20 January: Donald Trump’s inauguration – singer Beau Davidson recalls performing for the president

I had sung for the then candidate Donald Trump in March 2016 at Mar-a-Lago for a Lincoln’s Day dinner. I thought I was performing a patriotic duty, but I received quite a bit of vitriol afterwards, people treated me as if I had killed someone’s daughter.

Then in December 2016 I was asked to perform at the All American Ball on the eve of the inauguration in January. At this particular ball, Buzz Aldrin was being honoured and so was Oliver North.

The next day, I went to the swearing-in ceremony to watch the historic transfer of power. To get there, I walked through two areas of protest. They were loud, but there was respect between both sides. I’d never been to a swearing-in ceremony before. It was wonderful to see past presidents there.

Inside, the people around me were polite and respectful. There were times, such as when Hillary Clinton was announced, that there were boos from my area, but I didn’t see the level of vitriol that was reported. The rain started to fall. But most people wanted to see the spectacle. It’s something everyone should see.

It felt extremely full to me. I saw people to the north, south, east and west of me. But that’s not to say I knew the numbers.

Afterwards, I went to the diversity luncheon for the GOP. It was a small luncheon, maybe 50 people or fewer. I said: “You don’t know what it’s like to be a singer for conservative events, for the GOP,” and they looked at me, and said: “We’re black” – meaning you think it’s hard for you, try being a black Republican in the south.

There are some good things about this presidency, some bad things and some unfortunate things. But I believe that his spirit and his heart are in the right place. Beyoncé had the great honour of performing for President Obama and I had the honour of performing for President Trump.

21 January: Women march around the world – Sandi Toksvig remembers a day of joyful chaos

At one point, standing onstage in Trafalgar Square, I heard what I thought was a helicopter. In fact, it was the roar of the crowd coming down Whitehall. Nobody expected anything of this scale – no streets were closed, the police were panicked, but everyone was quite joyful, holding placards saying things like: “We Shall Overcomb,” and “My Pussy Bites Back.”

Compared with the excitement outside, backstage was rather different, warmed by fire from a single gas canister in a flapping tent. It felt like a bit of a shambles, actually. There were lots of high-profile speakers we couldn’t introduce because they were lost in the crowds, still marching. But in that British way, we made the best of it. Until, at 2.45pm, we were told we had to shut everything down due to an “incident”, which was rather worrying – Jo Cox was very much on our mind. But the incident turned out to be the fact that we’d closed down London. It was miraculous and wonderful. And necessary, too. The day before, the Financial Times had run a piece unpicking Theresa May’s style. Again, coverage of a powerful woman that was all about what she looks like. So it felt important that not only were we all seen, but heard, too. It was the most moving experience of my life.

Looking back, it’s clear that that collective voice led to these individual voices coming forward today, about sexual harassment or the gender pay gap. The World Economic Forum worked out it would take 170 years to achieve gender equality, but I’m an optimist. Also, I can’t wait that long. The Women’s Equality Party is focused on persuading political parties to change, and we’re the fastest-growing political party in the country. There was a time when feminism was the new F word – now people are proud to claim it for themselves. The roar of that crowd continues to echo.

8 February: Hockney’s exhibition is a sensation – designer Celia Birtwell on the record-breaking Tate show

David normally goes home before the end of his exhibition openings. Everybody wants a bit of him when he’s out and he’s exhausted by the end of it really, but after his Tate exhibition he stayed for the dinner. The tables were lined up, a huge banquet, but it was so damn hot and going up the escalator I remember looking around at all the people melting in the heat, and thinking: “This is all so crazy.”

I don’t go to all of David’s exhibitions but we’ve been friends since the 60s, and I’m a big fan, too. When he’s around I see him and also he emails me all of his ideas that he’s working on. I think nothing else in David’s life has been as important as his work. He’s amazing and I don’t know anybody else like him. If you start selling your paintings from a young age and people love them, it’s an explosion in your mind and it just keeps going. It’s addictive, it feeds you.

David’s done very nice drawings of me over the years and he’s a great pal of mine – he’s life enhancing, actually. When he painted me and my husband Ossie Clark he couldn’t get Ossie’s feet right, so he covered them up with a shag-pile carpet. I never could bear to look at the painting, though. And I don’t know why it became as famous as it did – it’s a strange combination, Ossie sitting down, me standing up and all the psychological conversations that people have about it.

