Heather Ann Thompson — Fear and Fury
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian examines the 1984 Bernie Goetz subway shooting and Reagan-era politics, connecting them to contemporary America.
Why we picked this
A Pulitzer-winning historian on the moment America decided to be afraid — and what we're still living with because of it. Free at ALOUD.
In 1984, Bernhard Goetz shot four Black teenagers on a New York City subway and became a folk hero. Heather Ann Thompson, whose “Blood in the Water” won the Bancroft Prize, uses this incident as a lens for understanding how fear and racial anxiety reshaped American politics during the Reagan era — and how the policies born from that moment still define criminal justice today.
She’s joined by Summer Lacey, the ACLU of Southern California’s criminal justice director, for what should be a conversation that connects the historical dots to the present. Part of the ALOUD series at the LA Central Library’s Mark Taper Auditorium. Free.