WEBVTT
1
00:00:00.170 --> 00:00:03.529
Anand Seer, the author of the new book out tomorrow
2
00:00:03.830 --> 00:00:08.820
titled Man in the Mirror, Hope, Struggle and Belonging in
3
00:00:08.919 --> 00:00:10.640
an American City. And we're going to have you here
4
00:00:10.679 --> 00:00:12.539
for a few days to talk about this book.
5
00:00:12.560 --> 00:00:13.519
Very grateful.
6
00:00:13.660 --> 00:00:16.699
It reports on the case of Jordan Neely from death
7
00:00:16.760 --> 00:00:19.879
to trial. And today you want to look at what
8
00:00:19.929 --> 00:00:22.809
we thought we knew about the case versus what you
9
00:00:23.750 --> 00:00:25.170
report and tell us about.
10
00:00:25.190 --> 00:00:27.149
I was thinking about that ad. You know, sometimes you
11
00:00:27.190 --> 00:00:30.850
have to zoom in. all the way in to individual
12
00:00:30.890 --> 00:00:34.329
human lives to kind of see the truth of the country.
13
00:00:34.590 --> 00:00:37.219
It's hard to see a country as a country. And
14
00:00:37.310 --> 00:00:40.119
so the story of Jordan Neely and Daniel Penny for
15
00:00:40.840 --> 00:00:44.280
the brief refresher is three years ago, a subway car
16
00:00:44.320 --> 00:00:48.060
in New York, a black mentally ill homeless man enters
17
00:00:48.799 --> 00:00:52.140
a subway car, starts, throws his jacket down, starts screaming,
18
00:00:52.200 --> 00:00:55.780
asking for food, for water, saying he's hungry, thirsty, ready
19
00:00:55.799 --> 00:01:00.020
to go to jail, ready to die. in obvious psychiatric distress.
20
00:01:01.479 --> 00:01:03.899
A white former Marine comes up behind him, puts him
21
00:01:03.939 --> 00:01:07.659
in a chokehold, drops him to the ground. Train gets
22
00:01:07.680 --> 00:01:09.819
to the station within a few seconds, most people leave,
23
00:01:10.280 --> 00:01:12.920
and the chokehold goes on for another five plus minutes.
24
00:01:13.420 --> 00:01:17.750
That's Jordan Neely. He was once a beloved Michael Jackson impersonator,
25
00:01:18.069 --> 00:01:21.709
right around here, 42nd Street in the subway system, had
26
00:01:21.750 --> 00:01:24.680
fallen on much harder times. And from the moment that
27
00:01:24.760 --> 00:01:26.900
case kind of came up above ground and the news
28
00:01:26.920 --> 00:01:30.129
came up above ground, everybody, you all remember, the Rev
29
00:01:30.150 --> 00:01:32.489
was there from the beginning making meaning of this case,
30
00:01:32.549 --> 00:01:36.840
delivered Jordan Neely's eulogy. Everybody in America instantly knew what
31
00:01:36.859 --> 00:01:37.500
they thought about it.
32
00:01:37.719 --> 00:01:39.640
Well, give us Daniel Penny's background.
33
00:01:39.719 --> 00:01:45.620
Daniel Penny from West Islip, Long Island, went to the Marines,
34
00:01:45.659 --> 00:01:47.120
sort of was, you know, like a lot of folks.
35
00:01:47.140 --> 00:01:50.879
I actually spent time with his Marine Corps unit for
36
00:01:50.900 --> 00:01:52.480
the reporting for this book. Like a lot of the
37
00:01:52.519 --> 00:01:54.819
guys in that unit, kind of not sure what they
38
00:01:54.840 --> 00:01:57.920
wanted to do with their life, found purpose and structure
39
00:01:57.939 --> 00:02:00.730
in the Marines. And he came from this very kind
40
00:02:00.769 --> 00:02:03.840
of bland background. town where most people stay and things
41
00:02:03.879 --> 00:02:06.109
are kind of the same. And he wanted out. And
42
00:02:06.150 --> 00:02:07.890
this is also part of the tragedy of this case.
