Heather Ann Thompson

And, of course, then everything he did thereafter was justified.

Absolutely.

He was asked about Daniel Penny.

He was asked about Goethe.

written house.

He is asked today what he thinks about the fact that books are being written about him.

I mean, people want to know, people want to make sure he's being treated fairly.

People want to know what he has to say.

I often just find myself wondering, have they reached out to the family members of the young men that he shot?

I suspect not.

Well, believe it or not, even though I've written quite a bit over these years about the power of

moments just like this, the ways in which racialized rage can animate American history.

And yet, again and again, I find myself just kind of taken aback.

But it's also important to remember that there was always a response to this.

From the very beginning, you know, Black New Yorkers are really clear about what is happening here.

And they are demanding justice for these teens and the civil rights community.

is largely extremely outspoken, in fact, about what is actually happening here and the hypocrisy.

If a black man would have gotten on that train and shot four rambunctious horsing around white teenagers, would this story even remotely resemble the one that would unfold?

And I don't think anyone actually even believed that it would have been the same, and yet it didn't matter.

You know, virtually every president had doubled down after Reagan on the economic conditions that then left us where we are today, right?