Squad Dems Vote Against Resolution Honoring Fallen Police
Two members of the far-left "Squad" Democrats were the only House lawmakers to vote against a resolution recognizing fallen police officers.
Democratic representatives Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Cori Bush (Mo.) stood alone in rejecting a resolution to support "National Police Week," which passed 413-2 on Monday. The pair said the measure pushed a "false narrative."
"It is a document intended to advance Republicans’ false narrative around supporting law enforcement and gaslight the public about where they stand," they said in a Tuesday statement.
They said the resolution is "not a referendum on support for the safety of first responders."
Monday's resolution honored 556 law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty.
The Democrats brought up January 6, 2021, as a reason to justify their rejection.
"Far from supporting law enforcement, Republicans are using their majority to actively target agencies that try to uphold the law and hold them and their cult leader Donald Trump accountable for their criminal behavior," Tlaib and Bush said.
Both have supported defunding the police, the Hill reported:
Bush has frequently expressed support for defunding the police. In August 2022, she declared in an interview "defunding the police has to happen,"adding "We need to defund the police and put that money into social safety nets because we’re trying to save lives."
She defended the use of the slogan in February 2022, telling a group of Black reporters, "’Defund the police’ is not the problem."
"We dangled the carrot in front of people’s faces and said we can get it done and that Democrats deliver, when we haven’t totally delivered," she added.
Tlaib has similarly made comments critical of law enforcement in the past. In April 2021, she said policing in the U.S. is "intentionally racist" and "can’t be reformed" after Daunte Wright was fatally shot in a Minneapolis suburb. She said there should be, "No more policing, incarceration, and militarization."
The vote comes weeks after it was revealed that the "Squad," which includes other far-left House members including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), has spent a combined $1 million on private security despite advancing measures to defund the police.
The New York City subway system is a deadly place. Crimes are disproportionately committed by black men. Passengers take that information with them when they enter the subway. When Neely, as reports indicate, began shouting in an irrational and threatening manner, passengers went into “fight or flight” mode. The three men who restrained Neely worked to keep him immobilized until police arrived.
Leftists from D.A. Alvin Bragg to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, though, hate self-defense because it makes people less dependent on the government. When a bodega worker killed a threatening robber, Bragg indicted the worker for murder. He wanted to do the same when a garage security guard wrestled the gun from a robber who shot him and fired back, killing the robber. Recall that, in Canada, Justin Trudeau has successfully eliminated self-defense:
George Soros-funded DAs, AGs and secretaries of state were not chosen for their intellectual firepower but for their loyalty
As of this writing (5:23 AM EDT), the legal defense fund established at GiveSendGo.com is a few thousand dollars short of $1.5 million, at $1,473,253. I am afraid that the hero Marine will need every penny and more if he is to beat this awful manslaughter rap for saving fellow subway passengers from a deranged man with a history of violent assaults on strangers.
As of this writing (5:23 AM EDT), the legal defense fund established at GiveSendGo.com is a few thousand dollars short of $1.5 million, at $1,473,253. I am afraid that the hero Marine will need every penny and more if he is to beat this awful manslaughter rap for saving fellow subway passengers from a deranged man with a history of violent assaults on strangers.
Jordan Neely Was on ‘Top 50’ List of at-Risk New York City Homeless People
Jordan Neely, the mentally ill New York City
man who died while having an erratic
outburst, was on the city’s “top 50” list of at-
risk homeless people who stood out for the
severity of their troubles and resistance to
help, the New York Times reported.
Jordan Neely, the mentally ill New York City
man who died while having an erratic
outburst, was on the city’s “top 50” list of at-
risk homeless people who stood out for the
severity of their troubles and resistance to
help, the New York Times reported.
Penny's response was measured. According to witnesses, he did not leap into action until after Neely started issuing death threats. "I would kill a m-----------," said Neely. "I don't care. I'll take a bullet. I'll go to jail." However unintentionally, Penny helped Neely fulfill his death wish.
Eleven days later, the Morlocks' enablers got their way. Manhattan's district attorney, Alvin Bragg, feeling the need to sacrifice a white man to the woke gods, charged Penny with manslaughter.
In subterranean New York, Penny came face to face with a modern Morlock, Jordan Neely by name. Neely had been arrested 42 times in the past 10 years and had a well documented mental health history. The NYPD knew he was dangerous. They had arrested Neely most recently in November 2021 on felony assault charges after he punched a 67-year-old female stranger in the face.
One study counted 286,075 firearm deaths among black people from 1990 to 2021. That’s over a quarter of a million deaths. Some of them are due to suicide, but suicides are much lower among black people than white people, and the majority of black gun deaths were homicides.
Jordan Neely Was Not a Victim of White Supremacy – Nor of Lack of Services
The leftists celebrating Neely wield a weapon that will hurt more like him.
I was debating gun control. Someone insisted that his gun was his best protection. I told him that his best protection is something he can’t even see, something he’s probably never thought about. His best protection is something ephemeral, something multisyllabic; something you can’t explain in a soundbite. “Your best protection,” I insisted, “is narrative.”
My family lived in the same house for almost seventy years. I was in and out of that house for decades. Not only did I never use a key, I don’t even know if a key existed. We slept with doors and windows open. Neighbors walked in and out without knocking. We lived in New Jersey, America’s most densely populated state. Our town was mostly white but there were blacks, Ramapo Mountain People, Chinese, Indians, Filipinos, Arabs, and Hispanics as well.
It wasn’t paradise. My hometown exposed me to the slings and arrows that flesh is heir to. In just three short blocks, I know of four women who had serious mental health or cognitive issues. This was back in the bad old days when doctors would irresponsibly over-prescribe drugs like Thorazine and Miltown. There was substance abuse, domestic abuse, suicides attempted and completed, and the very rare ax murder. Our town was industrial and cancer was ubiquitous. One family seemed targeted by God: cancer, crippling injury, chronic illness. And we were poor.
What made the town so safe? My best guess. We shared narrative. We were all working class, and religiously observant, largely church-going Catholics. We were children or grandchildren of immigrants. We were patriotic Americans who realized how lucky we were to be here, and not there, where our cousins lived under Communism or otherwise in poverty. The kids played together. The adults socialized together. We thought of ourselves as characters in each other’s narrative.
Some envision ideal love as A staring at B and B staring back at A. That love eventually tarnishes. Passion cools and familiarity breeds contempt. A more long-lasting love is structured as A and B staring, together, at C. C could be God. C could be the kids. C could be a shared business or home ownership. The C that binds people together could be a shared narrative. That shared narrative, like a quilt, can connect diverse people who have never met. Many Americans felt this after 9-11. That stunning attack caused normally quarreling and remote people to feel invested in each others’ lives.
There were bad things I could have done, that many kids do, that I never did, because they went against our narrative. Shoplifting. Smoking. Getting drunk. Taking drugs. Teen pregnancy. Skipping homework. Everyone around me, in what they said on these topics, informed me that they went against our narrative. If I did them, I’d feel guilty and ashamed. I would feel that I had taken a step down in status; I’d feel degraded. I would feel that I had hurt and betrayed people to whom I was connected, not just my parents, but my town and my ancestors.
Narrative: God bless America. Narrative: young people owe older people respect. Narrative: sex before marriage is a sin. Narrative: “Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.” Narrative: men and women are different and they have different roles they must fulfill. Men support their kids. Women nurture life. Narrative: drug abuse is shameful and deadly and a terrible burden for loved ones. Addicts are responsible for their own recovery. Narrative: you are part of a larger society and you share important values and history with that larger society. You donate to charity. You stand for the national anthem. You give your seat to an older person on public transportation. You stand up for the little guy. If you are drafted, you serve, even if the Vietnam War is controversial. You stop at red lights. You wear a slip under a skirt. You owe other people your participation in the larger narrative.
Again, my little town hosted the same challenges humans face everywhere. I know of at least two victims of domestic violence who went to live with neighbors for a time in order to escape what was going on at home. We were unaware of domestic violence shelters. Addicts were pressured to attend Twelve Step meetings that were held in the basement of the Catholic church down the street. In one case, my dad personally prevented a neighbor from committing suicide. I don’t know if this man ever saw a therapist; he saw my dad, a neighbor. It wasn’t paradise. There was a lot of human pain. But it was extremely safe.
The most dangerous place I ever lived was the Central African Republic, a remote and very poor country. Guns were not the problem. Most people’s most deadly weapons were their machetes. Overcrowding was not the problem. There were only 2.5 million people in a country the size of Texas. The Central African Republic had abundant resources. My students told me that if they got hungry they could go into the bush and easily capture their next meal.
Violence was unceasing: bombings, stabbings, kidnaps, rapes, torture, cannibalism, theft, riots, threats. The 2013 reports of “genocide” of Christians by Muslims, and then subsequent retaliatory killings of Muslims by Christians are just one violent outbreak among many in CAR. One among many problems is a lack of shared narrative. CAR was a major site of slave raids, then a colony, then ruled by Bokassa, an evil, corrupt dictator. Some tribes were slave traders; some tribes were cargo. Central Africans see themselves as members of their particular tribe. The country has never had a unifying government or a national narrative.
I remember once traveling by pick-up truck through miles of uninhabited bush. Those next to me on the truck were plotting, in Sango, to kill the Arabic-speaking Muslims on the truck. The truck broke down in the middle of nowhere and I got off and just started walking. I didn’t want to be around when and if the killing began.
The narratives that create a safe environment can be destructive. I lived in a very safe, remote village in Nepal. I slept with my door open. I trekked, often alone, miles through the Himalayan Mountains. I recognized that one narrative that rendered that tiny village so safe was the Hindu caste system and also karma, the caste system’s frightening threats of eternal punishments for anyone who violated caste. My neighbors were devout and lived in fear of the punishments outlined in Hindu scripture. In spite of my foreignness, given my pale skin and facial features, Nepalis interpreted me as high caste. The caste systems’ rigidity was a narrative that kept believers in check.
Narrative’s power is displayed in efforts to institute new narratives. In recent years, the Woke have introduced new vocabulary and severely punished those who refused to adopt it. Teachers who refer to male students as “he” can be fired. Words must constantly be rendered unspeakable and new words must replace them. “Racism” becomes “anti-blackness.” “Homeless” becomes “unhoused.” “Slave” becomes “enslaved person.” “Pregnant mother” becomes “pregnant person.” “Breast feeding” becomes “chest feeding.” The Woke advance is charted in narrative changes.
Characters must be replaced. “White man” is now an insult. New main characters arrive to replace the problematic white man. In Hamilton, America’s Founding Fathers are not white. In the new Camelot, Lancelot sports an Afro. On Netflix, King George III’s wife, Queen Charlotte, is black, as is Henry VIII’s wife, Anne Boleyn, in a previous production. Cleopatra, a descendant of Greek rulers, has also been turned into a black queen. “God bless America” is replaced with Obama’s mentor, Jeremiah Wright’s, “Goddamn America.”
Not that long ago, in 1992, Bill Clinton called the traditional American narrative an “ideal.” “Work hard and play by the rules, you’ll do a little better next year than you did last year, your kids will do better than you.” Clinton used the phrase often. In 1996, he said, “If you believe in the values of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, if you’re willing to work hard and play by the rules, you are part of our family and we’re proud to be with you … When you walk out of this hall, think about it. Live by it.” It’s hard to imagine a Democratic candidate today speaking so openly of love for America’s founding documents and an American narrative of hard work and self-discipline.
An infamous story signals a hideous rent in the American narrative. On March 27, 1964, the New York Times published history-making coverage of the stalking, stabbing, rape, murder and robbery of 28-year-old New York bar manager Kitty Genovese by 29-year-old Winston Moseley. Moseley was a serial killer, rapist, and necrophiliac. He was also a husband, father, and home-owner. “I chose women to kill because they were easier and didn’t fight back,” Moseley would say. Asked how he could commit such a heinous and drawn-out attack in a heavily populated area, Moseley said, “‘I knew they wouldn’t do anything; people never do.” Moseley’s attack lasted a half an hour. Genovese fought back, as wounds on her hands show.
Initial Times coverage alleged that 38 witnesses saw or heard the attack, but did not help or call police, because they “did not want to get involved.” The Times report began melodramatically. “For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. Twice their chatter and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights interrupted him and frightened him off. Each time he returned, sought her out, and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault.” The Genovese murder epitomized a shocking change in the American narrative. Now, the story suggested, anomie and chaos replaced community and mutual concern.
There were significant errors in the Times story. There were not 38 witnesses who saw and understood the attack and did not help or phone for help because they “didn’t want to get involved.” Some witnesses did attempt to call police. Robert Mozer yelled at Moseley to “Let that girl alone!” Moseley left the scene and waited for Mozer to return to bed. Then Moseley returned and completed his attack. Many heard something but weren’t sure what they heard. Sophia Farrar, Genovese’s friend and neighbor, rushed downstairs in her nightgown to investigate, and cradled Genovese’s head as she lay dying. The Times’ image of 38 people seeing, understanding, and refusing to act was simply false.
Times editor A.M. Rosenthal resented attempts to correct the Times’ record on this story. He took pride in the positive impact the story had, for example the creation of the 911 emergency call system. Rosenthal would later say to Kitty Genovese’s younger brother, Bill, “What was true? People all over the world were affected by it. Did it do anything? You bet your eye it did something. And I’m glad it did.” Bill was devastated by his sister’s death. The 2016 film The Witness recounts his efforts to come to terms with the tragedy.
On one hand, the Kitty Genovese story is a hideous rent in the American narrative. On the other hand, Kitty Genovese reaffirms the American narrative. Inspired by her story, others chose service. Kitty’s brother Bill volunteered to serve in Vietnam, where he lost his legs to a landmine. Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger “said he was always haunted by the story of Kitty Genovese.” In Texas, when he heard the coverage, “I made a pledge to myself, right then at age thirteen, that if I was ever in a situation where someone such as Kitty Genovese needed my help, I would choose to act. I would do whatever I could … I felt this real resolve … to live in a certain way.” Citizens struggle to find a way to “rescue” Kitty long after her horrific death. They don’t want to redeem Kitty alone. They want to redeem themselves. They want to redeem their society. They work toward a redeemed narrative.
If you think long enough about Kitty Genovese, you will eventually think about the Holocaust. We have been trying to redeem that narrative, too. To create a world where action would be taken sooner, and the Nazis’ victims would be saved in time. James Solomon, who directed The Witness, attributed the inaccuracies in the Times’ coverage at least partially to the impact of the Holocaust. “I do think that part of the reason this false narrative came to be was … the Holocaust. In 1964, several months after Kennedy’s assassination, the country was asking, ‘Who are we?’ and I believe that that question extended back to the Holocaust.” Rosenthal “had been a correspondent in Eastern Europe in the late 1950s. He was deeply affected by the Holocaust … he ruminates on silence and the nature of being an observer and not acing. How much of that thinking informed and influenced the Kitty Genovese narrative is an interesting question.”
Our attention to these questions takes us back to two very much older narratives. Cain, the first murderer, asks God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” A more contemporary translation has Genesis 4:9 thus: “Am I supposed to look after my brother?” The answer the Bible implies is, yes, you are supposed to look after your brother, and not just your brother.
The Good Samaritan is a game-changing parable from the New Testament. When asked what is the highest commandment, Jesus says to love God and your neighbor. When asked who one’s neighbor is, Jesus responds with the parable of the Good Samaritan. In Jesus’ day, ethics were tribal. One was to treat members of one’s own tribe with one set of ethics, and strangers with a different set. Jesus proposed universal ethics.
