He really was very in touch with people who were fleeing from war and violence and plague, and people who didn’t have housing and people who didn’t have food. Tommy really kept his eye on the lowest levels of the Maslow hierarchy of needs. Can you tell me a bit about what those causes meant to Tommy? Jamie Raskin
Singling out the global poor and animals was really striking to me. It’s a beautiful and heartbreaking request. Please look after each other, the animals, and the global poor for me. He wrote us a farewell note, which was found later in the day on December 31, 2020, when we lost him. Do you mind sharing that with us? Jamie Raskin Dylan MatthewsĪfter Tommy’s death, you and your wife Sarah wrote a really beautiful remembrance and shared the last request Tommy made. He got involved, toward the end of his life, in this movement of effective altruism, which is all based on the idea of doing the most good for the most number of people - and, in his case, animals too.
He had a brilliant mind, and he had a perfect heart. So let them do with it what they want to do, you know?” She was a little taken aback, and she said, “Well, Justice Stevens said that desecrating a flag is like putting graffiti on the Lincoln Memorial.” Tommy replied, “We only have one Lincoln Memorial, but everybody can have their own flag. Justice Scalia joined the liberals and said you can’t put somebody in jail for the thought crime of mistreating the flag. Johnson?” which was the case about flag desecration. She was telling him about Justice Stevens on the way down, and then Tommy said, “Well, what about his position in Texas v. Tommy was, I think, 6 years old, maybe 7. Our friend Ali is now a federal judge, but in those days was clerking for Justice Stevens. He went down to the Supreme Court with a tenant of ours who was clerking on the Supreme Court for Justice Stevens. I was thinking of a story about him that is not in the book. Tommy was an absolute joy from the youngest of ages. Tell me a bit about Tommy and what he believed in. It’s about January 6 and the crisis of American democracy, but a lot of it is about your son. Excerpts, lightly edited for length and clarity, follow. He and I spoke for the Vox Conversations podcast about the book, the life of Tommy Raskin, and keeping faith with moral values in moments of tragedy. In his new book, Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy, Raskin tells the story of his son’s life and of his experience of January 6, and explains how his son’s moral vision and clarity helped him cope with the aftermath of the Capitol attack. So, less than two weeks after his son’s death, Raskin became lead floor manager for the second impeachment of Donald Trump, leading only the fourth such effort in American history. But as a veteran lawyer and longtime professor at the American University Washington College of Law, Raskin was a natural person to lead Congress’s response to the events. Raskin, his daughter, and his son-in-law all made it out without physical harm. All three were thus present when thousands of Trump supporters, egged on by an inflammatory speech by the president, stormed the Capitol building, assaulting police officers and threatening the lives of Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among others. His daughter, Tabitha, and Hank Kronick, the husband of his other daughter Hannah, came along to witness the historic event.
Not even a week after his son’s death, Jamie Raskin was called to the Capitol to participate in the counting of electoral votes in the 2020 presidential race. Tommy - a student at Harvard Law School, an acclaimed poet and speaker, and an activist for peace and animal welfare - “had a perfect heart, a perfect soul, a riotously outrageous and relentless sense of humor, and a dazzling radiant mind,” as his parents described in a statement upon his passing. Jamie, the Democratic member of Congress representing many of DC’s most populous Maryland suburbs, and Sarah, a senior Fed and Treasury official under Obama, lost their son Tommy on December 31, 2020, to suicide. But it was particularly devastating for Jamie and Sarah Bloom Raskin. The end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 was trying for most people around the world.
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