Of course, one’s always a bit vain or has an idea of how you look. Sometimes he draws you and you can’t see what he’s doing, but he’s very intent and serious, and you’re just hoping that you’re going to like it. I think he can tell by your face whether you do or not. He’s got quite a good take of me now and he’ll say: “I don’t always flatter you, you know,” and you have to shut up and get on with it because you can’t do anything about it.

26 February: The wrong film ‘wins’ an Oscar – Moonlight’s producer Andrew Hevia remembers the moment of the announcement

Moonlight was a small, personal and independent film – the sort of movie you make because you fall in love with it. When the reviews started coming in, and then the award nominations, it was extraordinary. It’s all you can ever hope for, that the thing you love will be loved by others.

On the night of the Oscars there was a real sense that we were going to win something. Best Supporting Actor was on the table, Best Adapted Screenplay, too. As it had been nominated a record-matching number of times, we all knew La La Land was the odds-on favourite for Best Picture. Award after award went to them, and with two wins for Moonlight I wasn’t even disappointed – I was delighted.

When Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty stepped out onstage, and there was a pause before the announcement of a winner, I thought they were playing the crowd. Faye read out La La Land, as I expected.

It was only when La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz yelled through the mic that there had been a mistake, that Moonlight had actually won, that things got confusing. As we collected the award I tried to stay calm, but when we arrived backstage everyone was shellshocked, the teams from both movies squeezed into an area built for one. I turned to [playwright] Tarell McCraney and said: “Did that really just happen?”

It would have been incredible if the awards had gone without a hitch, but this was certainly memorable!

I’ve heard people say that it must be frustrating to have had Moonlight’s moment overshadowed, but I don’t see it that way. This had never happened in the history of the awards, so it’s Oscars trivia now. And to be forever linked to La La Land in this way is no bad thing. I’m grateful that the movie got recognised and I’m thrilled we had our moment, even if it didn’t happen as it was supposed to.

10 March: Toddler trouble – Robert Kelly on being upstaged on TV by his kids

I was doing an interview for the BBC in my study and my wife was filming me with her phone on the TV in the next room. After a while, my four-year-old daughter recognised who I was on the screen. After screaming “Daddy, Daddy!” at the TV and getting no response, she set off to find the real me in my office. It had been a long day and I had forgotten to lock the study door, so my daughter came bursting in, followed by my one-year-old son. My wife noticed my daughter had come into the room by seeing it live on TV in the other room and came sprinting after them.

I remember willing the BBC presenter to pull the switch and pretend that we’d lost signal, but he didn’t so I had to keep going. As soon as it was over, my wife and I just sat there in horror, we had a sleepless night thinking that was the end of my career. But then after about two hours my Twitter feed starting flashing and I got notifications from all around the world. The next morning the BBC called back wanting to do another interview because of the response the video had had online.

Afterwards, it was super intense. There was a lot of sexual and racial critique, which we didn’t want to get involved in. We’re just a normal family trying to raise a couple of kids.

I never know when I go up to speak at professional things if people are going to bring it up or play it before I speak. There are two or three places I have spoken at where it has been discussed. I don’t say anything because I don’t want to be over-sensitive, but it’s a little ridiculous.

9 April: United Airlines evicts Dr Dao from the flight – fellow passenger Jason Powell recounts how it happened

I was flying home to Kentucky, bringing history students back from a trip to Europe. When we boarded the plane, we did not imagine we’d see a man dragged from his seat, bleeding, with broken teeth.

United Airlines had overbooked by four seats and offered people $400 to get off. Two people accepted, but no one else wanted to move so they used a computer to randomly generate the names of two more passengers. A woman left so they just needed Dr David Dao, who was five rows behind me. He refused to leave. That’s when the aviation police came on. They argued. Dao said he was a doctor and had patients to see the next day.

At first, the police were just talking to him. But then an officer ripped Dao out of his chair and dragged him down the aisle, smashing his head against an armrest. There was blood everywhere and people were yelling at the security. It was brutal.

After he had been removed, Dao came running back on to the plane. At this point, I had seen enough. My students were seated at the back of the plane where Dao was bleeding, and the same security crew were coming towards him. I yelled: “Pick up your stuff, we’re leaving.” I got them off and then other people started to leave the plane, too. The whole time I felt disbelief. There was an eight-year-old crying and her dad went up to the police. He said: “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, we’re traumatised and you are just laughing it off!” Has this changed anything in the airline industry? I kind of doubt it.