Other cultures struggle with universal ethics. In 2011, a two-year-old Chinese girl, Wang Yue, wandered into a market. Subsequent events were recorded on camera. In the video, a bus runs over Wang with its front wheels, then, with effort, with its back wheels. Wang, still living, lies in the street. Eighteen people pass by her and do nothing. They appear well-fed, well-dressed, and not in any hurry. They can see exactly what they are passing – a two-year old girl bleeding to death. Another truck comes along and runs Wang over again. Eventually a 58-year-old woman, a garbage scavenger, Chen Xianmei, aka “Granny Chen,” stopped to help Wang. Of course by then it was too late.
A discussion ensued in China. Many argued that Chinese ethics, especially a feature called “guanxi,” demands that one extend concern to those to whom one is intimately connected, and allow for one to ignore the pain of strangers. The character for “guanxi” consists of the characters for “closed” and “system.” “We are brought up to show kindness to people in our network of guanxi, family, friends and business associates, but not particularly to strangers, especially if such kindness may potentially damage your interests,” one Chinese author wrote. “We need a Good Samaritan ethic,” some Chinese stated, using that very term. A story told two thousand years ago by a Jewish carpenter is cited in new laws in 21st century China. The power of narrative.
On May 1 2023, according to reports, Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man, entered a New York City subway car and behaved in a threatening manner. Multiple passengers phoned 911, at least one reporting that someone had a gun or a knife. Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old former Marine, immobilized Neely with what has been called a chokehold. At least two other passengers participated in immobilizing Neely, as video shows. Neely was later pronounced dead. Penny’s hold has been blamed for his death. Penny is white; one of two other men restraining Neely appears to be black.
The New York Times ran articles depicting Neely as a Michael Jackson imitator. One article was accompanied by a very attractive photo of Neely, looking harmless. USA Today depicted Neely as a “beloved part of many New Yorkers’ daily commute” The paper quoted Lennon Edwards, a “family lawyer.” “What he could have been, the world will never know … But we do know that he was someone who should have had an opportunity and a chance, a chance to recover – a chance to turn his life around, a chance to fulfill a dream that he had as a child.” Clearly, in this narrative, society never gave Neely a chance. The paper quotes activists alleging that society – white society – “successfully campaigned to keep poor people in jails” and “flooded our subways with cops.” “Neely’s death is the direct result of ‘abandonment and dehumanization of people experiencing homelessness and mental health complexities.'”
Conservative media dug deeper and exposed truths that interfered with the Neely-as-black-Christ-figure narrative. The New York Post reported that a Reddit user claimed that Neely had attempted to push him onto subway tracks. Ten years ago, Corazon DeLeon posted on Reddit, “Try to stay away from the Michael Jackson impersonator if you see him.” DeLeon warned that the man had “become a maniac” “He’s just been a scary dude.” ” I was scared for the people next to him … Just avoid the guy at all costs, try not to look at him at all. Stay safe.”
Newsweek and The Gateway Pundit catalogued some of Neely’s many arrests and convictions; for example, Neely pled guilty to attempting to kidnap a seven-year-old girl. On another occasion, Neely beat an elderly woman, a stranger, so badly he broke her bones. He carried out at least two other unprovoked assaults on women in the subway between 2019 and 2021. On another occasion, he beat an elderly man. Neely used K-2, an illegal drug known to cause violent behavior.
The Left desperately craved to turn Neely into a Christ figure. How do you commodify and exploit an adult man who pled guilty to trying to kidnap a seven-year-old girl, and who liked to beat up on women? The Left portrayed Neely as a victim of its chosen enemies: capitalism, white supremacy and the stone-cold callousness of American society. Neely was a “poor” “black” man undergoing a “mental health crisis” who “needed help” but was murdered by a “white man.” The white man was a convenient, readymade villain. The Left has shown more care for Neely than it showed for Tyre Nichols, an innocent black man beaten to death on camera by five police officers. Nichols’ killers were all black. Nichols’ death did not serve the narrative. Nichols will never receive the attention that Neely receives.
Neely was exculpated for his anti-social crimes because Neely was really the victim. Neely’s mother’s boyfriend strangled Neely’s mother to death when Neely was 14. That murder traumatized him. Being mentally ill was not his fault. Neely was completely helpless. Completely innocent. He made no choices that worsened his own life or his treatment of others. America was to blame. America murdered Neely because America is white supremacist and uncaring. The “amen” to this ritual chorus is “We need a revolution!”
I grew up with someone whose parent, when this person was just a child, was murdered in an unspeakable and heartbreaking anti-immigrant crime. This person lived a rough road but grew to be a law-abiding and productive member of society. If you ask me how he did it, I would have to say, “Narrative.” His narrative, and the narrative of the community around him: don’t wallow in your troubles. Be a good family man. Don’t quit. Work hard. Take care of other people. Fear God. The idea of living on the street and taking illegal drugs would simply never occur to him.
Again, in my little hometown, in just a few short blocks, I knew of at least four women with serious mental health issues, at least one of whom was prescribed Thorazine. These women were neither verbally nor physically abusive. They dealt with symptoms that luckier people never have to confront, but they were otherwise non-violent, law-abiding, clean, productive citizens. I knew these women fairly well and I feel safe in saying that none of them would conceive of taking illegal drugs or living on the street. That was not a plot point in their narrative nor did it appear in the narratives of their husbands, who stuck by them “in sickness and in health.”
We are told again and again that mentally ill people are more likely to be victims of violence than to be perpetrators of violence. We are told this as part of an effort to remove the stigma from mental illness. Further, mental illness alone does not predict violence. Rather, other factors, including choices the mentally ill person makes, make violence more or less likely. “While perpetrating violence is relatively uncommon among those with serious mental illness, when it does occur, in many cases it is intertwined with other issues such as co-occurring substance use, adverse childhood experiences, and environmental factors, says Eric B. Elbogen, PhD, a psychologist and professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the Duke University School of Medicine.”
What co-occurring factors predispose the mentally ill to violence? “Substance abuse.” “Adverse childhood experiences.” What was Neely’s first adverse childhood experience? Not the murder of his mother.
Neely’s father Andre Zachery, 59, has spoken to the Daily News. “‘I just want something to be done … Obviously he was calling for help … He wasn’t out to hurt nobody. He was a good kid and a good man too. Something has to be done … My son didn’t deserve to die because he needed help.’ The victim’s godfather Barry Kniebs, 64, suggested the Marine was way out of bounds when he laid hands on Neely. ‘This individual seems like he’s a vigilante … them days are over.'” “‘The whole system just failed him. He fell through the cracks of the system,” Neely’s aunt Caroline Neely said.
Caroline Neely, Jordan’s aunt, reported that Andre Zachery “abandoned Jordan as a baby.” Nedra Guaba, a close friend of the family, said that “Jordan lived with his father occasionally but the two did not get along.” His mother’s death destroyed him because “She was his sole support. His father sure wasn’t.”
Being abandoned by his father was Neely’s first “adverse childhood experience.” His mother moved in with a bad man with whom she “fought every day.” After his mother’s murder, Neely dropped out of school, an institution that might have provided structure and support.
Some amorphous “system” did not fail and could never rescue Neely. Neely’s family failed Neely, and then Neely failed himself. So many of his relatives have reported to the press that his mother’s murder, when he was only fourteen years old, devastated him. Where were they? Did they feed him, house him, teach him a narrative that enabled him to survive and thrive? If so, Neely listened to other narratives. Narratives that approved of dropping out of society and using an illegal drug that may have contributed to his violent behavior.
The “system,” and rotten old capitalist white supremacist Amerikkka, tried, again and again, to help Neely. Neely resisted help. “Mr. Neely was on what outreach workers refer to as the ‘Top 50’ list — a roster maintained by the city of the homeless people living on the street whom officials consider most urgently in need of assistance and treatment. He was taken to hospitals numerous times, both voluntarily and involuntarily.”
After one arrest for beating an elderly woman, Neely was treated with kid gloves. The Times reports, “He was to go from court to live at a treatment facility in the Bronx, and stay clean for 15 months. In return, his felony conviction would be reduced. He promised to take his medication and to avoid drugs, and not to leave the facility without permission. ‘This is a wonderful opportunity to turn things around, and we’re glad to give it to you,’ Mary Weisgerber, a prosecutor, said. ‘Thank you so much,’ Mr. Neely replied. But just 13 days later, he abandoned the facility. Judge Biben issued a warrant for his arrest.”
Jordan Neely was living his life by a narrative that facilitated violence and human decay. Living on the street, begging and threatening those who didn’t give, taking drugs, hurting, rather than contributing to society, were all acceptable plot points in that narrative. Those who give money to homeless panhandlers subsidize this narrative. Leftists who denigrate America and despise those of us who “work hard and play by the rules” advance this narrative.
Neely was not the only New Yorker living with trauma. On January 15, 2022, Michelle Go, an Asian-American woman “who did everything right,” was pushed in front of a subway train by an assailant sharing significant demographic details with Neely. Martial Simon was a homeless black man and said to be mentally ill. The subway murder of a good woman, Michelle Go, received a fraction of the attention allotted to Neely.
In April, 2022, Frank James mounted a terror attack in a subway car. He shot ten people. James was also black. On April 11, 2023, a teenager was shot dead on the subway; authorities say his death is most likely related to gang violence in a largely black housing project. On or before December 10, 2022, a man was stabbed to death on the subway. On October 23, 2022, video was released showing a black man shoving a man onto a subway track.
The New York City subway system is a deadly place. Crimes are disproportionately committed by black men. Passengers take that information with them when they enter the subway. When Neely, as reports indicate, began shouting in an irrational and threatening manner, passengers went into “fight or flight” mode. The three men who restrained Neely worked to keep him immobilized until police arrived.
The New York Times has been working hard at selling Neely as a Christ figure and cruel, cold, capitalist, white supremacist America as the assassin who did him in. In a surprise move, New York Times readers are having none of it.
“A Subway Killing Stuns and Divides New Yorkers,” the Times reported, on May 4, 2023. Neely’s death, some say, “was a heinous act of public violence to be swiftly prosecuted, and represented a failure by the city to care for people with serious mental illness.” The short article referenced “mental illness” five times and “emotional illness” one time. Clearly, “mental illness” is the new euphemism for “violent, anti-social criminality.”
Times readers, in the comments section, voiced a very different narrative from that of the Times itself. The following excerpts are from the nine comments voted “most popular” by Times readers.
“If I were in a confined space with someone menacing everyone and ranting that he’s ready to die or go to prison, I’d be thinking ‘I’m in the middle of the next mass shooting.’ It’s very easy to sit at home, in front of your keyboard, and claim that you’d remain perfectly calm in that situation.”
“Notice how this article omits that he told everyone he was ‘ready to get a life sentence’ after he had been yelling at people and behaving erratically. Instead they cite a different quote to make it seem like he was less of a threat than his other words indicate.”
“This guy had been terrorizing people on the subway for years. 43 arrests, with many against women and the elderly. The rider who got involved was trying to help others (yes there are people that still do that). The government won’t enforce the law, so its citizens are often left in dangerous situations.”
Neely’s “aggressively threatening behavior in a NYC subway car led to his being restrained by someone who would have been hailed as a Good Samaritan had Neely not died. This is what happens when the mentally ill ride the subways, walk the streets and threaten law abiding citizens with physical harm. As for the protesters, I do not see any of them taking into their homes or apartments the homeless and mentally ill.”
“Tens of millions of Americans are worried daily from experience about how uncomfortably drug addicted and meth or psychosis addled desperate people may attack them or their family, with the police unable to intervene and prosecutors unwilling to send them away. Enclosed subway cars without a cop on them can turn frightening in an instant. Sorry, but it’s true.”
“Everyone who rides the subway and everyone outside of a few far left and/or craving attention and/or virtue signaling people agree: it’s a tragedy but the responsibility lies with the city because people should not be threatened or harassed or scared on the subways. No one has a ‘right’ to do that. The ex-Marine was attempting to protect others from someone who was violating and threatening others. It’s a tragedy, but the Marine did nothing wrong.”
“no mention that he had … punched a 67 year old woman in the face.”
“Contrary to progressive doctrine, law abiding people do not have to pretend that drug addicts are victims or that violent mentally ill folks pose no threat.”
“AOC is a member of Congress, and knows nothing about this case other than what she’s read or heard, just like the rest of us. That she feels comfortable pre-judging the case speaks volumes. And remember that Al Sharpton also called for the district attorney to be charged in the Twana Brawley case.”
There are thousands more upvotes awarded to hundreds of more comments on this and other Times articles. The overwhelming vox populi agree: Daniel Penny was a Good Samaritan. Jordan Neely was a threat. His death was a tragedy, but larger forces ended his life, and Penny cannot be held responsible for those larger forces. I identify those larger forces as the narratives by which people choose to live, and teach their children to live.
When it comes to Neely, both the Left and the Right claim that they want to live in a society with more Good Samaritans. Only one side is telling the truth. The Left is lying. Here’s why. Good Samaritans, to do their work, require a society where members share and act on the same narrative, and that has to be a narrative that supports Good Samaritan actions. If you want to take from society, you have to give to society. Neely took, but he gave back violence, self-indulgence, self-destruction, and hate.
Leftists support the narratives that killed Neely even more surely than the Marine’s restraint. Broken families, no standards for behavior, a complete rejection of personal responsibility for anti-social acts, drug use, living on the street, panhandling, refusing needed mental health treatment, insistence that America is an unjust place and cultivating despair, are all championed by the Left.
The Good Samaritan here is not the leftists screaming for wealth redistribution and releasing criminals from jails. It’s not the leftists who side with the criminal, and ask law-abiding citizens to passively sacrifice their bodies, their public spaces, their sense of security, to victimization by anti-social elements. The Good Samaritan here is the Marine who risked his own comfort and safety to protect those on that train who are old fashioned enough to “work hard and play by the rules.” The Left’s narrative, one where Amerikkka is a genocidal, white supremacist monster who offers no services to the poor, where there is no such thing as personal responsibility, responsibility to one’s family, parental responsibility to the children one brings into this world, where every misfortune can be blamed on the “system” that is supposed to “do something” where the family did nothing to help its own, that narrative will harm many, many more Jordan Neelys.
Danusha Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery
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How the Morlocks Seized New York
If, in 1984, an inventive New Yorker set his time travel machine to the year 2023, the city in which he arrived would confound him. Although the New York City of today looks much like that of 1984, our time traveler would have a hard time understanding the people, almost as hard a time as H.G. Wells's "Time Traveler" did when his machine arrived in the year 802,701.
The public response of the average New Yorker to the arrest of former Marine sergeant Daniel Penny calls to mind the "Eloi" response to Wells's Traveler. The Eloi were the little, pretty people of the future whom the Time Traveler encountered. "Once the favored aristocracy" says the Traveler, "the Eloi, like the Carolingian kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful futility."
The passivity of the Eloi allowed the subterranean Morlocks, once their servants, to become their masters. "Already the Eloi had begun to learn one old lesson anew," says the Traveler. "They were becoming reacquainted with Fear." Unfortunately for their future, the Eloi had lost their spines. Eloi males no longer had even the instinct to rescue one of their own from peril or to defend themselves from the creeping cannibalism of the Morlocks.
Enter the Time Traveler. Writing the The Time Machine in 1895, Wells endowed his protagonist with those many virtues expected of an Englishman in the age of Victoria and Kipling. Tempted to leave behind the chaos he found in the future, the Traveler feels honor-bound to intervene; to save the Eloi from extinction; and, in the process, to show them how to save themselves.
After serving four years in the Marines, the 24-year-old Daniel Penny arrived in New York City almost as innocent as Wells's hero and likely as brave. "I have always been inspired by the ambition and grit," he posted on social media. "After high school and unsure of my future, I enlisted in the Marine Corps in search of adventure." In the Marines, Sergeant Penny served as squad leader on two deployments.
