"When you encounter a memorial during your commute, the paying of respect is the quickening of your walk, the feigning of a blank mind, the averting of your gaze. And yet these pedestrians are forgetting themselves; they are slowing to a complete halt at this one altar because it is a display of something uniquely upsetting: the grief of adolescents."
"From this God's-eye view, the Manhattan-bound J train, crossing the bridge below, is a hard metal streak. The video is enacting the viewpoint of the city itself on October 4th, the night that Ebba and Zema, dressed in dark, anonymizing colors, hoisted their small bodies onto the roof of a subway car, where they were later found, lifeless, at the Marcy Avenue station."
Mayor Eric Adams's administration expanded invasive surveillance framed as protecting teenagers from risky, social-media-driven behaviors. A North Brooklyn memorial for middle-schoolers Ebba Morina and Zemfira Mukhtarov draws unusually solemn public pauses, with flowers, candles, and handwritten tributes left in a steel-column recess. A social-media video filmed from the Williamsburg Bridge captures the Manhattan-bound J train the night the girls climbed onto a subway car roof and were later found lifeless at Marcy Avenue. The video mirrors the curiosity and exploration that led the girls into the city's underbelly. Authorities present surveillance expansion as an apolitical safety measure aimed at curbing similar urban exploration.
Read at The New Yorker
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