2 May: Taxi drivers take on George Osborne – cabbie Sean Day on the taxi demo

When I saw George Osborne ushered in to start as editor of the Evening Standard I thought: “He looks like he’s been up all night.” Clearly he needed to get into the office as quickly as possible. We found out he’d be there and we did a flash demo. He seemed unnerved by the sight of us – around 300 black-cab drivers.

It was under the banner of Dads Defending Daughters (DDD), a pressure group set up to highlight corporate and government injustice. We felt vindicated even if no one was listening. It wasn’t getting reported on and felt like a bit of a blackout.

But this protest was different. We knew Osborne had taken a job at BlackRock investment bank earning £650,000 for just one day a week, and found out that they invested in Uber. When he became editor of the Evening Standard, we saw it all fall into place. It felt like the government and regulators were against us.

It’s shocking he was given that editorship: a very credible senior journalist could have done a fantastic job and he gets it, and keeps his position as MP. It’s not in the spirit of London, especially with the government saying we were all in it together. Coming together makes everyone feel good, but it doesn’t change anything afterwards; most of the working class don’t have that resilience to keep going because you soon run out of the resources you need to sustain a protest.

I was told the other night that a black cab picked up George Osborne. I wish he’d get into my cab – I’d have had a few choice words for him.

3 June: London Bridge is attacked – journalist Geoff Ho on tackling the terrorists and being stabbed

I had finished work and spent the evening going from pub to pub, watching the Champions League final and having a few drinks. At about 9.45pm I was going to call it a night when I saw a fight break out outside a pub between two drunk men and a bouncer, so I held one of them off and waited for the police to come. Afterwards, I decided to go to the restaurant Black & Blue in Borough to catch up with friends. That’s when the terrorists attacked.

We saw three men walking towards the restaurant. They had what looked like suicide bombs attached to them. It was strange how they walked so slowly and calmly. They were like wild animals stalking people. One of the waitresses locked the door, but they kicked it in. Everyone panicked and hid under chairs and tables.

If I had just laid down like everyone else we probably would have all died. I wanted to make sure everyone had the chance to get out. I decided to try talking to them while everyone got away. As I approached them they attacked me. One stabbed me twice in the throat and tried to stab me in the stomach, but missed. I hit the floor and they ran off. Everyone else managed to make it out without injury, thankfully.

I picked myself off the floor. A friend called the police. I got him to keep the operator on the line and tell them what was going on so I could look for something to stop the bleeding. Soon, armed police arrived and radioed for an ambulance. When I got to hospital I was rushed into emergency surgery. I spent a 12 days in hospital. I couldn’t eat or speak because I had a tube down my throat.

The experience has changed my outlook. I am more appreciative of everything now. Above all, I was relieved I had distracted the terrorists. Seeing my friends and family rally around, I couldn’t help but feel better about the world. If it had to happen to someone, better me than someone unable to survive it.

4 June: Ariana Grande’s One Love benefit concert –
PC Paul Taylor on dancing at the Manchester concert

It was difficult for people to enjoy themselves bearing in mind what had gone on, but we wanted to show terrorists that they’re not going to win and we’re going to do everything we can to let people attend these events without fear. Before the crowd came into Ariana Grande’s One Love benefit concert, we wandered around getting to know where the entrances were, where the exits were, so that if, God forbid, anything did happen, we knew where to go.

The concert started and I’d been standing at the back for a few hours when my back started aching a bit. I do like Coldplay, I even like Take That, though I’m a 50-year-old guy. Then Justin Bieber came on and I noticed these two little girls, Tegan and Maya, and they were about five yards away just staring at me. Then Natasha, Maya’s mum, asked if they could have a photograph taken. So, of course, I did and a few minutes later we were dancing. It turned out to be just what I needed for my back, to get the old joints going. There were about 10 of us doing a little Ring a Ring o’ Roses, so I thought nothing of it, never did I imagine it would go viral.

At the end of the concert, there were a lot of tearful teenage girls – many of them had been to the original concert. They were saying they were apprehensive about making their way back outside. So I went to the exit with them and saw them out. People were really appreciative and thankful, shaking our hands. It’s not that often we get compliments from the public. It’s something I’ll never forget.

