To the Editor:
Re “Subway Killing Both Stuns City and Divides It” (front page, May 5):
Politicians and ordinary New Yorkers are pouncing on a debate as to whether or not a subway passenger who put Jordan Neely, a distressed, screaming homeless man, into a chokehold, killing him, should face legal repercussions. Meanwhile, they continue to sit on their hands and not make meaningful investments in solutions that might fundamentally address the city’s crisis of mental illness and homelessness.
Mr. Neely represents just one of the thousands of homeless and mentally ill New Yorkers who exist on our streets, in our haphazard shelter system and often in the stations and trains of our subways. We encounter these human beings every day, and most of us simply keep moving on because contemplating the moral stain this crisis is on all of us is too much to bear.
Jordan Neely is forcing us to ponder that in many ways, we all share some responsibility in his tragic death.
Cody Lyon
Brooklyn
To the Editor:
Re “Making Someone Uncomfortable Can Now Get You Killed,” by Roxane Gay (Opinion guest essay, May 5):
Never in all of my decades have I felt that my neighbors in New York were hateful. Never have I thought they lacked empathy. In fact, I have always considered that, though our city has its share of bigotry, New Yorkers come together to help each other. Now, in the wake of subway passengers harming and killing another passenger, a homeless man, I am at a loss.
Ms. Gay’s piece does the work of walking readers through incidents all over the country where people have been seriously injured and killed for making a mistake. But it’s clear that Jordan Neely’s death is something different. The media and politicians have raised people’s anxieties and put them needlessly on edge. That led to Mr. Neely’s death.
And unfortunately, in reading comments on Ms. Gay’s piece, we can see that empathy has not only cracked, but flowed away from a lot of us. So many comments say essentially “He shouldn’t have died, but …” There is no “but.”
The other subway riders should have never laid hands on him, and New Yorkers are excusing a murder.
How safe are we now?
Jeremy Rosen
Queens
To the Editor:
As a subway rider, I don’t appreciate Roxane Gay’s gratuitous vilification of those who may have witnessed Jordan Neely’s death as coldhearted or worse. My children and I often fear riding the subway precisely because of people who scream and threaten and sometimes kill or shove others onto the tracks. Almost invariably we stay quiet and pray we are not attacked.
If some brave soul chooses to subdue him, he has our thanks. If the threatening person dies in the process, why the immediate conclusion that the prolonged chokehold was reckless and avoidable?
Perhaps in the unspeakable panic and rush of adrenaline in a fight where death is possible, this was a tragic mistake? The subduer can’t be given the benefit of the doubt? Did it occur to Ms. Gay that the subduer may be just as upset about the death as she is?
To lump this incident together with those who shoot random strangers who mistakenly ring the wrong doorbell is totally unfair.
Ari Weitzner
New York
To the Editor:
As a lifelong New Yorker, I am appalled at many of my neighbors’ and fellow Americans’ countenance of Jordan Neely’s killing.
This is not a dangerous city. Living here has its challenges, but it is one of the safest large cities in the country.
You do not have the right to snuff the life out of someone — especially an unarmed, mentally ill person — because you’re scared of them. Or angry. Or annoyed. For God’s sake!
If the subway causes you that much angst, take the bus, ride a bike, hail a cab.
I am sick to my stomach. This hysteria over crime and homeless people must end now.
Shahryar Motia
Brooklyn
A Loss at Berkeley
To the Editor:
Re “Protest Is a Fight for Humanities in an A.I. Age” (front page, May 3):
Your story about the sit-in at the doomed anthropology library at the University of California, Berkeley (“Cal” to us old-timers), is another indictment of the end of higher education as we knew it.
As the university pivots away from the humanities toward A.I., data analytics and machine learning, it loses its soul in the process.
How clever it would have been to weave humanities into the Gateway, the new data sciences building, creating an interdisciplinary tapestry that transcends the antiquated siloing of campus departments.
Instead, we sacrifice the arts and humanities on the altar of STEM. What a shame.
Maris Thatcher Meyerson
Berkeley, Calif.
The writer is a donor to the University of California, Berkeley.
The Silicon Valley Bank Failure
To the Editor:
Re “Federal Reserve Criticizes Itself on Bank Failure” (front page, April 29):
The Federal Reserve’s review of its supervision and regulation of Silicon Valley Bank pointed to several lapses in oversight, with the article noting that the bank “had 31 open supervisory findings — which flag issues — when it failed in March.”
Clearly, we need better regulation and oversight. In the meantime, I suspect that one simple fix would help spur banks to promptly address weaknesses as they are raised by bank supervisors: So long as a bank has any open supervisory findings, its employees and directors should not be allowed to trade its shares or exercise any stock options.
Given what we’ve learned about the apparently bottomless venality of bank management, I’d guess that such a rule would help them resolve supervisory issues with alacrity.
François Furstenberg
Montreal
The Center-Right Agenda Has ‘Won the Day’
To the Editor:
Re “The Tragedy of Fox News,” by Bret Stephens (column, April 26):
We’ve heard this plea before: If only there were a rational, honest, center-right party or news source!
Mr. Stephens and similar lamenters don’t indicate what such a party’s positions would be, other than general shifts to more liberal democratic ideals.
The fact is, the agendas of these center-right Republicans have already won the day. We live in a country dominated by their policies, which today’s Democrats either acquiesce to or try vainly to mitigate, while occasionally passing a measure that’s inadequate to solve a problem.
So the wealth gap steadily increases; the rich continue to evade fair taxation; the prospects of the poor continue to worsen; the judicial system incarcerates disproportionate numbers of minorities; military-style weapons continue to proliferate, resulting in an absurd rate of mass shootings; debt handicaps the young and the poor; and the list goes on.
With the agendas of yesteryear’s Republicans in place, contemporary Republicans appeal to the frightened, aggrieved, white supremacist, male chauvinist, undereducated people who are impervious to evidence and unaware that their actual economic interests are not being served.
The only group that addresses the real needs of our ailing nation are progressives, but the mainstream media pays them scant attention.
Meanwhile climate extremes become increasingly destructive — and China grows stronger.
Joel Simpson
Union, N.J.
