More chillingly, he reports the decision of some Democrats to cross their chamber after Congress was invaded, “because they thought a mass shooter who entered would be less likely to aim at the Republican side of the House”.īut Raskin was never afraid: “The very worst thing that could ever have happened to us has already happened … and Tommy is with me somehow every step of the way. He realizes these “fascist bread crumbs throughout the city” should have activated “some kind of cultural alarm”. Driving to the Capitol, Raskin spotted Maga supporters heckling a young Black driver and a car with a bumper sticker reading: “If Guns Are Outlawed, How Am I Going To Shoot Liberals?” This is also a political memoir, of the Capitol attack and the second impeachment. His father described his illness as “a kind of relentless torture in the brain … Despite very fine doctors and a loving family … the pain became overwhelming and unyielding and unbearable at last.” Congressman Jamie Raskin: ‘I’ll never forget the terrible sound of them trying to barrel into the chamber’ Like so many others with clinical depression, the catastrophe deepened his symptoms. Tommy was a second-year student at Harvard Law School when Covid began. In the state legislature, Raskin helped outlaw the death penalty and legalize same-sex marriage. Jamie Raskin taught constitutional law then ran for the Maryland senate, with Tommy, then 10, his first campaign aide. When Raskin was the only one acquitted, he famously demanded a retrial. In 1968, Marcus Raskin was indicted with William Sloane Coffin, Dr Benjamin Spock and others for conspiracy to aid resistance to the draft. His grandfather, Marcus Raskin, was one of the earliest opponents of the Vietnam war when he worked in the Kennedy White House. His maternal great-grandfather was the first Jew elected to the Minnesota legislature. Tommy Raskin was the fourth generation in a great liberal family. Ron Kampeas writes for the JTA global Jewish news source.Raskin’s astonishing story of tragedy and redemption, of “despair and survival”, depended entirely on all the “good and compassionate people” like Tommy, “the non-narcissists, the feisty, life-size human beings who hate bullying and fascism naturally – people just the right size for a democracy … where we are all created equal”. Tommy Raskin graduated from Amherst College and was a student at Harvard Law School when he died. The post noted Tommy Raskin’s many interests and volunteer gigs, including teaching Sunday school at Temple Emanuel in Chevy Chase, a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., and at J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group. “He ordered and devoured books on the Civil War and Maryland’s history in it, World War II and resistance to Nazism, Jewish history, libertarianism, moral philosophy, the history of the Middle East conflict, peace movements, anything by Gar Alperovitz on the decision to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and anything by Peter Singer on animal rights.” “Tommy grew up as a strikingly beautiful curly-haired madcap boy beaming with laughter and charm, making mischief, kicking the soccer ball in the goal, acting out scenes from To Kill A Mockingbird with his little sister in his father’s constitutional law class, teaching other children the names of all the Justices on the Supreme Court, hugging strangers on the street, teaching our dogs foreign languages, running up and down the aisle on airplanes giving people high fives, playing jazz piano like a blues great from Bourbon Street, and at 12 writing a detailed brief to his mother explaining why he should not have to do a Bar Mitzvah and citing Due Process liberty interests (appeal rejected),” the post said. “He began to be tortured later in his 20s by a blindingly painful and merciless ‘disease called depression,’ as Tabitha put it,” the family said. The Raskins posted a memorial to Tommy, who took his life at 25, on Medium. The money will be directed twice a year to charities favored by Tommy Raskin, including Oxfam, Give Directly, the Helen Keller Institute and Animal Outlook. The Tommy Raskin Memorial Fund for People and Animals launched this week with initial funding of $50,000. Jamie Raskin has established a fund to honor the memory of Tommy Raskin, the Maryland Jewish Democrat’s son, who died on Dec.
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