Unlike most young men of this era, Penny pulled his inspiration from Cervantes's Don Quixote, a novel that at its most literal interpretation would have reinforced his Marine Corps values. As Penny learned during this past week, if not before, his values and those of his fellow New Yorkers were as out of sync as those of Wells's hero and the Eloi.
In subterranean New York, Penny came face to face with a modern Morlock, Jordan Neely by name. Neely had been arrested 42 times in the past 10 years and had a well documented mental health history. The NYPD knew he was dangerous. They had arrested Neely most recently in November 2021 on felony assault charges after he punched a 67-year-old female stranger in the face.
Two years later, Neely was roaming free. After 20 years of good governance, the left took over New York's City Hall with the installation of Bill de Blasio in 2014. Since then, the Morlocks of New York, armies of them, have been emboldened to terrorize the Eloi on the streets and on the subways. Hardly a day passes without some new video surfacing of a Morlock striking or threatening an Eloi while the other Eloi pretend not to see.
It seems somehow appropriate that Neely died on May 1, the ultimate feast day on the revolutionary calendar. Eleven days later, the Morlocks' enablers got their way. Manhattan's district attorney, Alvin Bragg, feeling the need to sacrifice a white man to the woke gods, charged Penny with manslaughter.
Penny clearly did not intend to kill Neely. He expected to restrain him until the police arrived. I suspect that from what he learned in the Marines and in the books he read, Penny had been trained to intervene when a madman threatens to kill the innocent people around him.
Penny's response was measured. According to witnesses, he did not leap into action until after Neely started issuing death threats. "I would kill a m-----------," said Neely. "I don't care. I'll take a bullet. I'll go to jail." However unintentionally, Penny helped Neely fulfill his death wish.
Penny certainly did not expect to be called a murderer, but he misjudged New York circa 2023. "Jordan Neely was murdered, tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. "While many in power demonize the poor, the murderer gets protected w/ passive headlines + no charges. It's disgusting."
This was not the New York of 1984. That was the year that the nerdy Bernard Goetz shot four teenage thugs on a New York City subway car. In watching news from that era, I am reminded of just how shabby New York City had become before the 20-year renaissance overseen by Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg. I am reminded too of just how much New Yorkers have changed over the past 40 years.
Unlike the soft and spineless New Yorkers of today, everyday New Yorkers of 1984 were often bold and outspoken. I would encourage readers to search YouTube for "Bernie Goetz" and watch the news clips from that era. Although the white Goetz shot four black teenagers, New Yorkers, black and white, were not afraid to speak out in Goetz's defense. These were real New Yorkers, toughened by a life riding subways. They cared more about justice than race.
In 2023, radicals have no hesitance about speaking out, but everyday New Yorkers certainly do. Beaten down by years of oppressive political correctness, they come off as feckless as their Wellsian counterparts. That said, I suspect that the great majority of them, certainly the subway riders, are pulling quietly for Penny.
Like the Eloi, they are "becoming reacquainted with Fear." If that fear does not motivate them to champion Daniel Penny and acquit him, the Morlocks will own the city until it dies.
Jack Cashill's Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America's Cities is available for pre-order in all formats.
Image: Billie Grace Ward via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
Alvin Bragg attacks self-defense by indicting Daniel Penny for Jordan Neely’s death
Daniel Penny, along with others on a New York subway, used a wrestling hold to subdue Jordan Neely after the latter’s behavior was “hostile and erratic.” The Democrat narrative is that a white supremacist murdered a Michael Jackson impersonator. Now, Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s hard-left District Attorney, has indicted Penny for manslaughter. New Yorkers, though, may not take this indictment lying down.
The last time New York City was as violently out of control as today was in the 1970s and early 1980s. That’s why, when Bernhard Goetz, a white subway rider who had previously been violently mugged, pulled out a gun and shot four black teens who were demanding his money, many in New York City supported him. He was their everyman. The jury rejected serious charges against him, finding him guilty of carrying an unlicensed firearm, for which he served only eight months.
Giuliani restored order to New York, and Bloomberg maintained it. Things fell apart again under DeBlasio, a process that accelerated when BLM paralyzed policing. Today, in NYC subways, it’s déjà vu all over again for those who remember the 1970s.
Image: Neely being put in a recovery position. Twitter screen grab.
Subway crime goes beyond fare-jumpers, litter, and graffiti. It includes homeless people taking over subway cars and literally befouling them with urine, and crazy people shooting at passengers, pushing them onto the tracks, and otherwise assaulting them.
It was in this context that Neely, a homeless man with a long criminal record, including multiple assault charges, came into contact with Penny. According to witnesses, Neely behaved in a “hostile and erratic manner” and threw trash at people (a form of assault), frightening passengers. That’s why Penny put Neely in a “chokehold,” while two other passengers helped.
For a chokehold, one person puts his arm around another person’s neck to control that person. I’ve had hundreds of chokeholds put on me, and I’ve put hundreds on other people. Nobody choked. If you apply hard pressure the correct way, though, you can either cut off someone’s air supply, suffocating them or the flow of blood to their brain. The moment you remove pressure, the suffocation stops, and the blood flow returns.
So, it’s theoretically possible that a chokehold could have killed Neely. Except that we know from the full video, rather than the parts the media focused on, that once Neely stopped screaming and fighting, Penny put him in a recovery position. This is inconsistent with intending to kill a man or believing you have killed him. Several people involved (many of whom thanked Penny) were certain that Neely was alive—and, indeed, Neely was alive, dying only at the hospital:
Hypothetically, though, it shouldn’t matter if Neely had died. The self-defense principle is that you must neutralize the threat. People die because they thought that wounding someone was sufficient to neutralize them.
New York’s self-defense doctrine gives reasonable people the right to take whatever steps are needed to defend themselves or others. They don’t have to wait until they’re wounded (perhaps fatally) to act. Instead, the justification for killing someone kicks in when “a person reasonably believes it is necessary to defend himself/ herself or a third party when there is a reasonable belief of imminent use of unlawful physical force.” (NY Penal Code § 35.15.)
Leftists from D.A. Alvin Bragg to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, though, hate self-defense because it makes people less dependent on the government. When a bodega worker killed a threatening robber, Bragg indicted the worker for murder. He wanted to do the same when a garage security guard wrestled the gun from a robber who shot him and fired back, killing the robber. Recall that, in Canada, Justin Trudeau has successfully eliminated self-defense:
Therefore, it was predictable that Bragg would indict Penny for second-degree manslaughter.
The real question is whether New Yorkers will resist, as they did with the bodega and parking garage workers. While the left is pushing the George Floyd narrative (white-on-black violence), New Yorkers are looking at a subway that functions as the city’s artery, but that is becoming too dangerous for them to use.
No wonder even left-wing outlets are worriedly writing about the number of New Yorkers who have come to Penny’s defense. (See, e.g., Vox, Daily News, Politico, and The Times-Tribune.) And no wonder that Bragg bypassed the grand jury because he feared they’d side with Penny and withhold an indictment.
New Yorkers understand that the government cannot and will not—and does not want to—protect them from violence. As happened with Bernie Goetz almost 40 years ago, this is when vigilantes become heroes.
You can contribute to Daniel Penny's legal defense fund here.
If, in 1984, an inventive New Yorker set his time travel machine to the year 2023, the city in which he arrived would confound him. Although the New York City of today looks much like that of 1984, our time traveler would have a hard time understanding the people, almost as hard a time as H.G. Wells's "Time Traveler" did when his machine arrived in the year 802,701.
The public response of the average New Yorker to the arrest of former Marine sergeant Daniel Penny calls to mind the "Eloi" response to Wells's Traveler. The Eloi were the little, pretty people of the future whom the Time Traveler encountered. "Once the favored aristocracy" says the Traveler, "the Eloi, like the Carolingian kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful futility."
The passivity of the Eloi allowed the subterranean Morlocks, once their servants, to become their masters. "Already the Eloi had begun to learn one old lesson anew," says the Traveler. "They were becoming reacquainted with Fear." Unfortunately for their future, the Eloi had lost their spines. Eloi males no longer had even the instinct to rescue one of their own from peril or to defend themselves from the creeping cannibalism of the Morlocks.
Enter the Time Traveler. Writing the The Time Machine in 1895, Wells endowed his protagonist with those many virtues expected of an Englishman in the age of Victoria and Kipling. Tempted to leave behind the chaos he found in the future, the Traveler feels honor-bound to intervene; to save the Eloi from extinction; and, in the process, to show them how to save themselves.
After serving four years in the Marines, the 24-year-old Daniel Penny arrived in New York City almost as innocent as Wells's hero and likely as brave. "I have always been inspired by the ambition and grit," he posted on social media. "After high school and unsure of my future, I enlisted in the Marine Corps in search of adventure." In the Marines, Sergeant Penny served as squad leader on two deployments.
Unlike most young men of this era, Penny pulled his inspiration from Cervantes's Don Quixote, a novel that at its most literal interpretation would have reinforced his Marine Corps values. As Penny learned during this past week, if not before, his values and those of his fellow New Yorkers were as out of sync as those of Wells's hero and the Eloi.
In subterranean New York, Penny came face to face with a modern Morlock, Jordan Neely by name. Neely had been arrested 42 times in the past 10 years and had a well documented mental health history. The NYPD knew he was dangerous. They had arrested Neely most recently in November 2021 on felony assault charges after he punched a 67-year-old female stranger in the face.
Two years later, Neely was roaming free. After 20 years of good governance, the left took over New York's City Hall with the installation of Bill de Blasio in 2014. Since then, the Morlocks of New York, armies of them, have been emboldened to terrorize the Eloi on the streets and on the subways. Hardly a day passes without some new video surfacing of a Morlock striking or threatening an Eloi while the other Eloi pretend not to see.
It seems somehow appropriate that Neely died on May 1, the ultimate feast day on the revolutionary calendar. Eleven days later, the Morlocks' enablers got their way. Manhattan's district attorney, Alvin Bragg, feeling the need to sacrifice a white man to the woke gods, charged Penny with manslaughter.
Penny clearly did not intend to kill Neely. He expected to restrain him until the police arrived. I suspect that from what he learned in the Marines and in the books he read, Penny had been trained to intervene when a madman threatens to kill the innocent people around him.
Penny's response was measured. According to witnesses, he did not leap into action until after Neely started issuing death threats. "I would kill a m-----------," said Neely. "I don't care. I'll take a bullet. I'll go to jail." However unintentionally, Penny helped Neely fulfill his death wish.
Penny certainly did not expect to be called a murderer, but he misjudged New York circa 2023. "Jordan Neely was murdered, tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. "While many in power demonize the poor, the murderer gets protected w/ passive headlines + no charges. It's disgusting."
This was not the New York of 1984. That was the year that the nerdy Bernard Goetz shot four teenage thugs on a New York City subway car. In watching news from that era, I am reminded of just how shabby New York City had become before the 20-year renaissance overseen by Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg. I am reminded too of just how much New Yorkers have changed over the past 40 years.
Unlike the soft and spineless New Yorkers of today, everyday New Yorkers of 1984 were often bold and outspoken. I would encourage readers to search YouTube for "Bernie Goetz" and watch the news clips from that era. Although the white Goetz shot four black teenagers, New Yorkers, black and white, were not afraid to speak out in Goetz's defense. These were real New Yorkers, toughened by a life riding subways. They cared more about justice than race.
In 2023, radicals have no hesitance about speaking out, but everyday New Yorkers certainly do. Beaten down by years of oppressive political correctness, they come off as feckless as their Wellsian counterparts. That said, I suspect that the great majority of them, certainly the subway riders, are pulling quietly for Penny.
Like the Eloi, they are "becoming reacquainted with Fear." If that fear does not motivate them to champion Daniel Penny and acquit him, the Morlocks will own the city until it dies.
Jack Cashill's Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America's Cities is available for pre-order in all formats.
Image: Billie Grace Ward via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
Alvin Bragg attacks self-defense by indicting Daniel Penny for Jordan Neely’s death
Daniel Penny, along with others on a New York subway, used a wrestling hold to subdue Jordan Neely after the latter’s behavior was “hostile and erratic.” The Democrat narrative is that a white supremacist murdered a Michael Jackson impersonator. Now, Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s hard-left District Attorney, has indicted Penny for manslaughter. New Yorkers, though, may not take this indictment lying down.
The last time New York City was as violently out of control as today was in the 1970s and early 1980s. That’s why, when Bernhard Goetz, a white subway rider who had previously been violently mugged, pulled out a gun and shot four black teens who were demanding his money, many in New York City supported him. He was their everyman. The jury rejected serious charges against him, finding him guilty of carrying an unlicensed firearm, for which he served only eight months.
Giuliani restored order to New York, and Bloomberg maintained it. Things fell apart again under DeBlasio, a process that accelerated when BLM paralyzed policing. Today, in NYC subways, it’s déjà vu all over again for those who remember the 1970s.
Image: Neely being put in a recovery position. Twitter screen grab.
Subway crime goes beyond fare-jumpers, litter, and graffiti. It includes homeless people taking over subway cars and literally befouling them with urine, and crazy people shooting at passengers, pushing them onto the tracks, and otherwise assaulting them.
It was in this context that Neely, a homeless man with a long criminal record, including multiple assault charges, came into contact with Penny. According to witnesses, Neely behaved in a “hostile and erratic manner” and threw trash at people (a form of assault), frightening passengers. That’s why Penny put Neely in a “chokehold,” while two other passengers helped.
For a chokehold, one person puts his arm around another person’s neck to control that person. I’ve had hundreds of chokeholds put on me, and I’ve put hundreds on other people. Nobody choked. If you apply hard pressure the correct way, though, you can either cut off someone’s air supply, suffocating them or the flow of blood to their brain. The moment you remove pressure, the suffocation stops, and the blood flow returns.
So, it’s theoretically possible that a chokehold could have killed Neely. Except that we know from the full video, rather than the parts the media focused on, that once Neely stopped screaming and fighting, Penny put him in a recovery position. This is inconsistent with intending to kill a man or believing you have killed him. Several people involved (many of whom thanked Penny) were certain that Neely was alive—and, indeed, Neely was alive, dying only at the hospital:
Hypothetically, though, it shouldn’t matter if Neely had died. The self-defense principle is that you must neutralize the threat. People die because they thought that wounding someone was sufficient to neutralize them.
New York’s self-defense doctrine gives reasonable people the right to take whatever steps are needed to defend themselves or others. They don’t have to wait until they’re wounded (perhaps fatally) to act. Instead, the justification for killing someone kicks in when “a person reasonably believes it is necessary to defend himself/ herself or a third party when there is a reasonable belief of imminent use of unlawful physical force.” (NY Penal Code § 35.15.)
Leftists from D.A. Alvin Bragg to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, though, hate self-defense because it makes people less dependent on the government. When a bodega worker killed a threatening robber, Bragg indicted the worker for murder. He wanted to do the same when a garage security guard wrestled the gun from a robber who shot him and fired back, killing the robber. Recall that, in Canada, Justin Trudeau has successfully eliminated self-defense:
Therefore, it was predictable that Bragg would indict Penny for second-degree manslaughter.
The real question is whether New Yorkers will resist, as they did with the bodega and parking garage workers. While the left is pushing the George Floyd narrative (white-on-black violence), New Yorkers are looking at a subway that functions as the city’s artery, but that is becoming too dangerous for them to use.
No wonder even left-wing outlets are worriedly writing about the number of New Yorkers who have come to Penny’s defense. (See, e.g., Vox, Daily News, Politico, and The Times-Tribune.) And no wonder that Bragg bypassed the grand jury because he feared they’d side with Penny and withhold an indictment.
New Yorkers understand that the government cannot and will not—and does not want to—protect them from violence. As happened with Bernie Goetz almost 40 years ago, this is when vigilantes become heroes.