14 June: Grenfell Tower blazes – a firefighter with North Kensington fire service relives the tragic night

It was mid-morning by the time everyone from my watch had been rounded up. The 10 of us had been spread all over the area – in the building, pumping, working on the ground. In the end we just sat together in a dazed silence on the pavement in the shadow of the tower, waiting to drive back to the station.

Most of us have worked alongside each other for years – we’ve seen and been through a lot together. But nothing compared to what we witnessed that night. The desperate screams and the debris falling from above us, the flashing lights and the smoke-filled stairwells. The all-consuming sound of the inferno.

It was silent as we drove back to the station. We sat glued to our phone screens, it was dawning on us that our families would be watching the horrors unfold on TV. I made sure my loved ones knew I was OK.

Back at the station firefighters from other watches were waiting. They helped us with our gear and made breakfast. We were asked to write down everything we had seen, every action taken. It’s hard to forget, but sometimes the little details fade.

Nothing was said about the number of lives lost that night, but there was no need to. We all knew there were so many people we couldn’t get to. We could see them in the windows waving and calling out for help, unreachable. It was devastating knowing that in that moment there was nothing more anyone could do. We knew we couldn’t save them.

As soon as I could I got away from the station. I reached a crossroads and looked up to see Grenfell Tower smoking. Flashbacks of the night ran through my mind.

When I made it home and walked in the front door my wife was waiting. She held me as we both burst into tears. It didn’t feel real. That sense of disbelief remains. The tears haven’t stopped either, although a lot of that has now turned to anger and frustration at how the community has been treated in the aftermath. The survivors of Grenfell are being failed by the government and the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The tragedy for them is far from over.

24 June: Glastonbury falls for the Labour leader – Jeremy Corbyn recalls the moment he took to the stage

I will never forget the electric atmosphere that met me on stage at Glastonbury. It was a wonderful event and so full of hope.

I remember being taken to Glastonbury as a boy by my mum and dad to see the Tor, long before the festival started. It has always been a special place, and now the festival is an extraordinary occasion, bringing together people, art, music, environment – and joy.

I wanted to reflect the magnitude of the occasion and was planning to incorporate appropriate poetry into my speech. I originally wanted to quote from Ode to the West Wind, as Shelley is a poet who has inspired generation after generation. The poem contains many pertinent lines, but there was nothing I could quote briefly, so I reverted to the famous rallying cry from The Masque of Anarchy: “Ye are many – they are few.”

I was going to stick to my script, but gazing out at all the banners I changed my mind about what to say. One sign read: “Build Bridges Not Walls”, so I began with a reference to Donald Trump and his ridiculous border plan. My speech, I hope, was a statement about the creativity that is in us all and that politics, like poetry and music, is about all of us: our hopes, our dreams and our aspirations for the world.

I returned to Glastonbury a few weeks ago for the opening of a social xhousing development and we went back to the festival site, with the Pyramid stage laid bare, a mere skeleton. Four of us stood in a field where there had been thousands in the summer. It was so quiet. You could only hear the rustle of the leaves and sheep faintly grazing. In the distance behind the stage, we could see the Tor. It was another magical moment, which reminded me of Shelley’s verse: “O Wind, / If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

9 July: The liberation of Mosul – by the BBC’s Quentin Sommerville

The battle for Mosul was a vicious street fight, played out in the homes of the people who lived there. In suburban neighbourhoods, the leaves of eucalyptus and orange trees would shake and fall as so-called Islamic State sent wave after wave of car bombs towards Iraqi forces.

The city airport was bombed flat and, as mortars landed nearby, I met a man who could take no more. He was leaving, with only a small bag of belongings and a blanket.

“For God’s sake,” he said, “we need you to help us, we need a shovel to get the dead bodies out of the building.” Six of his family were killed that day.

Iraqi special forces entered Mosul on 1 November 2016; on 9 July 2017 Iraq’s prime minister declared victory. Life had already returned and, in the east, much of the city was intact. But in the west, inside the historic old city, there was near total ruin.

In the city’s east, at the Mosque of Believers, I met Mullah Fares Fadel Ibrahim. He said Isis were welcomed as men of faith, until their true nature was realised. They murdered the senior imam at his mosque.

Iraq has declared victory over Isis. A remarkable feat when, three years before, its forces ran away from the jihadists, abandoning tanks, howitzers and even their uniforms as they fled.

