Jordan Neely Killing: Debates About Mental Health, Crime Are Misguided

[Nevilledog]

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/jordan-neely-killing-debates-mental-health-crime

I want us to imagine that things do not happen in a vacuum, that one thing causes another thing. That abandoning, vilifying, dehumanizing, and criminalizing homeless and Black people not only invites the killing of Jordan Neely but also invites an entire city and its press to try to justify it.

America systemically dehumanizes, abuses, and incarcerates Black and homeless people — even more so those who occupy both groups — and New York City is quite literally one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in. That’s one of the reasons there are more than 70,000 homeless people and an estimated 1 in every 120 New Yorkers are homeless. Yet they’re treated as a mysterious plague on the city, rather than the natural result.

When he took office, mayor Eric Adams initiated what many see as a war on the homeless. He added 1,000 more cops to the NYC subways, in part to police unhoused New Yorkers, removing them from the subway without a safe place for them to go. The city has torn down the encampments they live in all over the city — throwing people out with all their belongings and not doing enough to place them in housing. Adams also proposed sweeping budget cuts to the Department of Homeless Services.

I want us to imagine that the reality I just described and what happened to Jordan Neely are related.

America talks a lot about fear, but we seldom ask whose fear is it that America cares about. We don’t ask because we’d quickly discern that it’s not those who should be most afraid, those who this country beats down and discards. It’s obviously not those who have nowhere to lay their head at night, who are treated as subhuman, and whose government would rather give them a prison cell than a home.

*snip*

[Lunabell]

1. And as far as the evidence shows, there was NO threat of harm to ANYONE.

He needed kindness not a headlock. He was hungry, confused and tired, not violent.

[Docjohnson]

2. Of course he wasnt

His assailant was looking for any excuse to harm a black man. His excuses for his actions were nothing but convenient cover for his hatred.

[debm55]

3. Mental Illness is the new "go to" in this country. Add to that being Black and homeless and you

are a walking target.