Early yesterday morning, December 5, an autonomous group of activists boarded the F train at the Broadway-Lafayette Street/Bleeker Street subway station in Manhattan to replace the adverts displayed throughout the car with one message: “A man was lynched here.”
The protesters’ phrasing references a banner the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) displayed outside its office in New York between 1920 and 1938 to acknowledge the lynching of African Americans. It calls attention to Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old unhoused Black man and Michael Jackson impersonator who was killed on May 1, 2023, during a six-minute chokehold at the hands of Daniel Penny, a Marine veteran from Long Island who was 24 at the time. Penny apprehended Neely from behind on an F train between the Second Avenue and Broadway-Lafayette Street/Bleeker Street stops after Neely reportedly made multiple threatening remarks, behaved erratically, and threw items at other passengers.
The guerrilla action on the F train on Thursday morning comes days after the closing arguments in Penny’s trial. He was facing charges of manslaughter in the second degree and criminally negligent homicide. As of today, December 6, the judge dismissed the second-degree manslaughter charge, for which Penny faced up to 15 years in prison, after the jury deadlocked twice. This leaves only the lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide, which carries four years at most, and only if the judge decides to sentence him.
Cynthia Harris, a forensic pathologist with the city’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner who conducted the autopsy on Neely, concluded that Penny’s chokehold was responsible for his death. Another forensic pathologist hired by Penny’s attorneys testified that Neely’s death was caused by “the combined effects of sickle cell crisis, the schizophrenia, the struggle and restraint and the synthetic marijuana” that was in his system.
Jordan Neely’s killing yielded dozens of protests, interventions, and marches across New York City in the year and a half leading up to the trial. Many protestors and some politicians regarded it as a modern-day lynching, calling for Penny to be charged with murder. The NAACP called Penny’s actions “inhumane vigilante justice,” a message shared by the Black Lives Matter organization as well.
The autonomous group could not be reached for comment but shared a press release distributed by independent journalist Talia Jane, who documented the action, with input from multiple anonymous participants.
“New York must ensure its public spaces are free from the racist state violence and racist interpersonal violence that shape so much of life for Black and brown people in this city,” said a participant from Brooklyn, according to the release. “Jordan Neely was lynched on the F train. Regardless of what the court or jury will say about the matter, we took action today to mark this train car as a place of mourning, a place of grief, and a place of rage against a city and a country that deems certain lives to be more valuable than others.”
“Jordan Neely died at the hands of a state that insists Black and brown and poor and disabled folks — all but an elite few — are dispensable,” said a participant from the Bronx quoted in the release. “Jordan deserved care. All New Yorkers deserve care.”
