Tracing the Path from Bernie Goetz and Reagan to Today

Heather Ann Thompson, historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy and her latest, Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage (Pantheon, 2026)  argues that the roots of white rage and violence can be traced back to the Reagan Era and specifically the Bernie Goetz shootings of four Black teenagers on a NYC subway in 1984. She'll be speaking about the book with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Andrea Elliot at a ticketed event at the 92nd Street Y. She'll also be speaking at the Roosevelt House on March 4th.