You can contribute to Daniel Penny's legal defense fund here.
Alvin Bragg didn’t trust a grand jury to indict Daniel Penny for the death of Jordan Neely
In New York City, everybody but the richest few percent rides the subway, and they know how bad things have gotten in the wake Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg treating arrests as inequitable since African Americans are disproportionately arrested.
Jordan Neely died in a hospital after being subdued by Marine Corps veteran Daniel Penny with the help of two other passengers (who have not been charged).
Uncredited photo via The New York Post
Neely “avoid[ed] prison for allegedly slugging a 67-year-old woman in November 2021 during a psychotic episode” by agreeing to a plea deal. Despite a record of more than forty previous arrests, he was allowed to roam the streets, though he was to stay at Harbor House, where he could receive services. When he left there, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ellen Biben signed a warrant for his arrest on February 23.
Perhaps because police officers realize that arresting any black person can cause enormous career grief, Neely evaded arrest, even while riding subways and being visible on the streets. The justice system, in other words, completely failed to protect the public from a deranged, violent man. So, when riding the subway on May first and threatening passengers with violence, and assaulting some by throwing trash, it was only Daniel Penny who first took action to protect himself and fellow passengers.
As Andrea Widburg noted in her excellent coverage of the incident:
it’s theoretically possible that a chokehold could have killed Neely. Except that we know from the full video, rather than the parts the media focused on, that once Neely stopped screaming and fighting, Penny put him in a recovery position. This is inconsistent with intending to kill a man or believing you have killed him. Several people involved (many of whom thanked Penny) were certain that Neely was alive—and, indeed, Neely was alive, dying only at the hospital:
When DA Bragg indicted Penny, he avoided taking the case to a grand jury. I suspect he realized that most members of a Manhattan grand jury are subway riders, and might have even experienced a situation of being threatened on a subway car while on their way to the courthouse. He had reason to believe that a grand jury would not have returned an indictment.
So, just as he did with “Jose Alba, the bodega clerk charged with murder for fatally stabbing an ex-con who was assaulting him in the grocery,” his office issued the indictment on its own. Alba was sent to Riker’s Island, a notoriously violent and unsafe jail, only to be released when the public uproar grew deafening.
Daniel Penny, perhaps because he is white, has so far only been publicly excoriated by “activists” as probably racist, simply because he was a white man subduing a black man who died later. The vast majority of New Yorkers who will make up the jury pool for his trial, most of whom are fellow subway riders, are remaining silent. Literally, a silent majority.
I am afraid it will take a jury trial for Penny to receive justice for his heroic acts that ended badly for the offender. He will need capable (and expensive) counsel.
You can contribute to Daniel Penny's legal defense fund here.
I’d like to see Bragg repeat what he did in the case of Jose Alba and simply drop the charges because of the obvious injustice or prosecuting an act of self-defense. Large demonstrations might help convince him, but so far, they have not taken place. Unless the silent majority wakes up and realizes it has to encourage, not punish good Samaritans who protect fellow passengers from scary and violent lunatics, the city and its transportation system will only get scarier and more hazardous.
In New York City, everybody but the richest few percent rides the subway, and they know how bad things have gotten in the wake Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg treating arrests as inequitable since African Americans are disproportionately arrested.
Jordan Neely died in a hospital after being subdued by Marine Corps veteran Daniel Penny with the help of two other passengers (who have not been charged).
Uncredited photo via The New York Post
Neely “avoid[ed] prison for allegedly slugging a 67-year-old woman in November 2021 during a psychotic episode” by agreeing to a plea deal. Despite a record of more than forty previous arrests, he was allowed to roam the streets, though he was to stay at Harbor House, where he could receive services. When he left there, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ellen Biben signed a warrant for his arrest on February 23.
Perhaps because police officers realize that arresting any black person can cause enormous career grief, Neely evaded arrest, even while riding subways and being visible on the streets. The justice system, in other words, completely failed to protect the public from a deranged, violent man. So, when riding the subway on May first and threatening passengers with violence, and assaulting some by throwing trash, it was only Daniel Penny who first took action to protect himself and fellow passengers.
As Andrea Widburg noted in her excellent coverage of the incident:
it’s theoretically possible that a chokehold could have killed Neely. Except that we know from the full video, rather than the parts the media focused on, that once Neely stopped screaming and fighting, Penny put him in a recovery position. This is inconsistent with intending to kill a man or believing you have killed him. Several people involved (many of whom thanked Penny) were certain that Neely was alive—and, indeed, Neely was alive, dying only at the hospital:
When DA Bragg indicted Penny, he avoided taking the case to a grand jury. I suspect he realized that most members of a Manhattan grand jury are subway riders, and might have even experienced a situation of being threatened on a subway car while on their way to the courthouse. He had reason to believe that a grand jury would not have returned an indictment.
So, just as he did with “Jose Alba, the bodega clerk charged with murder for fatally stabbing an ex-con who was assaulting him in the grocery,” his office issued the indictment on its own. Alba was sent to Riker’s Island, a notoriously violent and unsafe jail, only to be released when the public uproar grew deafening.
Daniel Penny, perhaps because he is white, has so far only been publicly excoriated by “activists” as probably racist, simply because he was a white man subduing a black man who died later. The vast majority of New Yorkers who will make up the jury pool for his trial, most of whom are fellow subway riders, are remaining silent. Literally, a silent majority.
I am afraid it will take a jury trial for Penny to receive justice for his heroic acts that ended badly for the offender. He will need capable (and expensive) counsel.
You can contribute to Daniel Penny's legal defense fund here.
I’d like to see Bragg repeat what he did in the case of Jose Alba and simply drop the charges because of the obvious injustice or prosecuting an act of self-defense. Large demonstrations might help convince him, but so far, they have not taken place. Unless the silent majority wakes up and realizes it has to encourage, not punish good Samaritans who protect fellow passengers from scary and violent lunatics, the city and its transportation system will only get scarier and more hazardous.
THERE IS NO GREATER THREAT TO AMERICA THAN THE DEMOCRAT PARTY!
This analysis is a crock. Democrats have been seeking to divide the country by race, sex and class for decades. They have sought to destroy anyone who got their way. It started way before Trump. (MORE BELOW)
Watch Live: House Holds ‘Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan’ Hearing over Alvin Bragg’s Policies
Crime Killed a Quarter of a Million Black People.
THERE IS NO GREATER THREAT TO AMERICA THAN THE DEMOCRAT PARTY!
This analysis is a crock. Democrats have been seeking to divide the country by race, sex and class for decades. They have sought to destroy anyone who got their way. It started way before Trump. (MORE BELOW)
Watch Live: House Holds ‘Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan’ Hearing over Alvin Bragg’s Policies
Crime Killed a Quarter of a Million Black People.
And the racist pro-crime Left wants more.
Over the last decade, BLM, and assorted leftist and libertarian groups dismantled our criminal justice system. Police forces were defunded, pro-crime prosecutors refused to lock up criminals, federal and state prison systems released tens of thousands of them, and a wave of legislative decriminalization legalized everything from shoplifting, to drug dealing and mugging.
The pro-crime policymaking that eliminated public safety and cost over 3,000 lives in 2020 alone was done under the guise of fighting racism. Statistics which showed that black people were more likely to be arrested, imprisoned or shot during criminal encounters with police were used to spread conspiracy theories falsely accusing the criminal justice system of systemic racism.
What all of these racist conspiracy theories popularized by politicians, the media, and the entertainment industry ignored was that black people were also far more likely to be crime victims. Even as the BLM riots got underway, black people in surveys were strongly opposed to police defunding. The opposition was so vehement that Democrats not only abandoned the issue, but claimed that they had always been opposed to it and ran against their own position.
Despite years of false claims portraying black people as victims of a biased criminal justice system whose police forces are descended from “slave catchers” who repress minorities at the behest of white suburbanites, surveys of black people continue to tell a very different story.
A Pew survey found that while only 33% of white Democrats wanted to reduce crime, 63% of Hispanics and 66% of black people thought that fighting crime should be a priority.
And that’s nothing new.
Leftists and libertarians lied that the War on Drugs was racist when it was actually pushed by black groups, including the NAACP, which demanded the death penalty for drug dealers.
That same Pew survey showed that while only 38% of white Dems answered that reducing the availability of illegal drugs should be a priority, 57% of Hispanics and 60% of black people believed that it should be.
Now a Kaiser Family Foundation survey shows that black people are far more likely to suffer from crime than white people. The survey, meant to generate support for unconstitutional gun ban measures, instead unintentionally demonstrated that crime hurts black people more.
The KFF survey noted that “three in ten black adults (31%) have personally witnessed someone being shot”, “one-third of black adults (34%) have a family member who was killed by a gun” and (32%) say that they worry all the time about themselves or a family member being shot.
One in six of black adults say they don’t feel “safe at all” from gun violence in their neighborhood, compared to 2% of white adults. 1 in 4 also bought a gun to protect themselves.
Gun violence is just another way of saying crime.
Black people are disproportionately affected by crime. Pro-crime policies led to the deaths of an additional 2,244 black people in 2020. According to a Johns Hopkins report, “in 2020, one out of every 1,000 young black males (15–34) was shot and killed” and, “more than half of all black teens (15–19) who died in 2020—a staggering 52%—were killed by gun violence.”
CDC numbers showed that homicide is a leading cause of death among black men under the age of 20, and from the ages of 20 to 44. White men are killed by guns at the rate of 3.15 per 100,000 while black men die at the rate of 48.16 per 100,000. Pro-crime policies increase crime and kill thousands of black people. That’s what a real disproportionate impact looks like.
Every time pro-crime politicians free criminals, pro-crime prosecutors refuse to prosecute violent offenders, and legislatures eliminate bail, the impact is felt most strongly in the black community.
Law enforcement isn’t racist, but getting rid of it is. When a community depends more on a particular service, losing it has a clear disproportionate impact. Keeping the peace, arresting offenders and dispensing justice is one of the few primal duties of government. The breach in the social contract when the government fails to provide peacekeeping services is devastating.
Most crimes are committed by repeat offenders. The only way to interrupt the cycle of violence is to lock them up. Successful tough on crime policies in the 90s made cities safe once again and led to an economic boom in inner cities. Manhattan’s Harlem went from a danger zone to hosting Bill Clinton’s office, but in 2022, crime increased 44%. The Clinton offices have mostly moved down to the Wall Street area, but where they remain in Central Harlem, crime is up 32%. Next door in West Harlem, it’s up 133%. That means Bill is less likely to tour the Apollo Theater, but it also means that the mostly black residents are the ones feeling the worst of it.
Pro-crime activists have spent years regaling us with the suffering of convicts while caring very little about the shattered lives they have left in their wake. Foundations, protest groups, activist organizations and even PACs have spent hundreds of millions lobbying for criminals, fighting for their release and remaking our system to favor perpetrators, not victims. Their political success has come with a very high cost. And much of that burden has fallen on black people.
It is hard to think of any single policy in the last generation that has done more harm to black people or claimed more lives than the pro-crime agenda. Pro-crime activists have falsely claimed that police shootings of black men are a form of genocide. They’re not. Crime is.
One study counted 286,075 firearm deaths among black people from 1990 to 2021. That’s over a quarter of a million deaths. Some of them are due to suicide, but suicides are much lower among black people than white people, and the majority of black gun deaths were homicides.
And seeing a quarter of a million deaths, the pro-crime Left wants even more bodies.
Those quarter of a million deaths have been largely self-inflicted, but, much as with the welfare state, they were aided and abetted by white liberal policymakers who had come to believe that what the black community really needed was for the government to enable its criminals.
Racist liberal condescension continues to destroy black communities, families and lives.
2020 demonstrated that tough on crime policies can save thousands of black lives and, over time, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of black lives. Pro-crime policies are a racist disaster which reduced black people to criminals and then set out to free criminals to help black people.
That’s why 1 out of every 1,000 young black men are dead.
Pro-crime policies are racist. They enable a crime epidemic that has killed more black people than the total number of battlefield casualties for all races in the Civil War. More black people died in the year of Black Lives Matter than our entire death toll in the Iraq War.
Can it get worse than this? In 1991, 12,226 black people were murdered. For the first time, more black people were killed than white people. The numbers are trending that way once again. While the Left claims that highways and dress codes are systemically racist, their pro-crime policies are a racist program that promises liberation but offers only mass death.
Over the last decade, BLM, and assorted leftist and libertarian groups dismantled our criminal justice system. Police forces were defunded, pro-crime prosecutors refused to lock up criminals, federal and state prison systems released tens of thousands of them, and a wave of legislative decriminalization legalized everything from shoplifting, to drug dealing and mugging.
The pro-crime policymaking that eliminated public safety and cost over 3,000 lives in 2020 alone was done under the guise of fighting racism. Statistics which showed that black people were more likely to be arrested, imprisoned or shot during criminal encounters with police were used to spread conspiracy theories falsely accusing the criminal justice system of systemic racism.
What all of these racist conspiracy theories popularized by politicians, the media, and the entertainment industry ignored was that black people were also far more likely to be crime victims. Even as the BLM riots got underway, black people in surveys were strongly opposed to police defunding. The opposition was so vehement that Democrats not only abandoned the issue, but claimed that they had always been opposed to it and ran against their own position.
Despite years of false claims portraying black people as victims of a biased criminal justice system whose police forces are descended from “slave catchers” who repress minorities at the behest of white suburbanites, surveys of black people continue to tell a very different story.
A Pew survey found that while only 33% of white Democrats wanted to reduce crime, 63% of Hispanics and 66% of black people thought that fighting crime should be a priority.
And that’s nothing new.
Leftists and libertarians lied that the War on Drugs was racist when it was actually pushed by black groups, including the NAACP, which demanded the death penalty for drug dealers.
That same Pew survey showed that while only 38% of white Dems answered that reducing the availability of illegal drugs should be a priority, 57% of Hispanics and 60% of black people believed that it should be.
Now a Kaiser Family Foundation survey shows that black people are far more likely to suffer from crime than white people. The survey, meant to generate support for unconstitutional gun ban measures, instead unintentionally demonstrated that crime hurts black people more.
The KFF survey noted that “three in ten black adults (31%) have personally witnessed someone being shot”, “one-third of black adults (34%) have a family member who was killed by a gun” and (32%) say that they worry all the time about themselves or a family member being shot.
One in six of black adults say they don’t feel “safe at all” from gun violence in their neighborhood, compared to 2% of white adults. 1 in 4 also bought a gun to protect themselves.
Gun violence is just another way of saying crime.
Black people are disproportionately affected by crime. Pro-crime policies led to the deaths of an additional 2,244 black people in 2020. According to a Johns Hopkins report, “in 2020, one out of every 1,000 young black males (15–34) was shot and killed” and, “more than half of all black teens (15–19) who died in 2020—a staggering 52%—were killed by gun violence.”
CDC numbers showed that homicide is a leading cause of death among black men under the age of 20, and from the ages of 20 to 44. White men are killed by guns at the rate of 3.15 per 100,000 while black men die at the rate of 48.16 per 100,000. Pro-crime policies increase crime and kill thousands of black people. That’s what a real disproportionate impact looks like.
Every time pro-crime politicians free criminals, pro-crime prosecutors refuse to prosecute violent offenders, and legislatures eliminate bail, the impact is felt most strongly in the black community.
Law enforcement isn’t racist, but getting rid of it is. When a community depends more on a particular service, losing it has a clear disproportionate impact. Keeping the peace, arresting offenders and dispensing justice is one of the few primal duties of government. The breach in the social contract when the government fails to provide peacekeeping services is devastating.
