Accessibility Advocates Rally Over Mother’s Death on Subway Stairs

On a Manhattan sidewalk on Wednesday, about 30 protesters gathered in silence, holding white tulips. They laid the blooms outside the 7th Avenue subway station, to mark the death of Malaysia Goodson, the 22-year-old mother who was killed on Monday evening falling down the station stairs. She was carrying a stroller and holding her 1-year-old daughter, who survived the fall. The station does not have an elevator, and only has escalators going upwards.

Organized by Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled (BCID) and Center for Independence of the Disabled, NY (CIDNY), the rally took aim at a glaring, systemic issue on the New York City subway: the lack of adequate elevators in the mass transit system. Only 24 percent of the subway’s 472 stations are accessible via an elevator, according to a report by the City Comptroller’s Office. Half of the city’s subway-served neighborhoods qualify as “ADA transit deserts,” meaning they lack a single station that someone using wheels could easily use. Nearly 640,000 New Yorkers are dependent on these inaccessible stations.