43
00:02:07.950 --> 00:02:11.270
He wanted to come to New York and live in
44
00:02:11.289 --> 00:02:12.909
the East Village. He got a nose ring. He was
45
00:02:12.930 --> 00:02:17.229
trying to bartend. And these guys collide. And everybody immediately
46
00:02:17.289 --> 00:02:19.250
knew from that moment. It was kind of an American
47
00:02:19.270 --> 00:02:22.960
Rorschach test, right? Daniel Penny is either a hero stepping
48
00:02:23.039 --> 00:02:26.840
up against Anarchy in the cities or he's a white
49
00:02:26.860 --> 00:02:30.680
supremacist vigilante in the Trump era. You know, Jordan Neely
50
00:02:30.699 --> 00:02:34.319
was either a kind of thug, hobo, vagrant career criminal
51
00:02:34.379 --> 00:02:38.849
in one telling, or he was someone who embodies the
52
00:02:38.909 --> 00:02:41.770
failure of so many of our systems to care for
53
00:02:41.949 --> 00:02:45.060
those on the edge of the edge. Um, and I
54
00:02:45.340 --> 00:02:50.250
decided I wanted to spend three years, uh, not doing
55
00:02:50.289 --> 00:02:52.979
the clickbait thing that the country was doing with this story,
56
00:02:53.020 --> 00:02:56.330
the kind of chewing up and spitting out, uh, I
57
00:02:56.430 --> 00:02:58.629
chose to live inside this story for three years because
58
00:02:58.669 --> 00:03:01.530
I believed it would tell us something about who we are,
59
00:03:02.090 --> 00:03:06.180
what we've allowed to happen to this country, because I
60
00:03:06.219 --> 00:03:09.300
think of so many failures to see each other fully
61
00:03:09.340 --> 00:03:12.360
and properly as people. And I decided I was going
62
00:03:12.379 --> 00:03:15.889
to do the opposite of clickbait. I reported on everybody's perspective.
63
00:03:15.930 --> 00:03:19.250
I spent time in Daniel Penny's suburb with his Marine
64
00:03:19.270 --> 00:03:21.930
Corps unit. I spent time with Jordan Neely's Michael Jackson suburb.
65
00:03:22.169 --> 00:03:25.449
impersonator community, which is an incredible group of people in
66
00:03:25.490 --> 00:03:29.090
New York. I spent time in City Hall with officials
67
00:03:29.210 --> 00:03:31.780
trying to figure out when you have distressed folks on
68
00:03:31.789 --> 00:03:34.759
the street, do you grab them and force them to
69
00:03:34.780 --> 00:03:36.740
a hospital against their will? Is that the humane thing
70
00:03:36.780 --> 00:03:39.759
to do? Is leaving them to their choice the humane
71
00:03:39.780 --> 00:03:42.759
thing to do? I spent time with homeless outreach workers,
72
00:03:43.020 --> 00:03:46.780
Penn Station, other subway stations doing midnight to 8 a.m.
73
00:03:46.840 --> 00:03:47.199
Shifts.
