Why? Because of various disorderly conduct and curfew laws, you can’t sleep on a park bench at night or on the train, even when it’s cold outside. It was hard to hear men cry in conversation because no one had ever spoken to them like they mattered.Īnd some of the young homeless men I met at Rikers told me about the advice they’d gotten from elders: When the weather gets cold, if you can’t get into a shelter or get a meal, commit a public disturbance or a low-level crime. Inside, you are surrounded by trauma - people in cages yelling and fighting, aromas of bodily waste. The most difficult experience I had was working in Rikers Island for several years. Because these are the unwanted - the homeless, the untouchables - no one will check to make sure that the people responsible for providing them resources are doing their jobs. In every borough, in every shelter I’ve been to, the feedback is the same: People don’t feel safe or cared for. I’ve also visited food pantries and homeless shelters. For years, I have done outreach with vulnerable populations - homeless people, LGBTQ youth and young men charged with violent felonies at Rikers Island. But with no education, and everything he had faced, he was particularly vulnerable. It is hard enough growing up as a Black man in the city. I’d tell him that he needed to get an education.

That’s why whenever I met up with Jordan, I’d also encourage him to get his business in order. And even though I have been through all these horrible things, I knew there had to be something else for my life. I am a survivor of childhood physical and emotional abuse. He had a gift, and I really appreciated watching him make it safe for a crowd to engage and dance.īeing an artist, being a creator is how I decompress, too. When he was Michael, moving his body, he could forget about his life. I don’t know about all of the ways that Jordan was trying to escape his pain, but perhaps the biggest one was performing. He was just 14 when his mother was murdered by her boyfriend, and her body was placed in a suitcase. I learned that he had faced a lot of trauma in his life. He would confide in me, and I would confide in him. Over the years, Jordan and I would meet up at different Michael Jackson events around the city.

Here, his friend Moses Harper reflects on their first meeting, his painful life, and how he used dance to quiet his demons. Before the 30-year-old became a symbol of urban crisis, he was a street performer who specialized in impersonating Michael Jackson. īut there is another way to remember Jordan Neely. Citing Neely’s history of violence and drug use, r ight-wing commentators and politicians declared Penny a hero.

Some called the killing a case of racist vigilantism and an example of New York City’s systemic failure to protect people with mental illness and without homes. Neely’s killing - and the nearly two weeks it took for police to arrest Penny for manslaughter - sparked condemnation and protests from residents, activists and some Democratic politicians from New York. Within days, the city’s medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. During the minutes-long chokehold, two other men held down Neely’s arms. Penny, 24, claimed he was protecting himself and other passengers. Witnesses - including a freelance journalist who captured video of the fatal chokehold - said that Neely did not touch anyone, but was yelling that he was tired, hungry, unafraid of returning to jail, and ready to die. On May 1, Daniel Penny, a White former Marine, choked Jordan Neely, a Black homeless man in mental distress, to death on a New York City subway car. Sign up for our newsletters to receive all of our stories and analysis. The Marshall Project is a nonprofit newsroom covering the U.S. Sign up to receive 'Life Inside' emailed to you every week. Perspectives from those who work and live in the criminal justice system.

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