Most crimes are committed by repeat offenders. The only way to interrupt the cycle of violence is to lock them up. Successful tough on crime policies in the 90s made cities safe once again and led to an economic boom in inner cities. Manhattan’s Harlem went from a danger zone to hosting Bill Clinton’s office, but in 2022, crime increased 44%. The Clinton offices have mostly moved down to the Wall Street area, but where they remain in Central Harlem, crime is up 32%. Next door in West Harlem, it’s up 133%. That means Bill is less likely to tour the Apollo Theater, but it also means that the mostly black residents are the ones feeling the worst of it.
Pro-crime activists have spent years regaling us with the suffering of convicts while caring very little about the shattered lives they have left in their wake. Foundations, protest groups, activist organizations and even PACs have spent hundreds of millions lobbying for criminals, fighting for their release and remaking our system to favor perpetrators, not victims. Their political success has come with a very high cost. And much of that burden has fallen on black people.
It is hard to think of any single policy in the last generation that has done more harm to black people or claimed more lives than the pro-crime agenda. Pro-crime activists have falsely claimed that police shootings of black men are a form of genocide. They’re not. Crime is.
One study counted 286,075 firearm deaths among black people from 1990 to 2021. That’s over a quarter of a million deaths. Some of them are due to suicide, but suicides are much lower among black people than white people, and the majority of black gun deaths were homicides.
And seeing a quarter of a million deaths, the pro-crime Left wants even more bodies.
Those quarter of a million deaths have been largely self-inflicted, but, much as with the welfare state, they were aided and abetted by white liberal policymakers who had come to believe that what the black community really needed was for the government to enable its criminals.
Racist liberal condescension continues to destroy black communities, families and lives.
2020 demonstrated that tough on crime policies can save thousands of black lives and, over time, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of black lives. Pro-crime policies are a racist disaster which reduced black people to criminals and then set out to free criminals to help black people.
That’s why 1 out of every 1,000 young black men are dead.
Pro-crime policies are racist. They enable a crime epidemic that has killed more black people than the total number of battlefield casualties for all races in the Civil War. More black people died in the year of Black Lives Matter than our entire death toll in the Iraq War.
Can it get worse than this? In 1991, 12,226 black people were murdered. For the first time, more black people were killed than white people. The numbers are trending that way once again. While the Left claims that highways and dress codes are systemically racist, their pro-crime policies are a racist program that promises liberation but offers only mass death.
Daniel Greenfield
Reader Interactions
As Violent Crime SURGES across America, some politicians and some in the media are gaslighting the public into thinking the Police are the Problem…
Homicides:
Atlanta ⬆️ 58%
Portland ⬆️ 533%
Philadelphia ⬆️ 37%
Shootings:
New York City ⬆️ 64%
Los Angeles ⬆️ 51%
Chicago ⬆️ 18% pic.twitter.com/5RbhbKY312
— National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) (@GLFOP) June 22, 2021
DIVISIONIST GEORGE SOROS HITS AGAIN
New Yorkers understand that the government cannot and will not—and does not want to—protect them from violence. As happened with Bernie Goetz almost 40 years ago, this is when vigilantes become heroes.
You can contribute to Daniel Penny's legal defense fund here.
BLM Glorifies a Jew-Killing Terrorist. Here is BLM Chicago honoring Rasmea Odeh and also supporting the so-called Palestinian right of return, whose agenda is to overwhelm and destroy Israel demographically. The national BLM organization, as represented by Patrisse Cullors, called not only for the destruction of Israel but also for support for Odeh. Odeh was convicted of murdering two Jews with a bomb and trying to murder emergency responders, but the Israelis disarmed the second bomb in time.
THERE IS NOTHING MORE RACIST THAN THE BLM HOAX. NOR VIOLENT!
BLM is following a business model where victimhood is the product while outrage is the marketing strategy. This was pioneered by veteran race hustler Al Sharpton.
During his heyday, Sharpton made appearances following an incident where there were racial implications to make inflammatory speeches. Once they poured petrol into the fire he just flew out of the place and used it to raise funds for ‘charity’.
Sharpton seems to have mostly used his charity to enrich himself and his family. Sharpton was also a tax dodger; in 2016, he personally owed over $3 million in federal taxes.
As Violent Crime SURGES across America, some politicians and some in the media are gaslighting the public into thinking the Police are the Problem…
Homicides:
Atlanta ⬆️ 58%
Portland ⬆️ 533%
Philadelphia ⬆️ 37%
Shootings:
New York City ⬆️ 64%
Los Angeles ⬆️ 51%
Chicago ⬆️ 18% pic.twitter.com/5RbhbKY312
— National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) (@GLFOP) June 22, 2021
DIVISIONIST GEORGE SOROS HITS AGAIN
New Yorkers understand that the government cannot and will not—and does not want to—protect them from violence. As happened with Bernie Goetz almost 40 years ago, this is when vigilantes become heroes.
You can contribute to Daniel Penny's legal defense fund here.
BLM Glorifies a Jew-Killing Terrorist. Here is BLM Chicago honoring Rasmea Odeh and also supporting the so-called Palestinian right of return, whose agenda is to overwhelm and destroy Israel demographically. The national BLM organization, as represented by Patrisse Cullors, called not only for the destruction of Israel but also for support for Odeh. Odeh was convicted of murdering two Jews with a bomb and trying to murder emergency responders, but the Israelis disarmed the second bomb in time.
THERE IS NOTHING MORE RACIST THAN THE BLM HOAX. NOR VIOLENT!
BLM is following a business model where victimhood is the product while outrage is the marketing strategy. This was pioneered by veteran race hustler Al Sharpton.
During his heyday, Sharpton made appearances following an incident where there were racial implications to make inflammatory speeches. Once they poured petrol into the fire he just flew out of the place and used it to raise funds for ‘charity’.
Sharpton seems to have mostly used his charity to enrich himself and his family. Sharpton was also a tax dodger; in 2016, he personally owed over $3 million in federal taxes.
Daniel Penny’s legal defense fund closing in on $1.5 million
As of this writing (5:23 AM EDT), the legal defense fund established at GiveSendGo.com is a few thousand dollars short of $1.5 million, at $1,473,253. I am afraid that the hero Marine will need every penny and more if he is to beat this awful manslaughter rap for saving fellow subway passengers from a deranged man with a history of violent assaults on strangers.
Via GiveSendGo.com
The page explains:
Daniel Penny is, a twenty-four-year-old college student and decorated Marine veteran, facing a criminal investigation stemming from him protecting individuals on a NYC subway train from an assailant who later died. Funds are being raised to pay Mr. Penny’s legal fees incurred from any criminal charges filed and any future civil lawsuits that may arise, as well as expenses related to his defense. All contributions are greatly appreciated. Any proceeds collected which exceed those necessary to cover Mr. Penny’s legal defense will be donated to a mental health advocacy program in New York City.
***All funds will be sent to and managed by the law offices of Raiser & Kenniff, P.C***
I just donated, and I urge everyone who has any sum to spare, even $1, to make a donation. With so many prosecutors defaulting on their responsibilities for ideological reasons, and with police understaffed and justifiably afraid of being persecuted for doing their jobs, we are put in the position of having to stand up for ourselves, often at great personal peril, when deranged or merely criminal people attack us.
If we want the physically and morally able among us to stand up to those who threaten us, we must support Mr. Penny.
DIVISIONIST GEORGE SOROS HITS AGAIN
New Yorkers understand that the government cannot and will not—and does not want to—protect them from violence. As happened with Bernie Goetz almost 40 years ago, this is when vigilantes become heroes.
You can contribute to Daniel Penny's legal defense fund here.
As of this writing (5:23 AM EDT), the legal defense fund established at GiveSendGo.com is a few thousand dollars short of $1.5 million, at $1,473,253. I am afraid that the hero Marine will need every penny and more if he is to beat this awful manslaughter rap for saving fellow subway passengers from a deranged man with a history of violent assaults on strangers.
Via GiveSendGo.com
The page explains:
Daniel Penny is, a twenty-four-year-old college student and decorated Marine veteran, facing a criminal investigation stemming from him protecting individuals on a NYC subway train from an assailant who later died. Funds are being raised to pay Mr. Penny’s legal fees incurred from any criminal charges filed and any future civil lawsuits that may arise, as well as expenses related to his defense. All contributions are greatly appreciated. Any proceeds collected which exceed those necessary to cover Mr. Penny’s legal defense will be donated to a mental health advocacy program in New York City.
***All funds will be sent to and managed by the law offices of Raiser & Kenniff, P.C***
I just donated, and I urge everyone who has any sum to spare, even $1, to make a donation. With so many prosecutors defaulting on their responsibilities for ideological reasons, and with police understaffed and justifiably afraid of being persecuted for doing their jobs, we are put in the position of having to stand up for ourselves, often at great personal peril, when deranged or merely criminal people attack us.
If we want the physically and morally able among us to stand up to those who threaten us, we must support Mr. Penny.
DIVISIONIST GEORGE SOROS HITS AGAIN
New Yorkers understand that the government cannot and will not—and does not want to—protect them from violence. As happened with Bernie Goetz almost 40 years ago, this is when vigilantes become heroes.
You can contribute to Daniel Penny's legal defense fund here.
Jordan Neely Was on ‘Top 50’ List of at-Risk New York City Homeless People
Jordan Neely, the mentally ill New York City
man who died while having an erratic
outburst, was on the city’s “top 50” list of at-
risk homeless people who stood out for the
severity of their troubles and resistance to
help, the New York Times reported.
New York City’s Coordinated Behavioral Health Task Force monitors the city’s “most entrenched and chronic patients,” and keeps lists of those who reside on the streets and those who cause trouble in the subways.
The task force is formed of workers from New York City’s government and representatives of the nonprofit groups the city contracts with to try to address the homeless crisis.
Neely was on the task force’s “top 50” subway list and had several encounters with law enforcement and homeless-outreach workers in recent months, the Times reported.
For example, Neely was jailed in February after he assaulted a 67-year-old and broke several bones in her face. Ultimately, Neely was released under a plea deal that required him to avoid trouble for 15 months, take antipsychotic medication, not abuse drugs, and stay in a residential treatment program.
However, two weeks after his enrollment in the program, Neely “walked out of the facility and did not return,” resulting in an arrest warrant being issued.
In March, outreach workers at a Manhattan subway station contacted Neely, who was “neatly dressed and calm,” and provided him with a ride to a shelter in the Bronx, where he spent the night.
However, outreach workers on April 8 discovered him in a Coney Island subway station “wearing dirty clothes riddled with burn holes,” He also “exposed himself and urinated inside a subway car,” the Times reported.
According to the outlet:
The workers in Coney Island learned only the next day that the person they had met was a man on the Top 50 list, case notes show.
A note later filed by an outreach worker about the encounter reads prophetically: “Due to client’s aggressive behavior, he could be a harm to others or himself if left untreated and not assessed by a mental health professional.”
Under a directive issued by Mr. Adams last fall, people who are in such a severe state of psychological crisis that they are a danger to themselves or to others are supposed to be taken to a hospital for evaluation, involuntarily if necessary.
On Thursday, city councilwoman Pierina Sanchez confirmed Neely’s presence on the “top 50” list.
“Our city knew exactly who Jordan was, where he was, and what his history was. And yet we failed him,” Sanchez said.
On May 1, Neely allegedly ranted at subway passengers and threw trash at them before former marine Daniel Penny placed him in a fatal chokehold as he was trying to restrain him. Penny now faces second-degree manslaughter charges filed by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.
Jordan Neely, the mentally ill New York City
man who died while having an erratic
outburst, was on the city’s “top 50” list of at-
risk homeless people who stood out for the
severity of their troubles and resistance to
help, the New York Times reported.
New York City’s Coordinated Behavioral Health Task Force monitors the city’s “most entrenched and chronic patients,” and keeps lists of those who reside on the streets and those who cause trouble in the subways.
The task force is formed of workers from New York City’s government and representatives of the nonprofit groups the city contracts with to try to address the homeless crisis.
Neely was on the task force’s “top 50” subway list and had several encounters with law enforcement and homeless-outreach workers in recent months, the Times reported.
For example, Neely was jailed in February after he assaulted a 67-year-old and broke several bones in her face. Ultimately, Neely was released under a plea deal that required him to avoid trouble for 15 months, take antipsychotic medication, not abuse drugs, and stay in a residential treatment program.
However, two weeks after his enrollment in the program, Neely “walked out of the facility and did not return,” resulting in an arrest warrant being issued.
In March, outreach workers at a Manhattan subway station contacted Neely, who was “neatly dressed and calm,” and provided him with a ride to a shelter in the Bronx, where he spent the night.
However, outreach workers on April 8 discovered him in a Coney Island subway station “wearing dirty clothes riddled with burn holes,” He also “exposed himself and urinated inside a subway car,” the Times reported.
According to the outlet:
The workers in Coney Island learned only the next day that the person they had met was a man on the Top 50 list, case notes show.
A note later filed by an outreach worker about the encounter reads prophetically: “Due to client’s aggressive behavior, he could be a harm to others or himself if left untreated and not assessed by a mental health professional.”
Under a directive issued by Mr. Adams last fall, people who are in such a severe state of psychological crisis that they are a danger to themselves or to others are supposed to be taken to a hospital for evaluation, involuntarily if necessary.
On Thursday, city councilwoman Pierina Sanchez confirmed Neely’s presence on the “top 50” list.
“Our city knew exactly who Jordan was, where he was, and what his history was. And yet we failed him,” Sanchez said.
On May 1, Neely allegedly ranted at subway passengers and threw trash at them before former marine Daniel Penny placed him in a fatal chokehold as he was trying to restrain him. Penny now faces second-degree manslaughter charges filed by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.
BLM has self-identified as a Black nationalist entity, which underscores the need for the Republican Party to focus on the ties between this entity and the Democrats.
I have reported previously how the Black Lives Matter Global Network has glorified foreign and domestic terrorists, cop killers, and Fidel Castro, and has taken actions both the Anti-Defamation League and International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance define as anti-Semitic: denial of the right of Israel to exist. The organization has also encouraged looting and other forms of civil unrest.
The following statement is not from a right-wing news source; it is straight from BLM's official web page. This relates to the group's controversial decision to spend millions of dollars on property for the use of its leaders.
"Second, this property has served as a safe haven to protect the leaders of our Black nationalist movement. Our leaders and their families, including their children, have been targeted by white supremacists. They have been threatened with physical harm. We have a responsibility to protect them, and this property has supported those efforts." [emphasis added]
There is no place in our society for physical threats against other people and their property, whether from white supremacists against BLM or BLM against law-abiding citizens and their property. The central issue here is that BLM has openly self-identified as Black nationalist, and we need to look at exactly what that means.
What is Black Nationalism?
- According to Wikipedia (supported by references in both cases), "Black nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that black people are a race, and seeks to develop and maintain a black racial and national identity.." Wikipedia adds, "White nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that white people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a white racial and national identity." This comes across as the same kind of trash from two different dumpsters, and I am using the family-friendly version of what I am really thinking. There is only one nation between Canada and Mexico, its citizens come in all colors, and there is no place here for a white nation, a Black nation, a nation of Islam, or anything other than an American nation.
- Black nationalists don't like Jews very much. According to Eunice Pollack [emphasis is mine],
"…racialized forms of antisemitism and anti-Zionism took shape, spread, and intensified among Blacks in the US from the era of Malcolm X through the current Black Lives Matter movement. … one concluded in a Black students’ magazine that 'Caucasian Jews' continue to 'defile and trash and defecate on the rest of the world,' and warned that 'Caucasian Jews . . . should not expect anyone to respect or protect their humanity or even shed a tear when something catastrophic happens to them.'"
This sounds a lot like the dehumanizing and even violent rhetoric that came out of the Nazi Party in the 1930s, and a lot of Black criminals are acting on this in mostly Democrat-run cities.