74
00:03:47.680 --> 00:03:49.879
Going to one homeless person at a time saying, can
75
00:03:49.919 --> 00:03:52.180
I offer you services? Can I help you? I watched
76
00:03:52.240 --> 00:03:54.780
them do this work. And the last thing I'll say is,
77
00:03:54.780 --> 00:03:57.650
you know, for me, having sat around this table for
78
00:03:57.689 --> 00:04:00.710
a long time, I realized that I had also fallen
79
00:04:00.810 --> 00:04:04.550
prey to a culture sometimes of that hyper reactivity and
80
00:04:04.909 --> 00:04:09.560
the quick, you know, provocative viral take. And this book
81
00:04:09.620 --> 00:04:11.979
took me back to my own roots in reporting to say,
82
00:04:12.669 --> 00:04:15.650
Let's tell the stories of all kinds of people who
83
00:04:15.810 --> 00:04:17.980
are colliding in this moment. Let's tell the stories of
84
00:04:18.180 --> 00:04:20.139
all kinds of ways of looking at this country, the
85
00:04:20.180 --> 00:04:22.639
fighting fates of this country. And I really tried to
86
00:04:22.699 --> 00:04:26.980
live inside the minds and recreate. The minds of lots
87
00:04:27.000 --> 00:04:30.019
of different people, almost like in a novel, because at
88
00:04:30.060 --> 00:04:33.930
some deep level, I think America is in the crisis
89
00:04:33.970 --> 00:04:35.470
we are talking about. You're talking about that ad we
90
00:04:35.490 --> 00:04:37.649
talk about with Trump, not just because of one guy
91
00:04:37.730 --> 00:04:40.850
or four senators. There is a sickness among us in
92
00:04:41.069 --> 00:04:43.790
us that to me at its root is about a
93
00:04:43.829 --> 00:04:45.850
failure to see each other and a failure to understand
94
00:04:45.889 --> 00:04:46.209
each other.
95
00:04:46.850 --> 00:04:49.750
And, you know, Rev, when I was talking to Ann and.
96
00:04:49.769 --> 00:04:50.089
Yeah.
97
00:04:50.750 --> 00:04:53.389
One of the reasons I decided I wanted to do
98
00:04:53.430 --> 00:04:55.850
this for three days, which is obviously a lot more
99
00:04:55.889 --> 00:04:59.110
than we do for other books, is because of the
100
00:04:59.170 --> 00:05:03.730
subtlety that he was going after. Because I remember, I
101
00:05:04.459 --> 00:05:08.699
know you certainly remember Bernie Getz. What was that, early 80s?
102
00:05:08.699 --> 00:05:09.300
84.
103
00:05:09.300 --> 00:05:15.120
It was 84. You know, I'm in Pensacola, Florida. Just
104
00:05:15.160 --> 00:05:19.290
like you said, Bernie Getz. You know, a guy under
105
00:05:19.350 --> 00:05:23.540
attack stood up for his rights, immediate hero among a
106
00:05:23.600 --> 00:05:26.920
certain group of people, immediate villain among another.
107
00:05:26.660 --> 00:05:27.459
Group of people.
108
00:05:27.680 --> 00:05:31.240
And of course, later was we were talking about Bernie. Yeah,
109
00:05:31.459 --> 00:05:34.120
not not not too many people's hero by the end
110
00:05:34.170 --> 00:05:38.509
of all of that. But the snap judgment where I
111
00:05:38.550 --> 00:05:41.170
heard everybody around me go, well, it's about time somebody
112
00:05:41.230 --> 00:05:43.449
fought back. It's about time somebody.
113
00:05:43.149 --> 00:05:44.290
Was on social media.
114
00:05:44.689 --> 00:05:48.649
And yeah. And so this is this is such an
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00:05:48.740 --> 00:05:55.160
important look at a case that really does pull people
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00:05:55.199 --> 00:05:57.579
immediately to one side when, in fact, we ought to
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00:05:57.620 --> 00:05:58.879
look at the nuance in there.
118
00:05:59.339 --> 00:06:03.120
What struck me about this is I was involved in
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00:06:03.170 --> 00:06:07.230
Bernie's case 40 years ago. because I was stunned that
120
00:06:07.310 --> 00:06:10.170
everybody made a hero out of a guy who shot
121
00:06:10.329 --> 00:06:13.829
four guys on the train. I mean, it just struck
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00:06:13.870 --> 00:06:16.970
me wrong. One of the kids' mother called me and
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00:06:17.029 --> 00:06:19.569
I just started becoming known in New York. This is
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40 years ago.
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00:06:20.470 --> 00:06:23.329
Hey, it's me, Rachel Maddow. If you like the story
126
00:06:23.350 --> 00:06:25.310
you just watched, you should know about a new way
127
00:06:25.350 --> 00:06:28.449
to see even more from my show and from all
128
00:06:28.610 --> 00:06:32.990
of MSNL live or on tape. It's the new MSNOW membership.
