![]() 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. “I would report to him about our work on the Hill to try to address the pandemic, always providing positive a spin as possible.The end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 was trying for most people around the world. “In the fall of 2020, I was many times conscious, while at dinner with Sarah and Tommy, of censoring stories on the tip of my tongue about the ordeals of immigrants or refugees that we had heard in the Judiciary Committee, because I knew how much they would upset and pain Tommy,” he writes. This in turn led to Mr Raskin not speaking of his work as a congressman lest he upset his son. Mr Raskin notes how many young people like his son also dealt with depression and suicide has spiked in people in his son’s age group. The two Raskins marched in a Black Lives Matter rally, which was the last protest the two would attend together. I tried to comfort him, and we talked about what to do in response.” “Tommy looked heartbroken and astonished, as though his mind and heart could not assimilate the reality of so much viciousness and cruelty being densely concentrated in one man, a lawless agent of the state. “He was in our kitchen when he handed me his phone,” Mr Raskin writes. “Relationships were strained, forced into a premature or awkward intimacy, or more likely, into a melancholy virtual oblivion.”Īt the same time, Mr Raskin writes how his son was despondent at the death of George Floyd. “With in-person school closed, social life was reduced to a fragile and masked minimum,” the elder Raskin writes.
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