"Behrman said he believes the assaults are part of a disturbing game by some African-American teens. 'And they're playing a game: 'knockout.' 'Knock out the Jew,' maybe. And they're going around the neighborhood punching Jews,' Behrman said."
This is not to say that white criminals don't also commit anti-Semitic violence; alleged synagogue shooter Robert Bowers is a Caucasian. Most anti-Semitic hate speech comes, however, from the extreme political Left in the United States including diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) "professionals" and women's and gender studies departments.
Eunice Pollack's "Black Antisemitism in America: Past and Present" goes a lot further into the veritable sewer of Jew-hatred that comes from Black nationalists, including Black Lives Matter and Louis Farrakhan. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that Black nationalism and Black Lives Matter are no better than the Tsarist authors of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They have also, of course, directed vicious hate speech at Caucasians in general, including depiction of white people as "potential humans," and they don't think much of law enforcement professionals of any race. "What does Black Lives Matter call a Black police officer? The N word." That's not an exaggeration because this word is clearly audible in a video of a BLM riot in Detroit, and the rioters are throwing objects at the officers of all races. See "Protests in Detroit" at roughly the minus 24:00 mark for the N word. Warning; the F word also figures prominently in this display.
Who Supports Black Lives Matter?
We cannot repeat enough that the following people and organizations support BLM, which supports in turn cop killers (Joanne Chesimard and allegedly Charles Hill), Jew killers (Rasmea Odeh), vandals, rioters, looters, and Fidel Castro who murdered countless Cubans. We need to keep reminding people until they repudiate their support for BLM and, in the case of Hardin-Simmons University and Cornell's Law School, apologize respectively to the student HSU forced to leave when she criticized BLM and the Cornell Law professor whom the Dean attacked on an official Cornell web page. Until that happens, students should be discouraged from applying to either institution not only for their unfair treatment of the people in question but also for their alignment with an anti-Semitic and racist hate organization.
- Joe Biden's team met with BLM's leaders in 2021, when this behavior by BLM was well known. Even though BLM was not happy with the outcome, Biden's representatives should not have associated with them.
- Kamala Harris praised the "brilliance" of Black Lives Matter.
- Cornell's expensive Law School, as represented by then-Dean Eduardo Peñalver, went on record as supporting BLM under color of "racial justice." State University of New York Buffalo's Law School in-state tuition is roughly a third of Cornell's and you'll probably learn more law, rather than leftist ideology, there as well.
- Hardin-Simmons University, as represented by President Eric Bruntmyer.
- Solid Blue New York City renamed a street for Black Lives Matter, thus putting the mayor’s office solidly behind anti-Semitism and hatred of police.
- The Daily Signal lists major corporations, including Microsoft, that donated money to BLM but adds, "Microsoft Corp. announced June 5 that it would donate $250,000 to the 'Black Lives Matter Foundation,' but the computer and technology giant linked to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation." Robert Ray Barnes' BLM Foundation has absolutely nothing to do with the Black nationalist BLM Global Network Foundation, but the latter's web page identified itself as the "BLM Foundation Inc." which may have diverted donations from Barnes' small organization to Patrisse Cullors' entity. The reader can form his or her own conclusions as to BLM Global Networks' ethics in this regard. In any event, all these companies should be called upon to repudiate their support of BLM Global Network.
The Democrat Party's connections to BLM Global Network meanwhile need to take front and center stage for the 2024 national elections.
Civis Americanus is the pen name of a contributor who remembers the lessons of history, and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way. He or she is remaining anonymous due to the likely prospect of being subjected to "cancel culture" for exposing the Big Lie behind Black Lives Matter.
Photo credit: YouTube screengrab
BLM has self-identified as a Black nationalist entity, which underscores the need for the Republican Party to focus on the ties between this entity and the Democrats.
I have reported previously how the Black Lives Matter Global Network has glorified foreign and domestic terrorists, cop killers, and Fidel Castro, and has taken actions both the Anti-Defamation League and International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance define as anti-Semitic: denial of the right of Israel to exist. The organization has also encouraged looting and other forms of civil unrest.
The following statement is not from a right-wing news source; it is straight from BLM's official web page. This relates to the group's controversial decision to spend millions of dollars on property for the use of its leaders.
"Second, this property has served as a safe haven to protect the leaders of our Black nationalist movement. Our leaders and their families, including their children, have been targeted by white supremacists. They have been threatened with physical harm. We have a responsibility to protect them, and this property has supported those efforts." [emphasis added]
There is no place in our society for physical threats against other people and their property, whether from white supremacists against BLM or BLM against law-abiding citizens and their property. The central issue here is that BLM has openly self-identified as Black nationalist, and we need to look at exactly what that means.
What is Black Nationalism?
- According to Wikipedia (supported by references in both cases), "Black nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that black people are a race, and seeks to develop and maintain a black racial and national identity.." Wikipedia adds, "White nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that white people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a white racial and national identity." This comes across as the same kind of trash from two different dumpsters, and I am using the family-friendly version of what I am really thinking. There is only one nation between Canada and Mexico, its citizens come in all colors, and there is no place here for a white nation, a Black nation, a nation of Islam, or anything other than an American nation.
- Black nationalists don't like Jews very much. According to Eunice Pollack [emphasis is mine],
"…racialized forms of antisemitism and anti-Zionism took shape, spread, and intensified among Blacks in the US from the era of Malcolm X through the current Black Lives Matter movement. … one concluded in a Black students’ magazine that 'Caucasian Jews' continue to 'defile and trash and defecate on the rest of the world,' and warned that 'Caucasian Jews . . . should not expect anyone to respect or protect their humanity or even shed a tear when something catastrophic happens to them.'"
This sounds a lot like the dehumanizing and even violent rhetoric that came out of the Nazi Party in the 1930s, and a lot of Black criminals are acting on this in mostly Democrat-run cities.
"Behrman said he believes the assaults are part of a disturbing game by some African-American teens. 'And they're playing a game: 'knockout.' 'Knock out the Jew,' maybe. And they're going around the neighborhood punching Jews,' Behrman said."
This is not to say that white criminals don't also commit anti-Semitic violence; alleged synagogue shooter Robert Bowers is a Caucasian. Most anti-Semitic hate speech comes, however, from the extreme political Left in the United States including diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) "professionals" and women's and gender studies departments.
Eunice Pollack's "Black Antisemitism in America: Past and Present" goes a lot further into the veritable sewer of Jew-hatred that comes from Black nationalists, including Black Lives Matter and Louis Farrakhan. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that Black nationalism and Black Lives Matter are no better than the Tsarist authors of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They have also, of course, directed vicious hate speech at Caucasians in general, including depiction of white people as "potential humans," and they don't think much of law enforcement professionals of any race. "What does Black Lives Matter call a Black police officer? The N word." That's not an exaggeration because this word is clearly audible in a video of a BLM riot in Detroit, and the rioters are throwing objects at the officers of all races. See "Protests in Detroit" at roughly the minus 24:00 mark for the N word. Warning; the F word also figures prominently in this display.
Who Supports Black Lives Matter?
We cannot repeat enough that the following people and organizations support BLM, which supports in turn cop killers (Joanne Chesimard and allegedly Charles Hill), Jew killers (Rasmea Odeh), vandals, rioters, looters, and Fidel Castro who murdered countless Cubans. We need to keep reminding people until they repudiate their support for BLM and, in the case of Hardin-Simmons University and Cornell's Law School, apologize respectively to the student HSU forced to leave when she criticized BLM and the Cornell Law professor whom the Dean attacked on an official Cornell web page. Until that happens, students should be discouraged from applying to either institution not only for their unfair treatment of the people in question but also for their alignment with an anti-Semitic and racist hate organization.
- Joe Biden's team met with BLM's leaders in 2021, when this behavior by BLM was well known. Even though BLM was not happy with the outcome, Biden's representatives should not have associated with them.
- Kamala Harris praised the "brilliance" of Black Lives Matter.
- Cornell's expensive Law School, as represented by then-Dean Eduardo Peñalver, went on record as supporting BLM under color of "racial justice." State University of New York Buffalo's Law School in-state tuition is roughly a third of Cornell's and you'll probably learn more law, rather than leftist ideology, there as well.
- Hardin-Simmons University, as represented by President Eric Bruntmyer.
- Solid Blue New York City renamed a street for Black Lives Matter, thus putting the mayor’s office solidly behind anti-Semitism and hatred of police.
- The Daily Signal lists major corporations, including Microsoft, that donated money to BLM but adds, "Microsoft Corp. announced June 5 that it would donate $250,000 to the 'Black Lives Matter Foundation,' but the computer and technology giant linked to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation." Robert Ray Barnes' BLM Foundation has absolutely nothing to do with the Black nationalist BLM Global Network Foundation, but the latter's web page identified itself as the "BLM Foundation Inc." which may have diverted donations from Barnes' small organization to Patrisse Cullors' entity. The reader can form his or her own conclusions as to BLM Global Networks' ethics in this regard. In any event, all these companies should be called upon to repudiate their support of BLM Global Network.
The Democrat Party's connections to BLM Global Network meanwhile need to take front and center stage for the 2024 national elections.
Civis Americanus is the pen name of a contributor who remembers the lessons of history, and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way. He or she is remaining anonymous due to the likely prospect of being subjected to "cancel culture" for exposing the Big Lie behind Black Lives Matter.
Photo credit: YouTube screengrab
Alvin Bragg attacks self-defense by indicting Daniel Penny for Jordan Neely’s death
Daniel Penny, along with others on a New York subway, used a wrestling hold to subdue Jordan Neely after the latter’s behavior was “hostile and erratic.” The Democrat narrative is that a white supremacist murdered a Michael Jackson impersonator. Now, Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s hard-left District Attorney, has indicted Penny for manslaughter. New Yorkers, though, may not take this indictment lying down.
The last time New York City was as violently out of control as today was in the 1970s and early 1980s. That’s why, when Bernhard Goetz, a white subway rider who had previously been violently mugged, pulled out a gun and shot four black teens who were demanding his money, many in New York City supported him. He was their everyman. The jury rejected serious charges against him, finding him guilty of carrying an unlicensed firearm, for which he served only eight months.
Giuliani restored order to New York, and Bloomberg maintained it. Things fell apart again under DeBlasio, a process that accelerated when BLM paralyzed policing. Today, in NYC subways, it’s déjà vu all over again for those who remember the 1970s.
Image: Neely being put in a recovery position. Twitter screen grab.
Subway crime goes beyond fare-jumpers, litter, and graffiti. It includes homeless people taking over subway cars and literally befouling them with urine, and crazy people shooting at passengers, pushing them onto the tracks, and otherwise assaulting them.
It was in this context that Neely, a homeless man with a long criminal record, including multiple assault charges, came into contact with Penny. According to witnesses, Neely behaved in a “hostile and erratic manner” and threw trash at people (a form of assault), frightening passengers. That’s why Penny put Neely in a “chokehold,” while two other passengers helped.
For a chokehold, one person puts his arm around another person’s neck to control that person. I’ve had hundreds of chokeholds put on me, and I’ve put hundreds on other people. Nobody choked. If you apply hard pressure the correct way, though, you can either cut off someone’s air supply, suffocating them or the flow of blood to their brain. The moment you remove pressure, the suffocation stops, and the blood flow returns.
So, it’s theoretically possible that a chokehold could have killed Neely. Except that we know from the full video, rather than the parts the media focused on, that once Neely stopped screaming and fighting, Penny put him in a recovery position. This is inconsistent with intending to kill a man or believing you have killed him. Several people involved (many of whom thanked Penny) were certain that Neely was alive—and, indeed, Neely was alive, dying only at the hospital:
Hypothetically, though, it shouldn’t matter if Neely had died. The self-defense principle is that you must neutralize the threat. People die because they thought that wounding someone was sufficient to neutralize them.
New York’s self-defense doctrine gives reasonable people the right to take whatever steps are needed to defend themselves or others. They don’t have to wait until they’re wounded (perhaps fatally) to act. Instead, the justification for killing someone kicks in when “a person reasonably believes it is necessary to defend himself/ herself or a third party when there is a reasonable belief of imminent use of unlawful physical force.” (NY Penal Code § 35.15.)
Leftists from D.A. Alvin Bragg to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, though, hate self-defense because it makes people less dependent on the government. When a bodega worker killed a threatening robber, Bragg indicted the worker for murder. He wanted to do the same when a garage security guard wrestled the gun from a robber who shot him and fired back, killing the robber. Recall that, in Canada, Justin Trudeau has successfully eliminated self-defense:
Therefore, it was predictable that Bragg would indict Penny for second-degree manslaughter.
The real question is whether New Yorkers will resist, as they did with the bodega and parking garage workers. While the left is pushing the George Floyd narrative (white-on-black violence), New Yorkers are looking at a subway that functions as the city’s artery, but that is becoming too dangerous for them to use.
No wonder even left-wing outlets are worriedly writing about the number of New Yorkers who have come to Penny’s defense. (See, e.g., Vox, Daily News, Politico, and The Times-Tribune.) And no wonder that Bragg bypassed the grand jury because he feared they’d side with Penny and withhold an indictment.
New Yorkers understand that the government cannot and will not—and does not want to—protect them from violence. As happened with Bernie Goetz almost 40 years ago, this is when vigilantes become heroes.
You can contribute to Daniel Penny's legal defense fund here.
Alvin Bragg attacks self-defense by indicting Daniel Penny for Jordan Neely’s death
Daniel Penny, along with others on a New York subway, used a wrestling hold to subdue Jordan Neely after the latter’s behavior was “hostile and erratic.” The Democrat narrative is that a white supremacist murdered a Michael Jackson impersonator. Now, Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s hard-left District Attorney, has indicted Penny for manslaughter. New Yorkers, though, may not take this indictment lying down.
The last time New York City was as violently out of control as today was in the 1970s and early 1980s. That’s why, when Bernhard Goetz, a white subway rider who had previously been violently mugged, pulled out a gun and shot four black teens who were demanding his money, many in New York City supported him. He was their everyman. The jury rejected serious charges against him, finding him guilty of carrying an unlicensed firearm, for which he served only eight months.
Giuliani restored order to New York, and Bloomberg maintained it. Things fell apart again under DeBlasio, a process that accelerated when BLM paralyzed policing. Today, in NYC subways, it’s déjà vu all over again for those who remember the 1970s.
Image: Neely being put in a recovery position. Twitter screen grab.
Subway crime goes beyond fare-jumpers, litter, and graffiti. It includes homeless people taking over subway cars and literally befouling them with urine, and crazy people shooting at passengers, pushing them onto the tracks, and otherwise assaulting them.
It was in this context that Neely, a homeless man with a long criminal record, including multiple assault charges, came into contact with Penny. According to witnesses, Neely behaved in a “hostile and erratic manner” and threw trash at people (a form of assault), frightening passengers. That’s why Penny put Neely in a “chokehold,” while two other passengers helped.
For a chokehold, one person puts his arm around another person’s neck to control that person. I’ve had hundreds of chokeholds put on me, and I’ve put hundreds on other people. Nobody choked. If you apply hard pressure the correct way, though, you can either cut off someone’s air supply, suffocating them or the flow of blood to their brain. The moment you remove pressure, the suffocation stops, and the blood flow returns.
So, it’s theoretically possible that a chokehold could have killed Neely. Except that we know from the full video, rather than the parts the media focused on, that once Neely stopped screaming and fighting, Penny put him in a recovery position. This is inconsistent with intending to kill a man or believing you have killed him. Several people involved (many of whom thanked Penny) were certain that Neely was alive—and, indeed, Neely was alive, dying only at the hospital:
Hypothetically, though, it shouldn’t matter if Neely had died. The self-defense principle is that you must neutralize the threat. People die because they thought that wounding someone was sufficient to neutralize them.
