Contradictions on the NYC Subway

The New York City subway system serves as the primary avenue in which diverse groups of people come into contact. Recently, it’s become the center of many national issues coming up against each other. Economic issues stemming from not being able to afford basic cost of living, the attacks on immigrants, over-policing affecting Black and brown communities, and the rise of vigilantes, are all broad issues that share the NYC subway system as a common thread.

2025 kicked off with an economic attack on working-class New Yorkers: Subway fares are slated to go up from $2.90 to $3.00 this summer, and Congestion Pricing has begun. Congestion Pricing is a $9 tax on all cars driving in the “Congestion Relief Zone” in Manhattan south of 60th Street This was enacted simultaneously with the raising of all tolls in the area. Add to this skyrocketing rent costs, and continuing inflation, and you have a situation where working people are becoming more and more desperate. Due to this, we have seen increased turnstile jumping and people covering up their license plates to avoid the fees. All of this has come with increased policing and surveillance.

Kathy Hochul and Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Chair Janno Lieber are telling us these attacks are being done to raise the funds to repair the broken subway system, to decrease pollution from cars, and even to make the MTA more accessible to people with disabilities. But these politicians and their wealthy backers are not known for policies that battle the climate crisis, or that make our cities more accessible, and they have not proven themselves to care about the poor state of the subway system.

The fact is, they don’t care. The MTA is $45 billion in debt to the big Wall Street banks, which is why they continue to raise fares and tolls every year and are implementing Congestion Pricing – to pay off the interest on these loans. When the MTA began to take on debt in the ’70s, this kicked off a vicious cycle which has continued ever since. Instead of coming up with the money from elsewhere (like from the $11 billion police budget), they get the money from people commuting to work instead. They make car owners out to be “rich suburbanites who don’t care about the environment” and subway riders to be “low income and environmentally conscious,” and pit these two groups against each other. The fact of the matter is, Congestion Pricing is incredibly unpopular, with 60% opposing the measure (75% in the suburbs) in 2024 before it was put into place.

Aside from creating a fog around the real issue, New York politicians are leaning on the oppression of Black New Yorkers to make sure MTA debts get paid. The increase of NYPD presence on the subways is a trend that goes back to Mayor DeBlasio, but it has experienced a huge spike under cop-Mayor Eric Adams. Adams, a former cop, has declared a “crackdown” on fare evasion and added thousands of officers to the subways, whose overtime costs more than the fares lost. In 2023, 82% of those ticketed for fare evasion and 92% of those arrested were Black and brown, and Black New Yorkers have a 10% higher chance of being ticketed for fare evasion than they did six years ago. In September of 2024, Derrell Mickles, a Black man, was shot by NYPD for jumping the turnstile, and another Black man, Gregory Delpeche, a bystander, was shot in the head by a rogue NYPD bullet from the same officer.

This is in addition to other increases in police presence in order to battle so-called “violent crime”. A few high-profile incidents on the subways involving deadly weapons have been jumped on by politicians to justify over-policing and increased surveillance. Stop and Frisk Policing has increased under Adams, Governor Hochul has sent in the National Guard, they’ve installed gun detectors that don’t work, and there is supposed to be a camera on every subway car by this year. Instead of actually investing in people’s lives, New York politicians are using cops to shake down Black and brown people to pay off government debts.

This same unwillingness to invest in our communities has created an immigrant housing crisis in NYC. U.S. imperialist policies that have destabilized much of Latin America, coupled with Texas Governor’s Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star,” have caused an influx of immigrants to New York City. The housing shortage in the city, caused by greedy landlords and politicians, is exacerbated as immigrants and New Yorkers have trouble finding housing. Rather than forcing landlords to rent out their empty units at a decent rent, NYC politicians are pitting immigrants and New Yorkers against each other.

How are NYC politicians handling this? Eric Adams will be destroying 13 migrant shelters in all five boroughs, a reduction of about 10,000 beds. He justifies this by building one new shelter in the Bronx, which will only have the capacity for about 2200 people. He is also cracking down on vendors, mainly Latino, both within the subway and without. Most notably, he wants to reverse NYC’s Sanctuary City Laws, by making it easier for the NYPD to collaborate with ICE. In August of 2024, Adams said, “Laws do not allow us to coordinate with ICE. That’s the law. And, you know I’m not happy about that.”

NY politicians like Adams, the NYPD, and the mainstream media have teamed up to harp on stories of so-called “migrant crime.” Stories about supposed immigrant involvement in a rape in Coney Island, attacks on police officers, and robberies serve to create a sense of fear in the NYC community. As politicians drum up this fear of taking public transportation, right-wing vigilantes have taken up the cause. We first saw it in 2023 with Daniel Penny, a white, off-duty marine who killed Jordan Neeley, an unhoused Black man who was experiencing a mental health crisis on the subway.

In 2025, the “Alliance of Guardian Angels,” a vigilante group started in the 80s by right-winger Curtis Sliwa, decided to make its comeback. Curtis Sliwa and his crew, who are now focused on patrolling the subways, have been known to target immigrants and other oppressed nationalities. In 2024, they tackled a Bronx man on live TV because he was “speaking Spanish” and had mistaken the man for “a migrant.”

The function of vigilante groups like the Guardian Angels appears similar to other white supremacist groups such as the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, which remain active in NYC. These groups have felt validated by the racist policies of Trump during his first term, and we can expect to see this again under his second. They are fueled by a particular narrative pushed by corporate-funded media and our politicians: that immigrants and Black people are the cause of crime in our society, and the powers that be aren’t doing enough about it.

The diverse political and social environment of New York City, as well as its size and dominant position in the national economic and social structure, make it an important factor in how things will play out nationwide. Currently, in NYC, we’re seeing these conflicts play out on the subway and in our public transportation. We can expect these trends to be reflected all over the country: heightened contradictions between the people, the intensified oppression of Black people and immigrants, and vigilantism.

Trump will try to heighten these conflicts between the people, distracting them from their real enemy, the U.S. ruling class. We must see through the messaging of various politicians, representatives of our ruling class, pushed through their lackeys in the establishment media. We must dig deep to determine the real causes of our suffering and establish the correct target of our anger. We must build the broadest front possible between all those who will be affected by these reactionary policies, which will reach a fever pitch under the Trump presidency.

#InJusticeSystem #NewYorkNY #NY #Subway #PublicTransit

Source: https://fightbacknews.org/contradictions-on-the-nyc-subway?pk_campaign=rss-feed