheartedly with the suggestion — so clicked “Approve”. Which I realise now approved the offensive comment, not the complaint.
LOL. The joys of moderation.
Please be assured I agreed with whoever flagged the comment, had already banned them, and have now removed the comments. Too gross. Not what Webworm is about.
Thank you for writing this. It always makes me feel better to know other people share my anger. Jordan should still be alive. Someone on that train car could have shared their water, food, or money to help him. Some small kindness could have changed his day. And now he's dead because some specially trained cunt murdered him.
I came to say essentially the same thing. Thanks for throwing in the word cunt though, you perfected it
Thanks, that's nice to hear. Usually it's the opposite lol
Cunt is the perfect word.
Could not agree more. 💗
Not long before I left NYC I pinned down a homeless man in the Times Square station who was in a light night fight with a white couple. They had made rude comments towards him when he asked for change and he snapped. The two men were tumbling down the stairs and I managed to grab the guy from behind and hold him down on top of me, quietly telling him I was protecting his body and loudly telling the bro and his asshole girl to fuck off. Once he had calmed, I released him, sat with him, put my arm around him when he cried, gave him food and money, and rode the subway with him for about half an hour. The idea of some big marine jumping a skinny black kid and murdering him in a similar situation makes me fucking sick to my stomach.
It is incredible what a display of respect and compassion will do to someone who is enraged at the injustice and disrespect that fate and the world has shown them.
I’ve seen Kiwis in the States be approached by homeless people and put their heads down and flee in fear. Just DON’T. Say Hi. Say ‘I’m sorry - I’ve got no cash on me - but God bless, my friend’. Or - heaven forgive - reach into your pocket, pull out whatever note you first touch, don’t look at the number on it, and hand it over. You’ll miss it far less than they’ll need it. And it is NOT YOUR PLACE to decide whether they’ll ‘just spend it on drugs’ because you never know - they MAY spend it on insulin. Or the guy that allows them to sleep in a safe place. Or bread. Or that bottle of gin that allows them to survive the day without being crushed by their depression. Don’t. Fucking. Judge.
That headline shows how we refuse to treat those in distress first as human beings worthy of love and respect. We judge. We fear.
But for the grace of God, there goes each and every one of us.
Sorry, David. You got me on this one today. I’m fucking riled up.
Just found this in a new NYT article:
“ …He was very upset at the time, and most of us just looked at him,” Ms. Thompson recalled. “He said he needed help and kept repeating the words, ‘food, shelter, I need a job.’”
Ms. Thompson saw him again a week later, at about 8 p.m., when she and her 8-year-old son were on a Manhattan-bound F train. She said she gave him some money and he thanked her “for five minutes.”
Mr. Neely seemed tired, Ms. Thompson said, and told her he was embarrassed that he had not showered.”
She showed him compassion and he thanked her for five minutes. What if that Marine had - with the security of his combat training - offered help? A man would not have been murdered. FUCK.
THANK YOU SO, SO MUCH FOR THIS STORY.
Just seeing how it played out for you, thank you. Invaluable insight and advice.
Thank you.
Thank you.
thank you - And I agree.
This comment really got to me.. Thank you!
Such a sad story. The one thing I kept thinking reading your “ranting” as you called it, was “So everyone else on the Subway let the “straphanger” kill Jordan Neely?” All of them are accomplices in my book. I would hope I would have stepped up in that instance had I been there. Of course there is such a thing as, “bystander effect” and I understand that happens too. In the past I have made a conscious effort to be the “one” person who steps up and outside their comfort zone which is all it takes to get others to also stand with you.
I wish someone would have done so for Mr. Neely.
Related to the comment about the bystander effect - I will recommend the documentary movie The Witness, in which Kitty Genovese’s brother goes back to investigate in more depth about what happened there. He finds a lot of things that contradict the story that’s been used for so many years: https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/witness/
They were probably terrified of the "raging black man", unaware that they were fearful of the wrong person in that carriage....