New York’s self-defense doctrine gives reasonable people the right to take whatever steps are needed to defend themselves or others. They don’t have to wait until they’re wounded (perhaps fatally) to act. Instead, the justification for killing someone kicks in when “a person reasonably believes it is necessary to defend himself/ herself or a third party when there is a reasonable belief of imminent use of unlawful physical force.” (NY Penal Code § 35.15.)
Leftists from D.A. Alvin Bragg to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, though, hate self-defense because it makes people less dependent on the government. When a bodega worker killed a threatening robber, Bragg indicted the worker for murder. He wanted to do the same when a garage security guard wrestled the gun from a robber who shot him and fired back, killing the robber. Recall that, in Canada, Justin Trudeau has successfully eliminated self-defense:
Therefore, it was predictable that Bragg would indict Penny for second-degree manslaughter.
The real question is whether New Yorkers will resist, as they did with the bodega and parking garage workers. While the left is pushing the George Floyd narrative (white-on-black violence), New Yorkers are looking at a subway that functions as the city’s artery, but that is becoming too dangerous for them to use.
No wonder even left-wing outlets are worriedly writing about the number of New Yorkers who have come to Penny’s defense. (See, e.g., Vox, Daily News, Politico, and The Times-Tribune.) And no wonder that Bragg bypassed the grand jury because he feared they’d side with Penny and withhold an indictment.
New Yorkers understand that the government cannot and will not—and does not want to—protect them from violence. As happened with Bernie Goetz almost 40 years ago, this is when vigilantes become heroes.
You can contribute to Daniel Penny's legal defense fund here.
Alvin Bragg didn’t trust a grand jury to indict Daniel Penny for the death of Jordan Neely
In New York City, everybody but the richest few percent rides the subway, and they know how bad things have gotten in the wake Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg treating arrests as inequitable since African Americans are disproportionately arrested.
Jordan Neely died in a hospital after being subdued by Marine Corps veteran Daniel Penny with the help of two other passengers (who have not been charged).
Uncredited photo via The New York Post
Neely “avoid[ed] prison for allegedly slugging a 67-year-old woman in November 2021 during a psychotic episode” by agreeing to a plea deal. Despite a record of more than forty previous arrests, he was allowed to roam the streets, though he was to stay at Harbor House, where he could receive services. When he left there, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ellen Biben signed a warrant for his arrest on February 23.
Perhaps because police officers realize that arresting any black person can cause enormous career grief, Neely evaded arrest, even while riding subways and being visible on the streets. The justice system, in other words, completely failed to protect the public from a deranged, violent man. So, when riding the subway on May first and threatening passengers with violence, and assaulting some by throwing trash, it was only Daniel Penny who first took action to protect himself and fellow passengers.
As Andrea Widburg noted in her excellent coverage of the incident:
it’s theoretically possible that a chokehold could have killed Neely. Except that we know from the full video, rather than the parts the media focused on, that once Neely stopped screaming and fighting, Penny put him in a recovery position. This is inconsistent with intending to kill a man or believing you have killed him. Several people involved (many of whom thanked Penny) were certain that Neely was alive—and, indeed, Neely was alive, dying only at the hospital:
When DA Bragg indicted Penny, he avoided taking the case to a grand jury. I suspect he realized that most members of a Manhattan grand jury are subway riders, and might have even experienced a situation of being threatened on a subway car while on their way to the courthouse. He had reason to believe that a grand jury would not have returned an indictment.
So, just as he did with “Jose Alba, the bodega clerk charged with murder for fatally stabbing an ex-con who was assaulting him in the grocery,” his office issued the indictment on its own. Alba was sent to Riker’s Island, a notoriously violent and unsafe jail, only to be released when the public uproar grew deafening.
Daniel Penny, perhaps because he is white, has so far only been publicly excoriated by “activists” as probably racist, simply because he was a white man subduing a black man who died later. The vast majority of New Yorkers who will make up the jury pool for his trial, most of whom are fellow subway riders, are remaining silent. Literally, a silent majority.
I am afraid it will take a jury trial for Penny to receive justice for his heroic acts that ended badly for the offender. He will need capable (and expensive) counsel.
You can contribute to Daniel Penny's legal defense fund here.
I’d like to see Bragg repeat what he did in the case of Jose Alba and simply drop the charges because of the obvious injustice or prosecuting an act of self-defense. Large demonstrations might help convince him, but so far, they have not taken place. Unless the silent majority wakes up and realizes it has to encourage, not punish good Samaritans who protect fellow passengers from scary and violent lunatics, the city and its transportation system will only get scarier and more hazardous.
THERE IS NO GREATER THREAT TO AMERICA THAN THE DEMOCRAT PARTY!
In New York City, everybody but the richest few percent rides the subway, and they know how bad things have gotten in the wake Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg treating arrests as inequitable since African Americans are disproportionately arrested.
Jordan Neely died in a hospital after being subdued by Marine Corps veteran Daniel Penny with the help of two other passengers (who have not been charged).
Uncredited photo via The New York Post
Neely “avoid[ed] prison for allegedly slugging a 67-year-old woman in November 2021 during a psychotic episode” by agreeing to a plea deal. Despite a record of more than forty previous arrests, he was allowed to roam the streets, though he was to stay at Harbor House, where he could receive services. When he left there, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ellen Biben signed a warrant for his arrest on February 23.
Perhaps because police officers realize that arresting any black person can cause enormous career grief, Neely evaded arrest, even while riding subways and being visible on the streets. The justice system, in other words, completely failed to protect the public from a deranged, violent man. So, when riding the subway on May first and threatening passengers with violence, and assaulting some by throwing trash, it was only Daniel Penny who first took action to protect himself and fellow passengers.
As Andrea Widburg noted in her excellent coverage of the incident:
it’s theoretically possible that a chokehold could have killed Neely. Except that we know from the full video, rather than the parts the media focused on, that once Neely stopped screaming and fighting, Penny put him in a recovery position. This is inconsistent with intending to kill a man or believing you have killed him. Several people involved (many of whom thanked Penny) were certain that Neely was alive—and, indeed, Neely was alive, dying only at the hospital:
When DA Bragg indicted Penny, he avoided taking the case to a grand jury. I suspect he realized that most members of a Manhattan grand jury are subway riders, and might have even experienced a situation of being threatened on a subway car while on their way to the courthouse. He had reason to believe that a grand jury would not have returned an indictment.
So, just as he did with “Jose Alba, the bodega clerk charged with murder for fatally stabbing an ex-con who was assaulting him in the grocery,” his office issued the indictment on its own. Alba was sent to Riker’s Island, a notoriously violent and unsafe jail, only to be released when the public uproar grew deafening.
Daniel Penny, perhaps because he is white, has so far only been publicly excoriated by “activists” as probably racist, simply because he was a white man subduing a black man who died later. The vast majority of New Yorkers who will make up the jury pool for his trial, most of whom are fellow subway riders, are remaining silent. Literally, a silent majority.
I am afraid it will take a jury trial for Penny to receive justice for his heroic acts that ended badly for the offender. He will need capable (and expensive) counsel.
You can contribute to Daniel Penny's legal defense fund here.
I’d like to see Bragg repeat what he did in the case of Jose Alba and simply drop the charges because of the obvious injustice or prosecuting an act of self-defense. Large demonstrations might help convince him, but so far, they have not taken place. Unless the silent majority wakes up and realizes it has to encourage, not punish good Samaritans who protect fellow passengers from scary and violent lunatics, the city and its transportation system will only get scarier and more hazardous.
THERE IS NO GREATER THREAT TO AMERICA THAN THE DEMOCRAT PARTY!
This analysis is a crock. Democrats have been seeking to divide the country by race, sex and class for decades. They have sought to destroy anyone who got their way. It started way before Trump. (MORE BELOW)
Watch Live: House Holds ‘Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan’ Hearing over Alvin Bragg’s Policies
Crime Killed a Quarter of a Million Black People.
This analysis is a crock. Democrats have been seeking to divide the country by race, sex and class for decades. They have sought to destroy anyone who got their way. It started way before Trump. (MORE BELOW)
Watch Live: House Holds ‘Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan’ Hearing over Alvin Bragg’s Policies
Crime Killed a Quarter of a Million Black People.
And the racist pro-crime Left wants more.
Over the last decade, BLM, and assorted leftist and libertarian groups dismantled our criminal justice system. Police forces were defunded, pro-crime prosecutors refused to lock up criminals, federal and state prison systems released tens of thousands of them, and a wave of legislative decriminalization legalized everything from shoplifting, to drug dealing and mugging.
The pro-crime policymaking that eliminated public safety and cost over 3,000 lives in 2020 alone was done under the guise of fighting racism. Statistics which showed that black people were more likely to be arrested, imprisoned or shot during criminal encounters with police were used to spread conspiracy theories falsely accusing the criminal justice system of systemic racism.
What all of these racist conspiracy theories popularized by politicians, the media, and the entertainment industry ignored was that black people were also far more likely to be crime victims. Even as the BLM riots got underway, black people in surveys were strongly opposed to police defunding. The opposition was so vehement that Democrats not only abandoned the issue, but claimed that they had always been opposed to it and ran against their own position.
Despite years of false claims portraying black people as victims of a biased criminal justice system whose police forces are descended from “slave catchers” who repress minorities at the behest of white suburbanites, surveys of black people continue to tell a very different story.
A Pew survey found that while only 33% of white Democrats wanted to reduce crime, 63% of Hispanics and 66% of black people thought that fighting crime should be a priority.
And that’s nothing new.
Leftists and libertarians lied that the War on Drugs was racist when it was actually pushed by black groups, including the NAACP, which demanded the death penalty for drug dealers.
That same Pew survey showed that while only 38% of white Dems answered that reducing the availability of illegal drugs should be a priority, 57% of Hispanics and 60% of black people believed that it should be.
Now a Kaiser Family Foundation survey shows that black people are far more likely to suffer from crime than white people. The survey, meant to generate support for unconstitutional gun ban measures, instead unintentionally demonstrated that crime hurts black people more.
The KFF survey noted that “three in ten black adults (31%) have personally witnessed someone being shot”, “one-third of black adults (34%) have a family member who was killed by a gun” and (32%) say that they worry all the time about themselves or a family member being shot.
One in six of black adults say they don’t feel “safe at all” from gun violence in their neighborhood, compared to 2% of white adults. 1 in 4 also bought a gun to protect themselves.
Gun violence is just another way of saying crime.
Black people are disproportionately affected by crime. Pro-crime policies led to the deaths of an additional 2,244 black people in 2020. According to a Johns Hopkins report, “in 2020, one out of every 1,000 young black males (15–34) was shot and killed” and, “more than half of all black teens (15–19) who died in 2020—a staggering 52%—were killed by gun violence.”
CDC numbers showed that homicide is a leading cause of death among black men under the age of 20, and from the ages of 20 to 44. White men are killed by guns at the rate of 3.15 per 100,000 while black men die at the rate of 48.16 per 100,000. Pro-crime policies increase crime and kill thousands of black people. That’s what a real disproportionate impact looks like.
Every time pro-crime politicians free criminals, pro-crime prosecutors refuse to prosecute violent offenders, and legislatures eliminate bail, the impact is felt most strongly in the black community.
Law enforcement isn’t racist, but getting rid of it is. When a community depends more on a particular service, losing it has a clear disproportionate impact. Keeping the peace, arresting offenders and dispensing justice is one of the few primal duties of government. The breach in the social contract when the government fails to provide peacekeeping services is devastating.
Most crimes are committed by repeat offenders. The only way to interrupt the cycle of violence is to lock them up. Successful tough on crime policies in the 90s made cities safe once again and led to an economic boom in inner cities. Manhattan’s Harlem went from a danger zone to hosting Bill Clinton’s office, but in 2022, crime increased 44%. The Clinton offices have mostly moved down to the Wall Street area, but where they remain in Central Harlem, crime is up 32%. Next door in West Harlem, it’s up 133%. That means Bill is less likely to tour the Apollo Theater, but it also means that the mostly black residents are the ones feeling the worst of it.
Pro-crime activists have spent years regaling us with the suffering of convicts while caring very little about the shattered lives they have left in their wake. Foundations, protest groups, activist organizations and even PACs have spent hundreds of millions lobbying for criminals, fighting for their release and remaking our system to favor perpetrators, not victims. Their political success has come with a very high cost. And much of that burden has fallen on black people.
It is hard to think of any single policy in the last generation that has done more harm to black people or claimed more lives than the pro-crime agenda. Pro-crime activists have falsely claimed that police shootings of black men are a form of genocide. They’re not. Crime is.
One study counted 286,075 firearm deaths among black people from 1990 to 2021. That’s over a quarter of a million deaths. Some of them are due to suicide, but suicides are much lower among black people than white people, and the majority of black gun deaths were homicides.
And seeing a quarter of a million deaths, the pro-crime Left wants even more bodies.
Those quarter of a million deaths have been largely self-inflicted, but, much as with the welfare state, they were aided and abetted by white liberal policymakers who had come to believe that what the black community really needed was for the government to enable its criminals.
Racist liberal condescension continues to destroy black communities, families and lives.
2020 demonstrated that tough on crime policies can save thousands of black lives and, over time, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of black lives. Pro-crime policies are a racist disaster which reduced black people to criminals and then set out to free criminals to help black people.
That’s why 1 out of every 1,000 young black men are dead.
Pro-crime policies are racist. They enable a crime epidemic that has killed more black people than the total number of battlefield casualties for all races in the Civil War. More black people died in the year of Black Lives Matter than our entire death toll in the Iraq War.
Can it get worse than this? In 1991, 12,226 black people were murdered. For the first time, more black people were killed than white people. The numbers are trending that way once again. While the Left claims that highways and dress codes are systemically racist, their pro-crime policies are a racist program that promises liberation but offers only mass death.
Over the last decade, BLM, and assorted leftist and libertarian groups dismantled our criminal justice system. Police forces were defunded, pro-crime prosecutors refused to lock up criminals, federal and state prison systems released tens of thousands of them, and a wave of legislative decriminalization legalized everything from shoplifting, to drug dealing and mugging.
The pro-crime policymaking that eliminated public safety and cost over 3,000 lives in 2020 alone was done under the guise of fighting racism. Statistics which showed that black people were more likely to be arrested, imprisoned or shot during criminal encounters with police were used to spread conspiracy theories falsely accusing the criminal justice system of systemic racism.
What all of these racist conspiracy theories popularized by politicians, the media, and the entertainment industry ignored was that black people were also far more likely to be crime victims. Even as the BLM riots got underway, black people in surveys were strongly opposed to police defunding. The opposition was so vehement that Democrats not only abandoned the issue, but claimed that they had always been opposed to it and ran against their own position.
Despite years of false claims portraying black people as victims of a biased criminal justice system whose police forces are descended from “slave catchers” who repress minorities at the behest of white suburbanites, surveys of black people continue to tell a very different story.
A Pew survey found that while only 33% of white Democrats wanted to reduce crime, 63% of Hispanics and 66% of black people thought that fighting crime should be a priority.
And that’s nothing new.
Leftists and libertarians lied that the War on Drugs was racist when it was actually pushed by black groups, including the NAACP, which demanded the death penalty for drug dealers.
That same Pew survey showed that while only 38% of white Dems answered that reducing the availability of illegal drugs should be a priority, 57% of Hispanics and 60% of black people believed that it should be.
Now a Kaiser Family Foundation survey shows that black people are far more likely to suffer from crime than white people. The survey, meant to generate support for unconstitutional gun ban measures, instead unintentionally demonstrated that crime hurts black people more.
The KFF survey noted that “three in ten black adults (31%) have personally witnessed someone being shot”, “one-third of black adults (34%) have a family member who was killed by a gun” and (32%) say that they worry all the time about themselves or a family member being shot.