129
00:06:33.310 --> 00:06:35.829
You can watch everything we do on your phone or
130
00:06:35.850 --> 00:06:38.800
your tablet or your computer. Plus, you can join conversations
131
00:06:38.829 --> 00:06:41.860
with me and the other hosts and with other folks
132
00:06:41.899 --> 00:06:43.660
who care about the news as much as you do.
133
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MSNOW membership. During September, you can sign up for just
134
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$ 40 a year, which is like just over $ 3 a month.
135
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Just click on the MSNOW logo right here or go
136
00:06:55.589 --> 00:06:56.889
to ms.now.com. Hope to see you there.
1
00:00:00.170 --> 00:00:03.529
Anand Seer, the author of the new book out tomorrow
2
00:00:03.830 --> 00:00:08.820
titled Man in the Mirror, Hope, Struggle and Belonging in
3
00:00:08.919 --> 00:00:10.640
an American City. And we're going to have you here
4
00:00:10.679 --> 00:00:12.539
for a few days to talk about this book.
5
00:00:12.560 --> 00:00:13.519
Very grateful.
6
00:00:13.660 --> 00:00:16.699
It reports on the case of Jordan Neely from death
7
00:00:16.760 --> 00:00:19.879
to trial. And today you want to look at what
8
00:00:19.929 --> 00:00:22.809
we thought we knew about the case versus what you
9
00:00:23.750 --> 00:00:25.170
report and tell us about.
10
00:00:25.190 --> 00:00:27.149
I was thinking about that ad. You know, sometimes you
11
00:00:27.190 --> 00:00:30.850
have to zoom in. all the way in to individual
12
00:00:30.890 --> 00:00:34.329
human lives to kind of see the truth of the country.
13
00:00:34.590 --> 00:00:37.219
It's hard to see a country as a country. And
14
00:00:37.310 --> 00:00:40.119
so the story of Jordan Neely and Daniel Penny for
15
00:00:40.840 --> 00:00:44.280
the brief refresher is three years ago, a subway car
16
00:00:44.320 --> 00:00:48.060
in New York, a black mentally ill homeless man enters
17
00:00:48.799 --> 00:00:52.140
a subway car, starts, throws his jacket down, starts screaming,
18
00:00:52.200 --> 00:00:55.780
asking for food, for water, saying he's hungry, thirsty, ready
19
00:00:55.799 --> 00:01:00.020
to go to jail, ready to die. in obvious psychiatric distress.
20
00:01:01.479 --> 00:01:03.899
A white former Marine comes up behind him, puts him
21
00:01:03.939 --> 00:01:07.659
in a chokehold, drops him to the ground. Train gets
22
00:01:07.680 --> 00:01:09.819
to the station within a few seconds, most people leave,
23
00:01:10.280 --> 00:01:12.920
and the chokehold goes on for another five plus minutes.
24
00:01:13.420 --> 00:01:17.750
That's Jordan Neely. He was once a beloved Michael Jackson impersonator,
25
00:01:18.069 --> 00:01:21.709
right around here, 42nd Street in the subway system, had
26
00:01:21.750 --> 00:01:24.680
fallen on much harder times. And from the moment that
27
00:01:24.760 --> 00:01:26.900
case kind of came up above ground and the news
28
00:01:26.920 --> 00:01:30.129
came up above ground, everybody, you all remember, the Rev
29
00:01:30.150 --> 00:01:32.489
was there from the beginning making meaning of this case,
30
00:01:32.549 --> 00:01:36.840
delivered Jordan Neely's eulogy. Everybody in America instantly knew what
31
00:01:36.859 --> 00:01:37.500
they thought about it.
32
00:01:37.719 --> 00:01:39.640
Well, give us Daniel Penny's background.
33
00:01:39.719 --> 00:01:45.620
Daniel Penny from West Islip, Long Island, went to the Marines,
34
00:01:45.659 --> 00:01:47.120
sort of was, you know, like a lot of folks.