Don't wanna mansplain the NY subway here, so apologies if you're familiar with it - but as someone who lived there for years, it's way more likely nearly everyone on that train knew Mr Neely was not a threat. There's someone like that on damn near every train ride, without exaggeration, and they aren't actually causing problems or being a real threat. The ex-marine is the outlier and the problem.
Mansplain 😅 Thank you, I've never rode the subway but I did ride the tube (London underground)and other than the noise of the train you could hear a pin drop 🤣 Everyone very much kept to themselves.
Probably but still.
What an excellent and tragic point!
It beggars belief that the Marine (aka all-American hero) hasn't been charged with anything. A person died by his hands. He may as well just have shot him - it would've taken less physical effort. The US never fails to disgust...
Yeah I couldn't believe that the powers that be can't even bring themselves to charge him with manslaughter! If you genuinely swallow the story that Jordan was dangerous and this man was 'restraining' him...then wouldn't you still have to admit that he'd 'unintentionally' killed someone? If that's not thegood definition of manslaughter then what the fuck is that term even for? It says it in the name. Slaughter of a man. How can a person be killed by the hand of another and it not be EITHER murder OR manslaughter?
charged with mans laughter then plead down to some sort of aggravated assault. It isnt murder because it would be hard to establish intention I would guess. But still: the poor bastard died and he just walks? That seems wrong. At least a judge should have decided that after a trial.....
Things maybe heading in a more just direction, if prosecutors move on it: https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-dies-after-chokehold-nyc-subway-amid-rise/story?id=99038260
I'm not a legal expert, but I am somewhat of a jiu jitsu expert as I've trained it obsessively for about a decade. IMO, this marine should be charged to the full extent possible. As a marine, he's definitely received a bit of hand to hand combat training, including being taught about chokes. He would know that 15 minutes in a choke is going to kill someone. When properly applied it only takes a few seconds for someone to lose consciousness.
He could've easily used the choke to just restrain Neely if he wanted to. Even if he felt the need to put him to sleep, he could've done so and then let go of the choke, while maintaining control.
If you hold a choke for 15 minutes, you're trying to kill someone. No if's and's or but's.
Being Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand has meant that I've been acutely aware of this kind of 'reporting' since forever. Police 10-7 was always quite the parade of 'dangerous brown men and women' of whom you should be alert and afraid. Newspaper and television reporting - the suspect is either 'a man' or 'a Māori or Pacific Islander man'. The same goes for 'single mother', 'prostitute' (now the more respectful but not less categorising 'sex worker', where they had likely asked for whatever happened to them (what were they wearing???) - probably due to a sense of despair as a result of their own slutty behaviour. Inversely, 'much loved mother-of-two' is meant to invoke a bigger sense of outrage or sadness from the reader. THEY HAD SO MUCH TO LIVE FOR.
Isn't it gross that even the term 'single mother' is interpreted negatively, as if she is somehow at fault for her circumstances (how dare she reproduce out of wedlock!) instead of the correct and compassionate interpretation which should be "what a wahine toa she must be to have probably had some prick walk out on her and leave her to battle society and capitalism alone to raise her kids"
YES.
As a single mother I can tautoko that interpretation as presented to me repeatedly.
He nui te aroha ki a koe. I'm not a single mother, just an unmarried one, and the amount of grief that society still gives me (and I'm white, so it is pretty low-key) is frankly shocking, I can't even begin to imagine how horrible people must be to all the single ladies out there trying to raise children, especially when the people commenting are subconsciously clocking the skin colour of those people as they judge them. It reminds me of that song by Clean Bandit feat. Anne-Marie.
I'm married but kept my birth name and man the struggle that was and is. the right to be considered my own person is still a huge thing in NZ (law and society ) I'm single when I pay taxes yet when I need Government help I am adjunct to my husband??
haha this has become quite a tangent from the article...but an interesting discussion so I shall continue it...