One in six of black adults say they don’t feel “safe at all” from gun violence in their neighborhood, compared to 2% of white adults. 1 in 4 also bought a gun to protect themselves.
Gun violence is just another way of saying crime.
Black people are disproportionately affected by crime. Pro-crime policies led to the deaths of an additional 2,244 black people in 2020. According to a Johns Hopkins report, “in 2020, one out of every 1,000 young black males (15–34) was shot and killed” and, “more than half of all black teens (15–19) who died in 2020—a staggering 52%—were killed by gun violence.”
CDC numbers showed that homicide is a leading cause of death among black men under the age of 20, and from the ages of 20 to 44. White men are killed by guns at the rate of 3.15 per 100,000 while black men die at the rate of 48.16 per 100,000. Pro-crime policies increase crime and kill thousands of black people. That’s what a real disproportionate impact looks like.
Every time pro-crime politicians free criminals, pro-crime prosecutors refuse to prosecute violent offenders, and legislatures eliminate bail, the impact is felt most strongly in the black community.
Law enforcement isn’t racist, but getting rid of it is. When a community depends more on a particular service, losing it has a clear disproportionate impact. Keeping the peace, arresting offenders and dispensing justice is one of the few primal duties of government. The breach in the social contract when the government fails to provide peacekeeping services is devastating.
Most crimes are committed by repeat offenders. The only way to interrupt the cycle of violence is to lock them up. Successful tough on crime policies in the 90s made cities safe once again and led to an economic boom in inner cities. Manhattan’s Harlem went from a danger zone to hosting Bill Clinton’s office, but in 2022, crime increased 44%. The Clinton offices have mostly moved down to the Wall Street area, but where they remain in Central Harlem, crime is up 32%. Next door in West Harlem, it’s up 133%. That means Bill is less likely to tour the Apollo Theater, but it also means that the mostly black residents are the ones feeling the worst of it.
Pro-crime activists have spent years regaling us with the suffering of convicts while caring very little about the shattered lives they have left in their wake. Foundations, protest groups, activist organizations and even PACs have spent hundreds of millions lobbying for criminals, fighting for their release and remaking our system to favor perpetrators, not victims. Their political success has come with a very high cost. And much of that burden has fallen on black people.
It is hard to think of any single policy in the last generation that has done more harm to black people or claimed more lives than the pro-crime agenda. Pro-crime activists have falsely claimed that police shootings of black men are a form of genocide. They’re not. Crime is.
One study counted 286,075 firearm deaths among black people from 1990 to 2021. That’s over a quarter of a million deaths. Some of them are due to suicide, but suicides are much lower among black people than white people, and the majority of black gun deaths were homicides.
And seeing a quarter of a million deaths, the pro-crime Left wants even more bodies.
Those quarter of a million deaths have been largely self-inflicted, but, much as with the welfare state, they were aided and abetted by white liberal policymakers who had come to believe that what the black community really needed was for the government to enable its criminals.
Racist liberal condescension continues to destroy black communities, families and lives.
2020 demonstrated that tough on crime policies can save thousands of black lives and, over time, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of black lives. Pro-crime policies are a racist disaster which reduced black people to criminals and then set out to free criminals to help black people.
That’s why 1 out of every 1,000 young black men are dead.
Pro-crime policies are racist. They enable a crime epidemic that has killed more black people than the total number of battlefield casualties for all races in the Civil War. More black people died in the year of Black Lives Matter than our entire death toll in the Iraq War.
Can it get worse than this? In 1991, 12,226 black people were murdered. For the first time, more black people were killed than white people. The numbers are trending that way once again. While the Left claims that highways and dress codes are systemically racist, their pro-crime policies are a racist program that promises liberation but offers only mass death.
Daniel Greenfield
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As Violent Crime SURGES across America, some politicians and some in the media are gaslighting the public into thinking the Police are the Problem…
Homicides:
Atlanta ⬆️ 58%
Portland ⬆️ 533%
Philadelphia ⬆️ 37%
Shootings:
New York City ⬆️ 64%
Los Angeles ⬆️ 51%
Chicago ⬆️ 18% pic.twitter.com/5RbhbKY312
— National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) (@GLFOP) June 22, 2021
As Violent Crime SURGES across America, some politicians and some in the media are gaslighting the public into thinking the Police are the Problem…
Homicides:
Atlanta ⬆️ 58%
Portland ⬆️ 533%
Philadelphia ⬆️ 37%
Shootings:
New York City ⬆️ 64%
Los Angeles ⬆️ 51%
Chicago ⬆️ 18% pic.twitter.com/5RbhbKY312
— National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) (@GLFOP) June 22, 2021
Soros-backed prosecutor Kim Gardner’s out; now it’s time to do better
Kim Gardner is out as St. Louis Circuit Attorney. She resigned on May 4.
Part of her resignation letter to Governor Mike Parson says,
“Stepping back is the most powerful thing I can do to stop these outsiders from taking your views and your rights. I wanted to help the people of St. Louis when I took this job, and that’s still my north star. So, with a heavy heart but a firm decision, I’m retiring as your circuit attorney on June 1.”
Gardner announces her resignation
This is interesting comment since she was largely funded by an outsider. Gardner was one of the first state’s attorneys and attorneys general who were supported and funded by leftist billionaire George Soros.
She has also had the opportunity for years to help the people of St. Louis. She didn’t, and that’s why she’s had to resign.
She has been criticized for being soft on crime since the time she took office. She has faced disciplinary actions as a prosecutor, been reprimanded by the Missouri Supreme Court, and ordered to pay a fine. Her office is currently facing contempt charges because prosecutors failed to appear, and she was heading toward facing neglect of office charges.
In one case, the judge said Gardner’s office was a “rudderless ship of chaos,” and added that Gardner “complete indifference and a conscious disregard for the judicial process.”
While Gardner had weathered the criticism, she has recently seen it increasing even among members of her own party. This is because of a February incident when an out-of-control car hit a teen volleyball player, Janae Edmonson, who was in St. Louis for tournament. Both of Edmonson’s legs had to be amputated.
The car’s driver was out on bond while he waited for his trial in an armed robbery case. He had violated the terms of his bond dozens of times. Gardner’s office claimed that a judge blocked their attempt to arrest the driver before the accident, but there are no records to support this.
This is when Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a petition to start the process to fire Gardner if she was found in neglect of her duties. As part of his support for this, he said nearly 12,000 criminal cases had been dismissed because of Gardner’s neglect and 9,000 were thrown out right before they went to trial.
This was a good first step for St. Louis. Unfortunately, it wasn’t done by the voters in the city, but the state’s attorney general, who is a Republican. This means it will be turned into a political case, and to be honest, it is to a certain extent. This doesn’t mean that Gardner wasn’t incompetent as a circuit attorney, though. It means that whoever replaces her will need to show results.
Parson will choose a new circuit attorney to finish out Gardner’s term, which ends next year. Whoever this is will have a short amount of time to show results in an office that is in disarray. If the replacement can do this, a case can be made to allow the replacement remain in office or at least vote in a strong crime-fighting candidate. If the replacement fails to make a dent on the problem, residents will probably go back to voting for the candidate who matches their party affiliation, and St. Louis will continue to be mired in rising crime and falling public safety.
If St. Louis residents want to see crime come down in the city, they need to support Gardner’s replacement, and if he or she is successful, re-elect that attorney. If replacement fails, then elect someone who is tough on crime, whether that person is Republican or Democrat.
Michael A. Letts is the CEO and Founder of In-VestUSA, a national grassroots non-profit organization helping hundreds of communities provide thousands of bulletproof vests for their police forces through educational, public relations, sponsorship, and fundraising programs.
BILLINAORE NEO-FASCIST GEORGE SOROS IS BARACK OBAMA'S PATRON AND GODFATHER!
Soros Family Gives Early Financial
Support to Montana 'Moderate' Jon
Tester
Kim Gardner is out as St. Louis Circuit Attorney. She resigned on May 4.
Part of her resignation letter to Governor Mike Parson says,
“Stepping back is the most powerful thing I can do to stop these outsiders from taking your views and your rights. I wanted to help the people of St. Louis when I took this job, and that’s still my north star. So, with a heavy heart but a firm decision, I’m retiring as your circuit attorney on June 1.”
Gardner announces her resignation
This is interesting comment since she was largely funded by an outsider. Gardner was one of the first state’s attorneys and attorneys general who were supported and funded by leftist billionaire George Soros.
She has also had the opportunity for years to help the people of St. Louis. She didn’t, and that’s why she’s had to resign.
She has been criticized for being soft on crime since the time she took office. She has faced disciplinary actions as a prosecutor, been reprimanded by the Missouri Supreme Court, and ordered to pay a fine. Her office is currently facing contempt charges because prosecutors failed to appear, and she was heading toward facing neglect of office charges.
In one case, the judge said Gardner’s office was a “rudderless ship of chaos,” and added that Gardner “complete indifference and a conscious disregard for the judicial process.”
While Gardner had weathered the criticism, she has recently seen it increasing even among members of her own party. This is because of a February incident when an out-of-control car hit a teen volleyball player, Janae Edmonson, who was in St. Louis for tournament. Both of Edmonson’s legs had to be amputated.
The car’s driver was out on bond while he waited for his trial in an armed robbery case. He had violated the terms of his bond dozens of times. Gardner’s office claimed that a judge blocked their attempt to arrest the driver before the accident, but there are no records to support this.
This is when Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a petition to start the process to fire Gardner if she was found in neglect of her duties. As part of his support for this, he said nearly 12,000 criminal cases had been dismissed because of Gardner’s neglect and 9,000 were thrown out right before they went to trial.
This was a good first step for St. Louis. Unfortunately, it wasn’t done by the voters in the city, but the state’s attorney general, who is a Republican. This means it will be turned into a political case, and to be honest, it is to a certain extent. This doesn’t mean that Gardner wasn’t incompetent as a circuit attorney, though. It means that whoever replaces her will need to show results.
Parson will choose a new circuit attorney to finish out Gardner’s term, which ends next year. Whoever this is will have a short amount of time to show results in an office that is in disarray. If the replacement can do this, a case can be made to allow the replacement remain in office or at least vote in a strong crime-fighting candidate. If the replacement fails to make a dent on the problem, residents will probably go back to voting for the candidate who matches their party affiliation, and St. Louis will continue to be mired in rising crime and falling public safety.
If St. Louis residents want to see crime come down in the city, they need to support Gardner’s replacement, and if he or she is successful, re-elect that attorney. If replacement fails, then elect someone who is tough on crime, whether that person is Republican or Democrat.
Michael A. Letts is the CEO and Founder of In-VestUSA, a national grassroots non-profit organization helping hundreds of communities provide thousands of bulletproof vests for their police forces through educational, public relations, sponsorship, and fundraising programs.
BILLINAORE NEO-FASCIST GEORGE SOROS IS BARACK OBAMA'S PATRON AND GODFATHER!
Soros Family Gives Early Financial
Support to Montana 'Moderate' Jon
Tester
Liberal billionaire George Soros and his son nearly max out to Tester
April 28, 2023
Montana senator Jon Tester bills himself as a moderate Democrat willing to criticize his party's left-wing elements—like the progressive policies pushed by his latest financial backers, George and Alexander Soros.
The Soroses last month nearly maxed out campaign contributions to Tester, each giving $2,800, according to campaign finance disclosures, making the red-state Democrat the only candidate to whom both father and son have contributed this election cycle. Though the two pour millions of dollars every year into a variety of left-wing causes, their direct political support so far this cycle has been sparse. The elder Soros has given to only two candidates aside from Tester, Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.), both of whom are politically safe. His son Alexander Soros has given to only Tester and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D., Ariz.), who this cycle is targeting Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I., Ariz.), a former Democrat, from the left.
Tester's support from the Soros family highlights the political tightrope he will have to walk in his bid for reelection. Tester, considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents in the 2024 cycle, will need to raise money from major Democratic donors in what is likely to be one of the most expensive Senate races of 2024. But the senator, who recently said that he brings a "dirt-under-your-fingernails perspective to Washington," will have to avoid embracing left-wing policies unpopular in the Big Sky Country.
The elder Soros gives tens of millions of dollars a year to groups that support the movements to defund police, expand the Supreme Court, and restrict gun ownership. He has contributed $1.45 million to Color of Change, a civil rights organization that has called to defund police. He funds a variety of gun control groups and has stated, "I'm very much against guns."
Tester has spoken out against those policies, saying the average Montanan views the Democratic Party as "toxic" for ignoring rural voters.
"The defund the police stuff is garbage," said Tester, who also says he is a "strong supporter of the Second Amendment." Asked whether he supports packing the Supreme Court, Tester quipped, "Ix-nay on that bullshit-ay."
Tester's dilemma—balancing a centrist bent while wooing deep-pocketed Democratic donors—was on display last month following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Tester criticized a federal bailout of the bank and pledged to hold bank executives and regulators "accountable." But the same day, Tester attended a fundraiser in Palo Alto, Calif., organized by a lawyer for the firm that represents Silicon Valley Bank.
Another fundraiser host serves on the board of the National Resources Defense Council, an environmentalist group that repeatedly sued the Trump administration to shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, the Washington Free Beacon reported. The host, National Resources Defense Council board member Nicole Lederer, has said the pipeline "is against the best interest of our country."
Tester publicly supported the pipeline, saying that it "would have yielded big benefits" for Montana.
Montana senator Jon Tester bills himself as a moderate Democrat willing to criticize his party's left-wing elements—like the progressive policies pushed by his latest financial backers, George and Alexander Soros.
The Soroses last month nearly maxed out campaign contributions to Tester, each giving $2,800, according to campaign finance disclosures, making the red-state Democrat the only candidate to whom both father and son have contributed this election cycle. Though the two pour millions of dollars every year into a variety of left-wing causes, their direct political support so far this cycle has been sparse. The elder Soros has given to only two candidates aside from Tester, Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.), both of whom are politically safe. His son Alexander Soros has given to only Tester and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D., Ariz.), who this cycle is targeting Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I., Ariz.), a former Democrat, from the left.
Tester's support from the Soros family highlights the political tightrope he will have to walk in his bid for reelection. Tester, considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents in the 2024 cycle, will need to raise money from major Democratic donors in what is likely to be one of the most expensive Senate races of 2024. But the senator, who recently said that he brings a "dirt-under-your-fingernails perspective to Washington," will have to avoid embracing left-wing policies unpopular in the Big Sky Country.
The elder Soros gives tens of millions of dollars a year to groups that support the movements to defund police, expand the Supreme Court, and restrict gun ownership. He has contributed $1.45 million to Color of Change, a civil rights organization that has called to defund police. He funds a variety of gun control groups and has stated, "I'm very much against guns."
Tester has spoken out against those policies, saying the average Montanan views the Democratic Party as "toxic" for ignoring rural voters.
"The defund the police stuff is garbage," said Tester, who also says he is a "strong supporter of the Second Amendment." Asked whether he supports packing the Supreme Court, Tester quipped, "Ix-nay on that bullshit-ay."
Tester's dilemma—balancing a centrist bent while wooing deep-pocketed Democratic donors—was on display last month following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Tester criticized a federal bailout of the bank and pledged to hold bank executives and regulators "accountable." But the same day, Tester attended a fundraiser in Palo Alto, Calif., organized by a lawyer for the firm that represents Silicon Valley Bank.
Another fundraiser host serves on the board of the National Resources Defense Council, an environmentalist group that repeatedly sued the Trump administration to shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, the Washington Free Beacon reported. The host, National Resources Defense Council board member Nicole Lederer, has said the pipeline "is against the best interest of our country."
Tester publicly supported the pipeline, saying that it "would have yielded big benefits" for Montana.
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