What should we think about—what should we do in response to—the death of Jordan Neely? The homeless man who died on May 1 while another subway passenger held him in a chokehold presents Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times with a clearcut case. “The Demonization of the Homeless Has Vile Consequences,” he titled his column.

For Bouie, those consequences include Neely’s death, but also the reaction to it: some people being more sympathetic to the man who put Neely in that chokehold than to Neely himself. The idea that the man who held Neely—later identified as Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old ex-Marine from Long Island—may have been justified in his actions is the result of “a vicious campaign of demonization and hostility toward the homeless,” writes Bouie. Fox News and other media use reports of attacks committed by homeless people to portray them as “inherently unstable, violent and dangerous.”

Had our minds not been poisoned by such propaganda, according to Bouie, then the people on Neely’s subway car, and those around the city and country making sense of the story, would not have overinterpreted and overreacted to the threat Neely posed. He was behaving in a “hostile and erratic manner,” Bouie allows. Other reports say that Neely was “screaming in an aggressive manner” before Penny (and at least one other passenger) tackled him, and that he was saying that he was tired, didn’t care if he went to jail, and was ready to die.