I can assure you that there is absolutely no difference with respect to de facto vs married when it comes to anything like this. Wouldn't that be a fantastic kick back for de facto couples if the government was so old-school they didn't recognise the relationship and I could claim my income alone is my household income and get more childcare assistance for our son? I guess this was sort of the point made in that Detail ep (link above) ... the system is only too ready to come down hard on women receiving the DBP back in the day if they dared to have a male friend pop over for a sleep over, and yet I bet they were simultaneously set up so that an unmarried woman couldn't get anything should her partner die or something.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5od4SIqzdg1W51V3iHcdqG?si=sJKHc8fjTfiAEXwGA7yY1g
I was just listening to this on RNZ!!!
I can't even begin to imagine all that stuff piled on day after day. I notice elements of it - you will be on a whole other level.
(The demise of the old format and style of Police 10-7 was far beyond due).
Thanks for being here.
HOPEFULLY prosecutors move on this particular US case: https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-dies-after-chokehold-nyc-subway-amid-rise/story?id=99038260
Read the link - it seems that outrage came, slower than expected but it has come.
"NYC is not Gotham. We must not become a city where a mentally ill human being can be choked to death by a vigilante without consequence. Or where the killer is justified & cheered,"
That Police 10-7 guy was also a lover the word “mongrel” 🤦🏻♀️ the framing has so much impact and when used this way is so dehumanising
that's horrific. I wouldn't even use that term for a dog nowadays.
So glad that shit is off the air now! I could never watch it because of the rampant racism and classism (is that a word?). I found it too distressing to watch people being judged and ridiculed during stressful situations which usually arose because our majority white male police officers target mainly young brown men and poor white folk driving old bangers.
Classism is absolutely a word and that show definitely promoted and perpetuated classism. So gross.
Reminds me of another misleading New York Times headline from last year , when the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was murdered in the West Bank by the IDF. Initial headline was "Shireen Abu Akleh, Trailblazing Palestinian Journalist, Dies at 51". No mention at all that she was killed, just "dies", like it could have been from cancer or something.
In the UK media it was presented as “she was in the wrong place, and got hit by a stray bullet, oops!” as if it was her fault!
Jesus, what the fuck?
Incredibly thought provoking article, I think the NYTimes has become so terribly fearful of being criticized that they now use passive language in almost any situation even when doing so is irresponsible journalism.
I have lived in NYC for almost 10 years and take the subway alone regularly at all times of the day and night. I have witnessed such behaviour from mentally ill and homeless people first hand and although it can often be alarming I have never felt in physical danger. Were I a former Marine, presumably with combat training, I would imagine I would see such a person as even less of a threat.
These people are usually desperate and even those I have seen behave “aggressively” are usually very quick to calm down if they are lucky enough to get a few dollars for food or shelter and I have even had conversations with a few of them. We’re all human beings, and some of us are luckier than others and could do with being reminded of that from time to time.
Thanks for the insight into your NY time, Donal. As you say things can get unhinged and even scary at times I imagine (I have felt scared on the subway) but the jump from that to a 15 minute chokehold while everyone watches is just... no words.
Again - thank you for being here.
I grew up in Chicago and also experienced mentally ill and homeless people on the subway - I never really felt threatened, especially if there were a lot of people around. It doesn't sound like Jordan was putting himself or others in danger. I don't understand why violence was chosen rather than kindness. Like you said, giving someone a couple or dollars or even just talking to them to show them compassion will usually de-escalate the problem. Very sad.
I am always amazed at newspapers’ habit of framing cyclist deaths, every time a car driver plows into a cyclist and kills them, by stating “a cyclist collided with a car...”. As opposed to “A car driver did not look properly...” or “A driver was texting when they...” or “Poor road layout obscured a driver view of a cyclist and they...”. Framing is everything, yet somehow in my mind I still pretend news is ‘factual news’
Great insight into cycling death reporting. You're bang on.
The general attitude in NZ to cyclists and public transport is so incredibly skewed in general - and a lot of the reporting is not helping (some is, I am just talking in huge generalisations here!)
Yes! This always annoys me too and I think it's really reflective of how a lot of people feel about cyclists (annoying, arrogant, shouldn't be on our roads, was probably their fault anyway etc etc)
anyone who commutes by bicycle knows exactly how car drivers feel about cyclists.
