XPost: nyc.politics, alt.society.homeless, sac.politics   
   XPost: alt.politics.democrats, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns   
   From: leroysoetoro@kaga.com   
      
   https://nypost.com/2020/04/25/passed-out-passengers-trash-fill-subway-   
   cars-amid-coronavirus-crisis/   
      
   Maybe the mayor needs to check out these images.   
      
   The subway has become a filthy, deadly homeless shelter on rails,   
   according to disgusted transit workers who have taken to recording and   
   photographing the horrid conditions.   
      
   One video shot earlier this month shows cars of homeless men and women   
   stretched out and slumbering away on an E train. In another filmed   
   Thursday, a man puffs on a cigarette while standing on an E car. A   
   homeless woman was photographed sitting on a 2 train mid-afternoon   
   Wednesday next to an overflowing grocery cart and plastic bags.   
      
   And in one video, a man uses the space between the cars on a 2 train as a   
   toilet while stopped in a Brooklyn station.   
      
   “That’s straight disgusting, man,” the shocked MTA worker who saw him   
   exclaims in a video. “With the coronavirus, that’s f–king disgusting.”   
      
   Workers say the transit systems has never been dirtier or more packed with   
   the homeless as ridership has declined with stay-at-home restrictions for   
   all but essential workers.   
      
   The images of “essential workers” one MTA employee posted on a Facebook   
   page were of passed-out passengers.   
      
   “Thank you, MTA. I have to deal with homeless, mental illness and now   
   dudes from jail. Every f–king night there is a mother f–king problem. …   
   While our trains do not get clean. I have to wipe my own cab and air it   
   out. S–t is for the birds,” the worker wrote.   
      
   Train operator Tracey Jackson snapped a photo of a metal trash can,   
   complete with bag inside, that someone had dragged from the platform at   
   Atlantic Avenue on April 7 and placed in her train. Chicken bones and   
   empty pizza boxes were scattered on the car floor.   
      
   “It’s reminding me of the ’80s at this point,” she said of conditions in   
   the transit system.   
      
   Passengers are equally outraged.   
      
   A 54-year-old resident of Middle Village Queens said she had to travel   
   into Manhattan this week for a meeting and was shocked by an 8 a.m. E   
   train packed with smelly and slumped-over homeless people.   
      
   “I can put up with a lot. I am a housekeeper — germs don’t bother me. I   
   don’t get grossed out too easily, but this was just unbelievable to see   
   all of those people,” she said.   
      
   The woman, who was wearing a mask, said she feared for her own health as   
   she walked through five or six cars before finding one where she felt she   
   could breathe. She said the homeless passengers were not wearing masks.   
      
   “It’s not fair. It’s not fair on people that have to go to work. It’s not   
   fair on the homeless people,” she said. “Something has to be done. This   
   mayor we have is just completely out of touch with reality as to what’s   
   going on.”   
      
   As of Friday, 84 MTA workers have died from COVID-19. Workers get two N95   
   masks to wear throughout the week, the agency said.   
      
   Canella Gomez, a train operator who is out on leave and is a union   
   activist, said he had never seen the homeless situation this dire. He   
   suspected many may be sick with COVID-19.   
      
   “I feel like the city is using the subway system as containment for the   
   homeless. You have to assume that a lot of them have it. If they close the   
   system what would they do with all these possibly infected homeless   
   people?” he asked.   
      
   An MTA maintenance worker who took videos earlier this month at the   
   Jamaica Center E train station called it the “the coronavirus capital of   
   the MTA system.”   
      
   The homeless tend to favor the line because it never goes outdoors along   
   its route to the World Trade Center.   
      
   The worker, who puts in an overnight shift, said trains are cleaned and   
   sanitized when they are done with their runs.   
      
   “The horror begins when it comes out to the public,” he said. “The minute   
   it pulls into the station, you got the 100 homeless hanging out there.   
   This is where they live. They get on there. They lay down. They use the   
   bathroom. They vomit. Anything you can imagine gets done.”   
      
   MTA conductor Adrienne Blocker, 28, said the homeless issue is no longer   
   confined to after dark.   
      
   “We see it all day now,” Blocker said. “Now they’re there 24 hours.”   
      
   A frustrated Blocker posted photos she had taken of zonked-out zombie   
   riders on Facebook saying “The MTA is basically a mobile hotel for   
   homeless people right now!”   
      
   Blocker told The Post that as soon as trains are cleaned they immediately   
   get dirty.   
      
   “Besides the hygiene issues, we don’t really know what they have. They’re   
   not getting tested obviously,” Blocker said.   
      
   “They’re coughing. They’re peeing. They’re defecating in the cars. We   
   don’t know if they have COVID-19. They’re up in our faces every single day   
   as well as the other people who are taking the trains to and from work   
   every day.”   
      
   Sarah Feinberg, the MTA’s interim transit president, said this week that   
   the agency was also fed up and that the city needs to do more.   
      
   “It’s very frustrating to have this problem land in our lap,” Feinberg   
   told The Post Friday   
      
   She said the MTA had hired more than 150 private security guards in the   
   last week to enforce rules or report issues to the city, and there would   
   be more car cleaning.   
      
   “We are stepping up enforcement activity and those efforts now,” Feinberg   
   said.   
      
   Feinberg said Mayor Bill de Blasio has not responded to requests to meet   
   her to discuss issues in the system including one made after she was named   
   transit head in late February.   
      
   De Blasio insisted this week that “the NYPD has been out there in force   
   trying to address this issue constantly.”   
      
   “If she’s losing patience, I don’t know why she hasn’t called me,” the   
   mayor said.   
      
   City Councilman Robert Holden and three other councilmen have called on   
   Gov. Andrew Cuomo to temporarily shut down the subway system to help stop   
   coronavirus transmission, saying the city and state could find other ways   
   to transport essential workers.   
      
   “If any image comes close to the pending apocalypse it’s hundreds of   
   homeless, destitute souls huddled and sprawled out in countless train   
   cars,” Holden said.   
      
   The councilman encourages riders to photograph the disgraceful conditions   
   to show de Blasio. “He’s in denial because he doesn’t go down there. He   
   doesn’t know what’s happening,” Holden said.   
      
   “All New Yorkers must become a modern-day Jacob Riis to chronicle and   
   hopefully embarrass both the Mayor and Governor who apparently have   
   accepted this untenable reality,” Holden said, referring to the turn-of-   
   the-century muckraker and urban reformer.   
      
   Cuomo has rejected any shutdown, saying the subway system is needed to   
   move all front-line workers to their jobs.   
      
      
      
   --   
   No collusion - Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, March 2019.   
      
   Donald J. Trump, 304 electoral votes to 227, defeated compulsive liar in   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)