Man in the Mirror revisits the fatal May 1, 2023 encounter on a New York City subway in which Jordan Neely, an unhoused Black man known for his Michael Jackson performances, died after fellow rider Daniel Penny restrained him in a chokehold for six minutes. Video of the confrontation polarized the nation, with some seeing Penny as stepping in when police were absent and others seeing Neely as another Black man whose life was devalued.
Journalist Anand Giridharadas spent more than two years reporting beyond the viral clip, seeking to tell a story that captured what it feels like to live in the United States right now. When tragedies are reduced to social posts, he says, people are turned into caricatures.
In December 2024, Penny was acquitted of criminally negligent homicide after jurors deadlocked on a second degree manslaughter charge and prosecutors later dismissed it. Within days, Vice President-elect JD Vance invited him to the Army-Navy game alongside President-elect Trump.
Soon after, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm hired him.
Man in the Mirror and a tale of abandonment
In his new book, Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City, Giridharadas argues both men felt failed by institutions that should have helped them.
He says Neely had long felt abandoned, with reason. Penny, he says, has claimed he felt abandoned by the absence of law enforcement and by systems that left Neely in crisis on that train rather than in care.
That pervasive sense of abandonment, Giridharadas adds, pushes people to take matters into their own hands, often with tragic results.
Interview highlights
On Jordan Neely’s criminal record and the city’s attempt at rehabilitation
Neely had police encounters spanning more than a decade. Early incidents were minor, tied to surviving on the streets, such as fare evasion and sleeping outside.
In recent years, they escalated, including assaults, and he spent time at Rikers. As part of an alternative-to-incarceration program intended to address underlying issues, he was sent to a rehabilitation facility in the Bronx instead of prison.
He later walked out, triggering a warrant.
In April 2023, weeks before his death, he behaved erratically on a platform at Coney Island. Outreach workers engaged him without success, and police interacted with him but did not recognize him as the person wanted for leaving the rehab program.
The outreach team on scene also did not connect him to their agency’s prior history. He disappeared into the night.
Weeks later he was dead on the floor of another subway car.
On Daniel Penny’s origins in West Islip, Long Island
Giridharadas describes central Long Island communities as having a complicated relationship with New York City. Many commute to the city, others do not.
These largely white suburbs swelled during decades of white flight. He likens them to middle-class refuges from the perceived disorder of the city, with a dynamic that can include barely concealed contempt for the people and problems some residents sought to leave behind.
On whether Penny showed remorse
Giridharadas says he cannot know Penny’s inner feelings, but he did not sense sadness or remorse in a brief conversation at a celebration following the verdict about a year and a half after the incident.
He also notes that in body camera footage at the scene and during police questioning, Penny did not appear curious about what happened to Neely.
On Penny’s MAGA popularity
Penny initially projected ideological blankness, Giridharadas says, yet quickly became a symbol for supporters who projected their views onto him. He embraced the attention and funding, later appearing with JD Vance and Donald Trump at the Army-Navy game.
He then accepted a position as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz on its American dynamism team, which backs startups including those tied to defense technology.
On the politicization of the case and parallels with Luigi Mangione
Giridharadas observed arguments from Penny’s camp that the system failed, leaving a void Penny filled. During jury deliberations, news of the assassination of Brian Thompson of UnitedHealthCare, allegedly by Luigi Mangione, spurred similar rhetoric from the left, he says, casting Mangione as responding to a cruel health care system and widespread abandonment.
He cites Black Lives Matter activist Hawk Newsome, who argued that if vigilantes exist, there should be Black vigilantes too, along with building independent schools, media, and other institutions.
For Giridharadas, the common thread across extremes is the refrain that the system is rigged, people are abandoned, and individuals must act.
He urges reflection on the conditions that fuel this do-it-yourself impulse.
Interview produced and edited for broadcast by Anna Bauman and Thea Chaloner. Web adaptation by Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey.
For another recent high-profile shooting case involving questions about individual action and law enforcement, see Ex-NYPD detective indicted in GWB road rage shooting.
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