Washington DC—Elders from Third Act, accompanied by the Rapid Response Choir, and many from the DC area held a somber vigil to remember January 6, 2021. It was on that infamous date 5 years ago, that a mob of thousands stormed the U.S. Capitol, right after President Trump, still in the last two weeks of his first term, encouraged the mob to do.
The elders stood with a lighted sign reading “J6 Day of Infamy” while the Rapid Response Choir sang‘ America The Beautiful,’ ‘We shall Overcome,’ and other spiritual songs.
On everyone’s mind was the upsetting memory of that day. Organizers set up an illuminated screen showing photos and describing the January 6 incidents in a storyline for everyone to watch.
Then, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, and other fringe groups attempted to stop certification of States’ votes in 2021, and block the confirmation of the election of Joe Biden. The mob came within minutes of thwarting the legislative process with intent to take key legislators hostage or capture them and thereby stop the presidential confirmation, a sacred part of the nation’s democratic and peaceful transfer of power.
Lisa Finn, an organizer and member of Third Act, recalled that day, saying, “It took a long time for me to go by the Capitol…it was very hard for me to look at it.” She recounted watching the events unfold and worried about whether of not it could happen again. “People are trying to lie about it and that’s just not right. This could happen again and we want to understand the facts about what happened,” she said.
The Facts Of January 6 Are Incontrovertible
Many of the people who assaulted police were violent seditionists, part of organized groups that traveled from outside the city. They were of course followed by thousands of others who were ginned up by a barrage of lies, misinformation, lies conspiracy theories by Trump himself, about the election being stolen or undermined.
In the months after the November 4th general election, Trump and his party filed 52 cases in various states and jurisdictions alleging voter fraud, burned ballots, fake election results, dead people registered to vote, stolen votes, hacked voting machines, and more. All the cases were adjudicated quickly, appealed through higher courts of review, and in cases which merited Supreme Court review, were heard there as well. Every case resulted in no findings of voter fraud, fraudulent counting, or stolen results.
Trump’s party even appointed fake electors who attempted infiltrate and dubiously replace States electoral seats, thereby stealing State Electoral College votes on his behalf in multiple swing States. Those efforts were handily defeated.
Trump himself attempted to sway Georgia election officials to “find 11,780 votes” during a January 2 recorded phone call with Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger. This resulted in a Georgia State case against him for election interference. Raffensperger refused to alter the results of the Georgia general election. The case was eventually delayed and dismissed after its prosecutor was implicated in an unrelated conflict of interest relationship.
So on January 6, and all out of options, Trump exhorted followers to “go to the Capitol” during his ‘Stop the Steal’ speech at the White House. And so they went—to “convince Mike Pence” as Trump requested, to swing the Electoral College results in his favor.
When they arrived, they broke through the barriers around the Capitol grounds. They fought and broke through line after line of U.S. Capitol Police. The maced police, and they broke through windows and doors into the Capitol by force, overwhelming police and beating them with flag poles and riot shields.
Once inside they defiled the building with human waste, shat on the floors, rummaged through the Parliamentarian’s office scattering the documents over the floor, stole mail, and took trophies out of the House floor. They chased down legislators, some carrying zip-ties in an obvious attempt to illegally detain them. All this happened while the legislature was in session. Key legislative members escaped through back corridors to a secret bunker built in the 1990s and early 2000s in the event of such a scenario.
Police finally had enough outside the Office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and shot and killed Ashli Babbit, an Air Force Veteran. Babbit was not a patriot and was not serving her country honorably when she died even though the president posthumously pardoned her and restored all benefits to her parents. Her parents were awarded $5 million in damages.
The insurrectionists delayed the official count of the States votes and certification by 8 hours and had they succeeded in stopping it altogether, it is likely Joe Biden would not have been sworn in as the 46th President two weeks later.
There would not have been democracy here had they succeeded.
It was no mistake that their invasion was timed at the exact moment the legislature was convening to certify the States’ votes. They also intended to silence the voices of hundreds of thousands of Americans who had legitimately cast their votes and had a right for their votes to matter.
As they attempted to breach the sanctuary of our democracy, people put their lives on the line to stop them. Five Capitol policemen died later as a result of the actions of these misguided insurrectionists. Over 170 were maimed or injured.
Several independent media arrived as all this was happening inside. Trump ended up not going there though he wanted to. Later stories surfaced that his own Secret Service refused to transport her to the Capitol out of safety concerns.
Video taken by DCMediaGroup showed a violent scene where insurrectionist damaged Capitol windows, doors, and stood off against police. But what actually happened was much worse than the videos depicted. Video can capture only so much of a chaotic violent scene where scores of people battle eschother.
The mob also attacked members of the press and destroyed their equipment by the edge of the grey wall at the top of the West Lawn. The equipment was smashed and destroyed—$100,000s of equipment was smashed to pieces.
They urinated on the Capitol grounds over on the Senate side. They bashed in windows on the East and West and South side of the building. They smashed a police hut near the Capitol East Wing.
They maced and attacked anyone who was not with them. The carried flags honoring Trump and wore hats and shirts with Trump’s name on it and “Make America Great Again.”
In the effort to have accountability the Department of Justice later held those responsible which the FBI could identify and locate. Juries of their peers convicted many hundreds of the insurrectionists but their sentences were too lax for what they had collectively done.
Trump pardoned them all in a cynical attempt to avoid prosecution for his role in his misguided coup attempt. Since his pardons, 33 have committed new crimes of various sorts, some pretty serious.
In the aftermath of this event, the Trump regime has attempted to reinvent an alternate reality as January 6 was caused by the Democratic party.
The Third Act organizers and the Rapid Response Choir were at the Capitol to peacefully tell the story of what really happened that day.
