Heather Ann Thompson

I felt doing...

Attica because I was writing that as we were in the grips of and trying to make sense of mass incarceration, trying to make sense of why this country locked up more people than any other country on the planet.

It felt pretty pressing to me to understand that deeper history of that.

But this moment felt

like the entire democracy is at stake, that we are now in a society where violence is unhinged, that damages everybody and all of the time.

And it did feel, I guess, more, I felt a little bit more pressing, like, we've got to understand how we got here.

And I feel that we are all trying to make sense of this moment in our way.

Thank you so much for allowing me to share it with everyone.