Don't Give In to the Bullshit

I went viral on X without knowing for defending Jordan Neely and New York. I deleted the app afterwards, but it had me wondering about the nature of being working class right now.

The disgust started, as usual, when I saw people posting Daniel Penny’s interview with Fox News. It was night, and because Elon Musk’s X is designed to show you the posts that have the highest views — no matter if you don’t even know the person who made the posts — I had no choice in seeing this man and his mug. As you should know, Daniel Penny is the subway commuter who murdered Jordan Neely, a Black man, on the subway. Penny is a 24-year-old white man from Long Island; Neely, a Black man living in New York, by way of New Jersey, was a homeless man, on an informal list of homeless people in need of assistance by the city of New York. Neely had entered the F train and started screaming about being without food and water, defiantly screaming that he did not care if he went to jail. He grabbed his jacket and threw it on the ground. In a fact that the right wing used to their advantage during this whole trial and media campaign, at one point, Neely walked up to a mother and threatened to kill. Penny, a former marine who surely has the training required to put someone in a chokehold (as someone who has veterans in his family, Black veterans at that, Penny is offensive to the life and career of many veterans), was heading to the gym. He came up behind Neely and put him in a chokehold for six minutes. Neely’s legs flailed and flailed, before they finally became lifeless. Neely was pronounced as dead after entering Lenox Hill Hospital. (Fun fact: I was born in Lenox Hill Hospital).

When this murder originally happened, on May 1st of last year, I had written something on the left-wing website Jacobin — I know you just scoffed at the fact that I wrote for Jacobin; I do too, but I didn’t have a Substack then — about Mayor Eric Adams contributing to the murder with his corny rhetoric about homeless people. It was in response to the people who were cheering or excusing this heinous act, frustratingly warring with progressives who called for Penny’s arrest. A leader of a city making the comments that Adams made, likening homeless citizens to a cancerous sore, likely transfers that venom to the citizens that voted for him. Podcasters, citizens, and people invested in becoming the new Travis Bickle, were making New York seem like a jungle full of misfits, where danger is seconds away. If you can imagine, this made me — a born and raised New Yorker who has always adored this city, every single part of it all — boil with anger. It was only a week after the murder, and I had no idea what was bound to happen with Penny; all my thought process was, at that moment, I was a working class New Yorker who was angry with my mayor for giving credence to these corny right wingers.

If you truly know me, you know that I barely care about politics. I have politics, because I am a Black man in the country that enslaved my ancestors, and a working class citizen in a city that makes being working class a challenging — but rewarding (no matter how much money the rich have, being rich is sterile: being working class means being free to be vibrant) — feeling. But, I don’t necessarily breathe them the way someone who works for The Drift might. Sure, I am angry about Gaza, who wouldn’t be angry at a genocide? Sure, I listen to Chapo Trap House and load up a few episodes every month like the rest of us do, because those dudes are funny, charming, and honest, but I dislike talking about politics. I can’t tell you which regions in Michigan chose to stay home instead of voting for the Democrats; I can only tell you that I talk to those people online, and I know how angry they are that their Arab brothers and sisters are being murdered on America’s dollar. Quite frankly: It takes too much out of my day to be talking about police violence. My infatuation for presidents and their personal facts are about what the president means to the greater culture of society, more than they are about politics. Politics and culture are obviously related, and tend to blend into one another, but politics guys care about politics. Culture guys care about culture. Furthermore, I almost never talk politics on my Substack; I want the Substack to be fun and for everyone to be able to connect with my writing, and thus, I would rather be talking about the way Woody Allen embodies every characteristic of the intellectual New Yorker in Hannah and her Sisters. I am a certified cultural anthropologist, examining the skeletons of music, cinema, sport like I am Bones from Bones. I’m obsessed with culture, the ideas that allow me to answers why Tony Soprano considers himself a soldier and not a greedy gangster, the peerless fashion on NYPD Blue, the historic institution of Saturday Night Live, the swagger of a Spike Lee joint, DMX’s clothes in Belly, Nic Cage’s insanity in Face/Off, 30 Rock’s racial humor, the reasons why Xaviersobased is the future of hip-hop. I tend to believe that politics divides us, rendering most of us as Democrats or Republicans; on the flip side, culture unites us. There is nothing like bonding with a fellow man over a movie, the moment on “Sway” where Mick Jagger starts screaming on the third verse, or discussing the Detroit Lions at the bar Honoree Club with the owner. Politics ain’t the genre for a vibrant boy like me.