But some of the divisions which Isis exploited in Iraq remain. The group’s predecessor was al-Qaida, it was almost defeated in Iraq, but rose again. The caliphate, an unrealised empire that promised to threaten the gates of Rome, has been bombed out of existence. But Isis fighters and sympathisers still lie in wait, and will not be so easily obliterated.

12 August: Violence flares in Charlottesville – protestor Ross Mittiga recalls standing up to the neo-nazis

It was the night before the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville when it dawned on me that our streets were going to see violence. After a service led by Cornel West on the evening of 11 August our congregation was told to remain inside the church, as Nazis attacked students outside.

The next morning I marched with a group of 50 or so anti-racists to Emancipation Park, where the Nazis were gathering. Down the street was smoke and the sound of yelling. It quickly became obvious we couldn’t get close without risking serious harm. We changed direction and found ourselves face to face with the parade: Nazis dressed like Trump; Nazis dressed like Italian fascists; Nazis with wooden shields. There were no masks, nobody even attempting to hide their identities.

Eventually it quietened down. It looked as if we’d succeeded in chasing the racists from our town. My wife pointed out we’d taken no pictures of each other, so she turned her camera towards me. In that split-second a car smashed into the crowd just 20ft away. At first everyone froze. Bodies and placards were flying in the air. All I could hear was screaming. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed and 19 others were injured when a white supremacist ploughed into us.

Fear and anxiety remains, and I don’t know if or when that will go away. But today hope and pride also flow through Charlottesville, we are a town that showed strength. We resisted the neo-fascists and embraced each other through grief.

1 September: L’Oréal’s race row – by model and social activist Munroe Bergdorf

I got an email saying L’Oréal wanted me to be the face of a campaign. The importance of it only dawned on me as I was coming back from the shoot in Paris: I was to be the first transgender woman to do so.

The reception was great for two weeks, then L’Oréal’s PR department told me that the Daily Mail had a screen grab from a Facebook post I’d written, and the paper was running a story saying I think all white people are racist. Rather than allow me to explain my position, I was dropped.

The fallout was awful. People said they wanted to rape, kill and dismember me. The response just proved my point: if these people didn’t already dislike black people why would they react with such violence?

L’Oréal’s decision to hire me would have been a big deal if it hadn’t been just an exercise in tokenism. They wanted a black girl and a trans girl to sell their product, but they didn’t want my history, my thoughts or my voice.

6 September: The desperate plight of the Rohingya refugees – Minzayar Oo photographs the human crisis

More than 600,000 Rohingya refugees, over 340,000 of them children, have fled to Bangladesh since Myanmar’s military launched what it described as “clearance operations” in August. This photograph shows Rohingya families getting on to a boat on the Naf river to continue their journey as they entered Bangladesh. I took it on my first afternoon in the country; the next day, the authorities were waiting for us at the hotel. I was arrested on suspicion of espionage and faced with seven years in prison.

My assignment was for the German magazine Geo. They wanted to do a state-of-the-union report about Myanmar and, when you talk about my country, you cannot avoid the Rohingya issue. There is almost no access on the Myanmar side, only a few selected media get official permission to go to the Rakhine border and these are very much arranged trips. So we decided it was better to report from Bangladesh, hearing the stories of the people arriving.

The Rohingya people I met in Bangladesh looked exhausted and lost. I spoke to one man who was carrying his father on his shoulders. Their village and their house had been burned to the ground, so they had to leave.

In the hospital, there was a four-month-old baby with a serious injury and a woman who said she had been shot. Many of them had lived where they had left for decades. It was heartbreaking: I kept thinking: “What if it was me or my family?”

When I was arrested, I felt quite confident. I was just telling the truth whenever I was questioned. But it did get complicated, and I ended up spending 10 days in prison.

The Rohingya story is a very tough one to work on in Myanmar, but also it’s an important one. And if there’s a chance for me to keep reporting on it then, yes, I will do it.

6 September: Hurricane Irma causes devastation –
resident Laura Strickling braves the storm on St Thomas

I had never been through a hurricane before. The last big one to hit St Thomas was 20 years ago. People told me it was going to be fine and not to worry. The Friday before, I went out shopping and everyone said I’d gone overboard, but by Monday everyone was doing the same. By Tuesday they were saying Irma was going to be the biggest storm on record.

