Advocates Call For Action After Subway Video With Anti-Gay Slurs, Woman Being Shoved
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- The LGBT advocacy group the Anti-Violence Project has called for action from police and elected officials, following a confrontation on a subway train in which a man hurled anti-gay slurs at a group of youth and allegedly shoved a woman to the floor as she videotaped the incident.
The YouTube video clip of the confrontation had drawn over 750,000 views as of Friday.
The video, titled "LGBT Hate Crime New York Subway," was taken around 11:45 p.m. this past Sunday on a Queens-bound F train, and was posted two days later to a YouTube account named "Stopp Hating." The woman who took the video wrote in its description that the disturbance began with two men "loudly making homophobic comments like, 'Today was a scary day for me. There were f**s everywhere.'"
A group of LGBT youth got on the train soon afterward, and the men began harassing them, "stating that the teens made them want to puke and that they would be killed if they were in Iran," the woman wrote.
Warning: Disturbing Language And Physical Violence:
The video begins with a man telling the group, "You're going to get f***ed like you've never been f***ed," while the group protests that his remarks amount to discrimination. The man goes on to remark, "Did you hear what the Supreme Court did" and make reference to f***ots," before the woman holding the camera appears to be shoved to the ground.
"Seeing that he was being recorded, the first assailant lunged at me, violently grabbing my arms while trying to steal away my phone. One of the youth took the phone from me temporarily to protect it and told the assailant he shouldn't attack a woman," the woman wrote. "When the assailant threatened to punch me, I took the phone back and ran to the other side of the train to push the emergency button and alert the authorities. At this point the second assailant got up and came towards me, grabbing my body and hands to try and get the phone to destroy the evidence. I yelled and told him I was an attorney."
A man's voice is then heard telling the woman he will have her arrested for taping him, and that he will "snatch" the camera and break it.
Meanwhile, a group of other people on the train begins to confront the alleged assailants. In a caption in the video, the woman claimed one of the men put his hand around another young woman's neck as the confrontation escalated.
The woman wrote that the men eventually got off the train at Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens, and she called 911 while following them to the station exit. The woman wrote that she suffered bruises and scratches in the confrontation.
The woman who took the video, whose name has not been released, spoke with the Village Voice this week about the incident. She told the newspaper that she had posted the video to YouTube in the interest of identifying the men who started the confrontation.
The Anti-Violence Project said in response to the video that officials there have reached out to the NYPD, as well as City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the Queens District Attorney's Office, Queens City Councilman Ruben Wills, and advocacy partner Make the Road New York.
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