Heather Ann Thompson

And it doesn't excuse it to try to understand why in some moments in this country is crime out of control and other moments we feel like we're a much safer nation.

And one of the really interesting things is that what made the American middle class, what made people able to

feed their kids, send them to college, buy homes in the suburbs.

All the things that were part of this American dream were made possible by a robust federal government, high taxes, but not as high as Europe, but still higher taxes that provided for the public.

And lots and lots of white families benefited from that, including living in public housing that was taken care of, that gave them a leg up.

By the time we get to the 70s, you know, lots of Black folks who had been left out of all that, because a lot of those policies were discriminatory, start to push for inclusion.

And meanwhile, there's a global economic downturn.

The Reagan Republicans take advantage, frankly, of this moment when there's an economic crisis and there's a civil rights revolution and essentially start to say to white working class people,

Listen, things are going to hell in a handbasket.

Big government's bad.

Trust us in the private sector to take care of everything.

And they're kind of given a Faustian bargain because they kind of want to believe it because they're also afraid of Black people dying.

They're afraid of this, you know, civil rights era, but they're also buying something that's going to cost them a lot, which is this idea that we don't need public services and that you can count on rich people to take care of you.

I don't think I appreciated how much that moment mattered.

We began an austerity that then explains why people have to sell drugs.

It explains why cities are falling apart.

It explains why, whether you're a white person or a black person in a city of New York, you're fearful.

You feel like everything is coming apart at the seams.

And some people see that for what it is, but most people are being fed a steady diet through things like the New York Post and, you know, the daily news of, well, what's going on here?

Again, it's not that rich people are getting richer and richer and richer.