One of the blessings of modernity is that we have iPhones, and we’d downloaded hurricane-tracking apps which said the storm would arrive at 7am. The crazy thing is that the entire day of the storm I had a perfect signal. At 6am we went down to the basement. We all knew it was coming and we shut the door and put sandbags in front of it. We were going to be in there all day. It was so hot because it was summer. There were no fans because the power went out – it hasn’t come back on since.

For about three hours from noon to 3pm on hurricane day the whole building was shaking. You could barely hear because it was so loud and the pressure was so intense. We watched the storm on our phones and saw when the eye had passed, when we could breathe a little easier. You can’t just open a door to see what’s going on outside, that would be suicide.

We thought the house was going to fall apart; it just felt neverending. I’m a brave person – we lived in Afghanistan for three years – but I’ve never been as scared as I was that day.

When we closed the door before the storm everything was green, like a feast for the eyes, and when we finally opened the door everything was gone. The roofs of our neighbours’ houses were gone.

We stayed on our property for four days. The electric lines were down all over the roads so we weren’t even sure how far we’d be able to get if we got in our car to explore. Finally, on the fifth day, we got out and my family flew to Chicago.

A lot of people have decided not to go back at all, and those are my friends, so that’s really hard to imagine because we had this beautiful, perfect life in St Thomas.

27 September: Saudi Arabia lifts the ban on women driving – by activist Loujain Al-Hathloul

My phone rang half an hour before the government made the official announcement that women were soon to be given the right to drive in our country. I had no idea the news was coming, but on the other end of the line was an official from the Presidency of State Security, the secret service. At first I was thrilled by what he had to say, I am one of many who have campaigned tirelessly for women’s rights in Saudi and beyond.

Quickly it became obvious to me that this wasn’t a congratulatory phone call. I was told to say nothing publicly about the upcoming announcement and that if I did I’d be held accountable for my words. I was being threatened. This didn’t get in the way of my initial excitement: I phoned my husband, I couldn’t stop smiling, I cried.

When I was arrested and imprisoned back in 2014 simply for driving a car, I wasn’t sure whether a change like this was possible. If I hadn’t been given a royal pardon I’d still be behind bars today.

But that threatening phone call marred the occasion. This was the first time that I saw eye to eye with the government, but instead of embracing our work and our common goals I, and the many other women who received similar phone calls, were silenced.

I’m not sure if the government were pushing us aside in an attempt to erase our activism, as if the King wanted take all the credit himself. But ours was and is a grassroots movement, so shutting down a few voices won’t make us disappear. People won’t forget what we’ve done.

5 October: The Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal breaks – Professor Tomi-Ann Roberts tells her story

In the summer of 1984, I met Harvey and Bob Weinstein when I was waiting tables in New York, and Miramax was hardly a known entity. I was a 20-year-old student with aspirations of becoming an actor. Harvey offered me a part in their first feature film, but when I showed the script to my mother she said: “That’s a bit smutty.”

I was invited to Harvey’s apartment one evening for a read-through. No one else was there. Harvey was naked in the bathtub. He asked me to “at least” remove my top, saying I may need to for the role. I declined, apologetically. I left the apartment thinking: “I’m not cut out for this.” I felt I wasn’t cool enough, but there was a feminist whisper that went beyond that, telling me to get out.

I ended up going to the actual read-through and brought a beefy man friend along with me. It was clear Harvey wasn’t going to be there. A female casting agent said: “You know you’re not getting this part, right?” The sense that I’d been had was mortifying. Demoralising. It made me take a sharp left-turn away from pursuing that kind of career.

It’s absurd that one should feel terrified by a person pacified in a bathtub, but the sexual objectification of women occurs along a continuum and I was mistreated; a tool for this man’s gratification. It took me years to come to terms with it not being about me. The security of men in this kind of situation is incredible. He knew it was not going to work every time, but why not give it a try?

What struck me most about the #MeToo campaign is women’s resilience. We should not have to endure this treatment. Shame is a very lonely experience, but now you are in a room packed with women. You can turn the shame into anger, which is productive. Anger moves outwards. We change things with it.

I was supposed to be grading exams when I read Jodi Kantor’s piece on Weinstein in the New York Times. I thought I’d email her on the off-chance. Aside from telling people about my experience at parties, here was a chance to tell someone who wanted to hear it. When she replied, I thought: “This is a story? You care?” It was astonishing to me.