The Work of Witness Is Crucial
“Today, the work of witness and documentation and recording the bad acts of authoritarian government and spreading the word about them, that work is shared among everyone. And that work of witness is crucial. The victims and the perpetrators both need to know that justice is going to come one day—and justice can only come if these crimes are documented.”
That is what MS Now host Rachel Maddow says right before she shares quotes from the book attributed to HRDAG director of research Patrick Ball.
In this 29 June, 2026 segment of MS Now, Maddow talks with Julia Angwin and Ami Fields-Meyer, authors of “On Courage: How to be a dissident in an age of fear,” about how to live as an American during a time of authoritarianism. The book, On Courage, quotes Patrick, whom Maddow refers to as “a human rights statistician who has spent his whole career cataloguing perpetrators of state violence.”
After sharing Patrick’s quotes, Maddow summarizes: “The promise of accountability.”