35
00:01:47.140 --> 00:01:50.879
I actually spent time with his Marine Corps unit for
36
00:01:50.900 --> 00:01:52.480
the reporting for this book. Like a lot of the
37
00:01:52.519 --> 00:01:54.819
guys in that unit, kind of not sure what they
38
00:01:54.840 --> 00:01:57.920
wanted to do with their life, found purpose and structure
39
00:01:57.939 --> 00:02:00.730
in the Marines. And he came from this very kind
40
00:02:00.769 --> 00:02:03.840
of bland background. town where most people stay and things
41
00:02:03.879 --> 00:02:06.109
are kind of the same. And he wanted out. And
42
00:02:06.150 --> 00:02:07.890
this is also part of the tragedy of this case.
43
00:02:07.950 --> 00:02:11.270
He wanted to come to New York and live in
44
00:02:11.289 --> 00:02:12.909
the East Village. He got a nose ring. He was
45
00:02:12.930 --> 00:02:17.229
trying to bartend. And these guys collide. And everybody immediately
46
00:02:17.289 --> 00:02:19.250
knew from that moment. It was kind of an American
47
00:02:19.270 --> 00:02:22.960
Rorschach test, right? Daniel Penny is either a hero stepping
48
00:02:23.039 --> 00:02:26.840
up against Anarchy in the cities or he's a white
49
00:02:26.860 --> 00:02:30.680
supremacist vigilante in the Trump era. You know, Jordan Neely
50
00:02:30.699 --> 00:02:34.319
was either a kind of thug, hobo, vagrant career criminal
51
00:02:34.379 --> 00:02:38.849
in one telling, or he was someone who embodies the
52
00:02:38.909 --> 00:02:41.770
failure of so many of our systems to care for
53
00:02:41.949 --> 00:02:45.060
those on the edge of the edge. Um, and I
54
00:02:45.340 --> 00:02:50.250
decided I wanted to spend three years, uh, not doing
55
00:02:50.289 --> 00:02:52.979
the clickbait thing that the country was doing with this story,
56
00:02:53.020 --> 00:02:56.330
the kind of chewing up and spitting out, uh, I
57
00:02:56.430 --> 00:02:58.629
chose to live inside this story for three years because
58
00:02:58.669 --> 00:03:01.530
I believed it would tell us something about who we are,
59
00:03:02.090 --> 00:03:06.180
what we've allowed to happen to this country, because I
60
00:03:06.219 --> 00:03:09.300
think of so many failures to see each other fully
61
00:03:09.340 --> 00:03:12.360
and properly as people. And I decided I was going
62
00:03:12.379 --> 00:03:15.889
to do the opposite of clickbait. I reported on everybody's perspective.
63
00:03:15.930 --> 00:03:19.250
I spent time in Daniel Penny's suburb with his Marine
64
00:03:19.270 --> 00:03:21.930
Corps unit. I spent time with Jordan Neely's Michael Jackson suburb.
65
00:03:22.169 --> 00:03:25.449
impersonator community, which is an incredible group of people in
66
00:03:25.490 --> 00:03:29.090
New York. I spent time in City Hall with officials
67
00:03:29.210 --> 00:03:31.780
trying to figure out when you have distressed folks on
68
00:03:31.789 --> 00:03:34.759
the street, do you grab them and force them to
69
00:03:34.780 --> 00:03:36.740
a hospital against their will? Is that the humane thing
70
00:03:36.780 --> 00:03:39.759
to do? Is leaving them to their choice the humane
71
00:03:39.780 --> 00:03:42.759
thing to do? I spent time with homeless outreach workers,
72
00:03:43.020 --> 00:03:46.780
Penn Station, other subway stations doing midnight to 8 a.m.
73
00:03:46.840 --> 00:03:47.199
Shifts.