I'm a motorbike rider, and the amount of times inattentive dickheads kill riders then its a "motorcycle crash"..... gets on my tits.
Jane Gilmore runs a project called FixedIt on FB, which addresses the headline issue for male violence towards women and children. Headlines frame violent men as responding to challenging circumstances and their female victims as inhuman or making bad choices.
David’s article about the way NYT framed the murder immediately brought Jane Gilmore and her “Fixed It!” Project to mind. I googled it, and saw that she has now written a book. Women, and men of colour are consistently reduced to passive beings to whom bad things “just happen” in the media.
Thanks for this - I had not heard of this until now. Cheers, Ang.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41955506
She wrote a fascinating book about the project... really eye opening
Wait - he's not being charged even though he spent FIFTEEN MINUTES murdering someone whose only crime was being inconvenient during their ride home?
If you're wondering what stage of evolution we're in, looks like we are still in the 'chimp kills the weak and ill because it may be contagious' stage.
I'm pleased you chose chimpanzees as your comparison. Like us, they are super-violent great apes, unlike our other cousins, bonobo, gorillas and orangutans. What a shame that we aren't more like the peaceful, vegan mountain gorilla.
USA seems to be full of super-violent people at the moment. I can't help wondering why Chicago is totally different from Toronto, only a handful of miles away.
So sad. How is our response to desperate people murder? Why is that presented as a sane action?
Less of them, less to worry about. As disgusting as that is to type, it's underlying the whole thing. Always.
That's definitely part of the problem, prioritizing the comfort of the privileged over the needs of others. That's such a hubristic line of thinking, though: Nearly all of us are merely one or two major losses away from being Jordan ourselves. We could all become ill, disabled, homeless, etc. in an instant. You never think it could be you until, suddenly, it *is* you.
I agree. It’s humans disassociating at our finest and a massive part of individualistic societies. Putting a marker between us and them. Making ourselves feel better by convincing ourselves “they” don’t deserve help.
It's true. They're always doing sweeps and trashing unhoused people's few belongings as if that's going to make them go away because they're seen as a problem and not people who need help.
"Man dies after another inexcusable use of the passive voice."
This cowardice is something the news media desperately needs to face up to. It lies at the heart of journalism's supposed mission, which is to *tell the truth.* Using the passive voice in this way distorts and destroys truth; it evades both responsibility and reality.
I have so many thoughts and emotions here. Heartbroken for poor Jordan and absolutely enraged over every other detail of this. Most folks I know (myself included) have some kind of mental health issue. The general public fails to realize that could easily be someone they know in that situation that needs assistance and instead turn a blind eye to it and pretend its not even happening. And a poor man was murdered because of it 😥. I hope there is some kind of larger outrage over this and justice will be served for poor Jordan.
What you call "ranting" is what we are all here for, David, and we love you for it. A gentle voice of reason in an otherwise chaotic world ❤️❤️❤️.
Thanks, Jo. It took me awhile to come back and read comments on this one as I was still seething about it all. But reading them has been, as usual, very therapeutic.
I'm so glad it helps you ❤️❤️❤️❤️
P.S. here's a cute tiktok cat for you 😍:
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRwqVJmh/
So a train load of people watched on as an innocent man was slowly choked to death by some strap-hanging bystander. But the victim is the one who is "unhinged" and "violent". Yeah, fk that
I remember being in a psych class at Uni 20 years ago and the task we were given was to pull apart a news story - written that year - that was a similar thing. Thankfully the man (brown, homeless, mental health issues) wasn’t killed BUT the tone, the lack of empathy for his humanity was the same. It’s disgusting and infuriating.
Amazing how this stuff can stick with you. As in, once you see it you can't unsee it.
Go the psych class!
It really does. I was reading a story today about a man and woman on trial for murdering a woman in Chch in the 90s and the woman on trial was referred to as an ex-stripper. The man on trial had no such qualification. Just his name. 😤
And that has similarities in the denigrating way that those in opposition are currently framing trans issues, as we talked about in the post last month. That framing is likely meant to project a “this is all right and good” to try and frame the discussion.