However, that weekend Neely was murdered on X was full of people defending a murder of a man who needed help, a man who was not being given the basic needs of survival: shelter, food, and water; a man who was hurting in a city that is supposed to be able to protect him when he needs help. In the wake of Penny being acquitted of this murder on December 9th, and I will be calling it murder no matter what that jury thought about the act, now feels beyond the lackluster politics of Eric Adams. Penny, after the verdict, went to celebrate in a Manhattan bar. Then, he did an interview with Fox News. If you thought Penny was a bystander who did a gnarly thing, you would be shocked to hear what he says in the Fox News interview. He was startlingly in-control of what he wanted to convey. "I would not be able to live with myself if I didn't do anything in that situation and someone got hurt," he said. "I would feel guilty for the rest of my life." He even says that if he saw someone acting erratically, he would choke them again. No remorse; no code of honor. Straight excution in broad daylight, with no consequences at all.

It is impossible not to see Penny’s words as a right wing manifesto. He’s talking about being in danger like Neely wasn’t the one without food and water; he’s talking about doing it again, literally laughing in the faces of all the progressive New Yorkers that correctly view his actions as wrong. He said Neely was “extraordinarily strong”, even though Neely was a measly 5 '11. This is all a form of fear mongering: to get you to view Neely as anything but a man you should have empathy for, for you to not consider him a “productive” member of society, thus a man that is a candidate to get the life choked out of him. It’s the same thing people say about every police victim. Neely is nothing different just because he was suffered from mental illness. Penny is the murderer, the person who should not be a member of the city; Penny is the man who has no empathy for his fellow man, who decided that it was his right to murder Neely, a man who was hurting, who was systematically broken down by his city. I will never see people as bugs that I need to squash, no matter who they are or what they look like. And when my fellow man is hurting, I will express empathy at his plight, hope and wish for his comfort, and his consistent livelihood, as I hope he wishes and hopes for mine. I will never be afraid of my fellow man.

Yesterday, I saw a video of a man throwing air punches with grunt noises on the subway. Yes, the video is disturbing — he’s doing it in front of working women and men, who are getting to their destination. Yes, it’s annoying — who wants to be in a car with a man getting uncomfortably close? I didn’t want it posted on my timeline. That, along with Penny’s nazi rally of an interview, kept being floated. I snapped and tweeted that people should stay alert, keep their heads down, and never be afraid of passengers who are mentally ill in a city that no longer has the social services to help them. If you’re afraid, then fine, I understand that I am a 6’3 man and it takes more for me to be afraid than the normal human being, but I want you to wonder what it is like being homeless and over-policed. After that, get back to me. How can one be sane in a society that makes it easier to be insane than it does sane? Apparently, people were enraged at this tweet. I had deleted the app from my phone because I have been scrolling a bit too much, and I wanted to hang out with my friends last night without anything hindering me. I didn’t know until this morning, when one of my big homies, told me that I had attracted all of the racists that Elon Musk has given a platform for.

Suddenly, I was receiving threats, racial slurs, and tweets of monkeys, primates, and gorillas. At one point, I saw a reply that threatened to choke me out. (I can’t unsee the A.I. photo of the gorilla with broken down teeth out of my head. The guy talks about choking me out. It made me twitch. This is the kind of racism that will make you want to shrink in your hole for the rest of the day). These are the losers that helped elect President Trump, the losers that are now emboldened by a rich and miserable right winger like Elon Musk. These are people who are trying to normalize how right wing this country is; they’re trying to let it linger, so you don’t want to fight, so you want to accept the white nationalism on display. However, these people have met their match. Standing up for who I am is nothing new to me. I am a man of deep resolve, deep courage, deep intensity, and unfiltered principle. I planned on spending the day working on my presentation for an event that I am speaking at; I decided to write about how cowardly the right wing is, and how every time I think of Neely, I gain more empathy for his plight, for the way he entered that subway car that afternoon. New York should protect more Jordan Neely’s, and they should hold Daniel Penny’s accountable for their murderous actions.

Right now, I am writing this in a Brooklyn coffee shop. I am going on the subway soon — the L train — for my event, which coincidentally, is about the way New York changed after 9/11. People with a desire to go to their next destination, to live in a diverse city with people that they can connect with easier than the people in their hometown, natives who are surviving, still leading the diminishing culture in this city, to come to this city in order to possibly make their dreams happen, will be on the subway with me. A murder will not happen; perhaps I’ll marvel at the melodies of Xaviersobased; perhaps things will be possibly tranquil; perhaps I’ll see a few outfits that inspire me; perhaps I’ll make a comment towards a friendly stranger; “have a good day today”, maybe I’ll say.