To those of you who say this moved you to tears, posting the usual things about the NYPD and platform doors (which will never, ever be installed in all but a few stops and won't stop rapes, stabbings, or robberies), I pose this to you: what are you actually going to do about it?

Are you going to write a letter to your local state and city reps about this? Do you understand the fate of all the Martial Simons is impacted by judges, district attorneys, and lawmakers? That New Yorkers need to demand they do something for Michelle Go and all the other victims of attackers known to the public and police, left to rot in the street or to hurt people because the courts and the laws of this state say their "rights" to do so surpass our right to an uneventful ride home? The right to walk down a street that could use some more lighting, without being afraid of a brick to the skull?

I realize the people who will read this sort of post are mostly self-selecting and seem to take violence seriously, but I also suspect most of you that would read a longform from a grieving Asian father still really won't get it. You say this rips out your heart. You might see your own parents and family. You might even see yourself in Michelle Go. She was like many of you in many ways, not least in that unlike many NYC crime victims, she was upper middle class, educated, worked a white collar job, probably lived in a nice neighborhood, not a violent one where crime would be an ever-present personal concern. But she was still a woman, she took the subway, and most importantly, she was on the same platform as a man that told a psych doctor he thought about pushing a woman to death. That last thing is a choice someone made for her many times over.

Horrific beating or murder on video after the other, it never seems as if this is a priority to the vast majority of people that participate in this sub or live in this city - certainly not in Manhattan, where this happened, and where so many of these incidents occur. If it were, this would be deciding races.

People just post a comment about cops playing Candy Crush (as if their failures or role here is just that simple; the self-indulgence of it, when the same people also blame the cops for making arrests based on viral videos sent around by abolitionists that will lie for the cause...damned no matter what, useless or proactive, damned by the same redditors that can't even theoretically imagine what it's like to arrest someone that will escalate, kick, punch to avoid that) or the idea that free housing for Martial Simon will solve this, and leave it at that. That's as invested as they are. It's just another way of trivializing a woman's death and the many choices that preceded that fatal shove.

Meanwhile the lawmakers at least some of you put in office have shuttered prisons and hospitals with no comparable bridge, and gave those dollars to ideologically captured "community orgs" that do nothing, are not accountable to anyone. These people gave themselves a thirty percent salary increase for pisspoor performance on any of these problems, while New Yorkers are scrounging and paying $6 for a dozen eggs.

Are you even aware of it? Did it occur to you this is an issue that can be voted on, for all this bullshit about "mental health", the patronizing sloganeering? Haven't you figured out almost nobody in City Council or the state cares about preventing these incidents consistently through "mental healthcare" either, or that the problem of severe mental illness doesn't match up with their shitty solutions (favors to their friends)?

Martial Simon was paranoid schizophrenic, an addict, and a violent ex con that was cycled in and out of the psych system. There was clearly no followup after he was released for armed robbery. When Go was pushed, people here posted they recognized him from the 4 and 5 train. His own sister said he refused to take his meds. What agency is working on that at any level of government, when we're talking about thousands of men just like him?

https://web.archive.org/web/20220205100916/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/05/nyregion/martial-simon-michelle-go.html

"Mr. Simon’s medical records have not been made public. But an advocate for homeless people who was given access to some of them said they show that in 2017 he told a psychiatrist at the state-run Manhattan Psychiatric Center that he thought he would push a woman to the train tracks someday."

He shouldn't have been on the street. He should have been told, now you're on parole, and you can either comply with medical treatment, or go back to jail. If he threatened people or was arrested for menacing, then he should have been banned from public transit. There are many things the city and state could do to help with this problem, and they refuse. They should face unending consequences for it.

They can get away with it because they know you won't do what very little you can do, and you won't punish them for their failure. Or worse, as someone else noted, most people will defend purposeful inaction, waste, condescension, and the active unraveling of our criminal justice system and psych wards, giving Martial Simon free reign of the streets.

Not even the Asian community of this city cares enough to stop voting for candidates that despise them and sneer at their screams for help, although that might be changing in Brooklyn.

Nothing has changed and nothing is going to change until those that - far from mere neglect - actively contribute to a this climate are punished. We can start by ceasing to vote for any candidate of either party that doesn't talk about this problem. Every primary season, Democratic candidates campaign on quality of life and safety, and every primary season, they lose to the most horrible people that run...because that's who is connected and gets big bucks from left orgs and from self-serving progressive donor class members that will be insulated from violence. Or think they are.

So I blame voters. I blame the press. I blame these people for lying during elections. There's no public forum anywhere in this whole city where people really seem to take what they say their feelings are (anger, grief, fear after these incidents), put them to action, and demand material outcomes. It makes these discussions and the periodic, short-lived expressions of grief uncanny and seemingly false. Anyone who talks about this plainly is undermined, gaslit, insulted, or suppressed everywhere.

Unless you're willing to rise and demand better from your representatives and scuttle those that refuse to act, your posts about weeping reading this man's words are like everything else in the average self-absorbed New Yorker's/redditor's day: you're just briefly distracted because this piece talks about death, and it's coming from someone that reminds you of your own parent.

But this is a man describing a loss he will never recover from. Like most survivors of homicides, they likely will never actually have recourse against all the people that knew who Martial Simon was, knew he was dangerous, and just let him stalk the subways. No lawsuits, no legal changes, nothing at all to hold the state or lawmakers that have invoked Michelle Go's name to campaign accountable for their own voting records, and the lie it puts to their performative tears. This family is serving his own life sentence. They will never be granted belief their daughter/sister a frightening, violent, wholly preventable death because someone thought she deserved to be pushed.

We keep seeing these attacks due to the incompetence or zealotry embedded in our courts, state agencies, and lawmaking bodies. We hand power to lobbying orgs that are diametrically opposed to implementing restraints on dangerous, antisocial behavior - and I'm sorry, but yes, that includes jail for breaking the law against victims and injuring them. These incidents are systemic.

So how come nobody responsible, like the parole board, is being punished or reformed? How come no one in the media is asking about it or what lawmakers are doing to change this, and then following up in six months or in subsequent cases with all the Martial Simons out there? How come there was no press conference about the agencies responsible for men like Martial Simon, and how they're going to handle the mentally ill? I saw a bunch of bullshit about violence interruptors from City Council members. I continue to see members of the legislature use Michelle Go's name to campaign for the status quo of favoring the rights of Martial Simon and those that are dangerous to others, over those of the victims, you, and me. That's all this is to them. A campaign event and a cash grab in return for worse than nothing.

I'm not just sad. I'm angry. I'm a changed person after the last few years in this city, watching people be beaten or murdered on camera. Are you?

I want someone with power to help, and follow through.