74
00:03:47.680 --> 00:03:49.879
Going to one homeless person at a time saying, can
75
00:03:49.919 --> 00:03:52.180
I offer you services? Can I help you? I watched
76
00:03:52.240 --> 00:03:54.780
them do this work. And the last thing I'll say is,
77
00:03:54.780 --> 00:03:57.650
you know, for me, having sat around this table for
78
00:03:57.689 --> 00:04:00.710
a long time, I realized that I had also fallen
79
00:04:00.810 --> 00:04:04.550
prey to a culture sometimes of that hyper reactivity and
80
00:04:04.909 --> 00:04:09.560
the quick, you know, provocative viral take. And this book
81
00:04:09.620 --> 00:04:11.979
took me back to my own roots in reporting to say,
82
00:04:12.669 --> 00:04:15.650
Let's tell the stories of all kinds of people who
83
00:04:15.810 --> 00:04:17.980
are colliding in this moment. Let's tell the stories of
84
00:04:18.180 --> 00:04:20.139
all kinds of ways of looking at this country, the
85
00:04:20.180 --> 00:04:22.639
fighting fates of this country. And I really tried to
86
00:04:22.699 --> 00:04:26.980
live inside the minds and recreate. The minds of lots
87
00:04:27.000 --> 00:04:30.019
of different people, almost like in a novel, because at
88
00:04:30.060 --> 00:04:33.930
some deep level, I think America is in the crisis
89
00:04:33.970 --> 00:04:35.470
we are talking about. You're talking about that ad we
90
00:04:35.490 --> 00:04:37.649
talk about with Trump, not just because of one guy
91
00:04:37.730 --> 00:04:40.850
or four senators. There is a sickness among us in
92
00:04:41.069 --> 00:04:43.790
us that to me at its root is about a
93
00:04:43.829 --> 00:04:45.850
failure to see each other and a failure to understand
94
00:04:45.889 --> 00:04:46.209
each other.
95
00:04:46.850 --> 00:04:49.750
And, you know, Rev, when I was talking to Ann and.
96
00:04:49.769 --> 00:04:50.089
Yeah.
97
00:04:50.750 --> 00:04:53.389
One of the reasons I decided I wanted to do
98
00:04:53.430 --> 00:04:55.850
this for three days, which is obviously a lot more
99
00:04:55.889 --> 00:04:59.110
than we do for other books, is because of the
100
00:04:59.170 --> 00:05:03.730
subtlety that he was going after. Because I remember, I
101
00:05:04.459 --> 00:05:08.699
know you certainly remember Bernie Getz. What was that, early 80s?
102
00:05:08.699 --> 00:05:09.300
84.
103
00:05:09.300 --> 00:05:15.120
It was 84. You know, I'm in Pensacola, Florida. Just
104
00:05:15.160 --> 00:05:19.290
like you said, Bernie Getz. You know, a guy under
105
00:05:19.350 --> 00:05:23.540
attack stood up for his rights, immediate hero among a
106
00:05:23.600 --> 00:05:26.920
certain group of people, immediate villain among another.
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Group of people.
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And of course, later was we were talking about Bernie. Yeah,
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not not not too many people's hero by the end
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of all of that. But the snap judgment where I
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heard everybody around me go, well, it's about time somebody
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fought back. It's about time somebody.
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Was on social media.
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And yeah. And so this is this is such an
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important look at a case that really does pull people
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immediately to one side when, in fact, we ought to
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look at the nuance in there.
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What struck me about this is I was involved in
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Bernie's case 40 years ago. because I was stunned that
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everybody made a hero out of a guy who shot
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four guys on the train. I mean, it just struck
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me wrong. One of the kids' mother called me and
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I just started becoming known in New York. This is
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40 years ago.
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Hey, it's me, Rachel Maddow. If you like the story
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you just watched, you should know about a new way
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to see even more from my show and from all
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of MSNL live or on tape. It's the new MSNOW membership.
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You can watch everything we do on your phone or
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with me and the other hosts and with other folks
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Just click on the MSNOW logo right here or go
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to ms.now.com. Hope to see you there.
