Forgiveness After a Shooting

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Mark Hertsgaard, journalist and co-founder and executive director of Covering Climate Now, and the author of Big Red’s Mercy: The Shooting of Deborah Cotton and A Story of Race in America (Pegasus, 2024), shares the story of Deborah “Big Red” Cotton, an African American racial justice activist, who forgave the young Black men who shot her when they fired into a second line parade in New Orleans, a shooting in which Hertsgaard himself was injured -- and what that shooting and her response to it taught him about race and violence in America.