(Photo: Ryan DeBerardinis / Shutterstock)
In “progressive” New York City, reminders of inequality abound: A homeless woman asleep outside of a bank, a man begging for spare change outside of Starbucks. But as city officials have boasted about making New York City “the fairest big city in America,” they have remained committed to punishing New Yorkers who don’t — or can’t — pay the subway fare.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has tried to paint himself as a national progressive leader and been praised in books by progressive authors. During his campaign and first term, de Blasio has railed against income inequality to bolster several proposals around housing, education and even a “millionaire’s tax.” At the same time, he has clung to the “broken windows” theory of policing, which focuses on aggressive police enforcement of low-level offenses like jumping a turnstile. Last month, he went to new lows to keep the city on the criminal punishment track started under Rudy Giuliani and beloved by the most conservative voices in the US.
After Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance announced in February that he would not, with notable exceptions, prosecute fare-beating arrests, Mayor de Blasio insisted that many turnstile jumpers “have money in their pocket” to try to undercut sympathy for fare beaters from, ironically, an inequality perspective. For someone whose political identity hinges on being seen as a defender of the poor, the mayor’s attempts to divert the conversation away from poverty is strategic. His anecdote-based line of reasoning, however, is not.
A month has passed since de Blasio’s controversial comments, but the city has still not produced any data about how much money people have on them when they’re stopped or arrested for fare beating. Of course, even if someone has, say, $100 on them, the mere fact of having actual money on your person doesn’t preclude someone from living in poverty or scraping to get by — the sort of economic squeeze that might…