if it was nasty, Tommy would say, 'Excuse me, but it's hard to be a human.' And then that would be the end of that." He didn't mind gossip if it was good gossip. Jamie Raskin says, "You couldn't be in his presence and say a negative thing about people. Out of all of the group of interns, "somehow he was the one who took responsibility for making sure everyone was doing OK, that no one felt left out, that everyone was connected." "He held a rare level of empathy and compassion," writes Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies, where Tommy interned.
And he would say, 'Potter, Toby, you're such a fine sentient being.' "īy multiple accounts, that kindness toward sentient beings included people. And he would pet them sort of by gently touching the very top of their heads. He would take Benadryl or whatever to be around them. So Tommy "had a special relationship with them. "We are a very big dog family," Jamie Raskin says. His love for animals was perhaps most challenging at home though: Tommy was allergic to dogs and cats. "It was his heart."Īnimal Outlook, where Tommy interned, called him a "dynamic force for good in this world, driven to expose, challenge and uproot all forms of injustice, including the suffering forced upon animals." He worked as a summer associate at Mercy for Animals, which wrote that his "kindness, passion, & empathy inspires our continued advocacy & remains in our hearts." "It wasn't his mind that marked him as so extraordinary," Jamie Raskin says. Trauma is still trauma for the creatures that crawl."įamily photo Jamie Raskin and son Tommy Raskin in an undated photo. How smart you are friends shouldn't matter at all Of aggression, oppression, from tyrannous might,
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"When it comes to the right to live free from the blight Speaking at DC VegFest in 2017, he recited his lengthy poem " Where War Begins." An excerpt: Tommy wrote at length about philosophy and animal rights he thought about how human lives should be measured against those of animals and animal suffering. Nobody in our family was a vegetarian, and now everybody is." "I mean, Tommy, he felt all of the pain and the suffering in the world, which is how, of course, he found his way quickly to vegetarianism. "We've been hearing stories like this ever since it happened," Raskin tells Weekend Edition. Tributes to Tommy have poured in over the past few days.Ī neighbor wrote to the Raskin family about a time when Tommy organized a group dinner in high school so a classmate of his who didn't have a date to the prom wasn't left out. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Takoma Park, represents Maryland's 8th Congressional District in Congress. The stories of his love and compassion are absolutely astounding." But it wasn't his mind that marked him as so extraordinary. "He had a photographic memory and, like some other kids in our family, knew all the presidents and vice presidents in order. "Tommy was remarkable from the beginning," Jamie Raskin tells NPR's Scott Simon. Tommy, as his father Jamie Raskin calls him, was also tormented by depression. By the age of 25, Thomas Bloom Raskin had already accomplished a great deal: He was a graduate of Amherst College who went on to intern at the Cato Institute and J Street, among other prominent organizations a passionate vegan who wrote philosophical defenses of animal rights and converted those around him to giving up meat a political writer who had essays published in The Nation and elsewhere and a law student and teaching assistant at Harvard Law School who donated from his teaching salary to charities in his students' names.
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