By Tony Murphy
August 14, 2017

When the presiding judge in a Manhattan courtroom on Aug. 10 called the name of Darryl Goodwin, 60 people stood up.

Goodwin himself, ill that day, was unable to attend. But that didn’t stop the entire room from literally “standing up for” him — and demanding that the false charges against the African-American, 27-year Manhattan Transportation Authority veteran be dropped.

In May, Goodwin was working a station booth (known formerly as a token booth), assisting a passenger when a New York Police Department lieutenant yelled at the worker to buzz him through the station gate.

When Goodwin didn’t drop what he was doing for the cop, he got hit with a raft of serious charges: obstructing governmental justice, assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. He was also suspended from his job for over a month.

To bolster the outrageously false charges, the arresting officer fed a bogus story to the media that the worker refused to assist the police in their pursuit of a shoplifter. Activists with the Workers Defense Committee, the group that organized community members to help pack the court, knew it was necessary to make sure Goodwin’s case didn’t get isolated.

The presiding judge saw that Goodwin was not alone on Aug. 10. Even Goodwin’s lawyer seemed surprised at the fact that the whole room stood up when his case was called.

Later that day, Goodwin’s union, Transport Workers Union Local 100, tweeted out a photo of union members and community supporters rallying side-by-side with the caption, “TWU crowd outside the courthouse urging prosecutors to drop charges against [station agent] Darryl Goodwin.”

The next court date is Sept. 28. To continue to help build support for Goodwin, sign the drop-the-charges petition (which got a hundred signers a day in its first week online). Also, please help spread the fundraising campaign, which will help Goodwin with legal expenses as well as a month’s missed pay.