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Choosing The Victims' Stories
- Heather Ann Thompson recounts why she chose not to interview Bernie Goetz for the book and focused on the erased victims instead.
- She found three of the four teenagers were unreachable due to paralysis, suicide, or death after addiction, and the fourth had retreated from public life.
Austerity Fueled Racial Resentment
- Thompson links Reagan-era austerity to public decay and to political actors framing that decay as the fault of marginalized people.
- She argues conservatives weaponized racial resentment to critique liberalism while dismantling social services.
The Subway Shooting And Its Toll
- Thompson describes the subway shooting's sequence and the brutal injuries sustained by the four teens on December 22, 1984.
- She details how one teen was paralyzed with subsequent pneumonia and brain damage, showing the long-term human wreckage of the attack.
