“Jason shared after all of it with me that for him - these are his words - as a white male he could take off his pin, or he could keep his pin and run over to the other side with the Republicans and stand there and people may not know the difference,” Demings said. Val Demings, a Black former Orlando police chief who was also trapped in the gallery, that he didn’t realize at the time how difficult it would be for members of color to disguise themselves from the mob.
In the aftermath of the attack, Crow and other white lawmakers reckoned with the experiences their colleagues of color faced that day. It was that same kind of hatred I saw in people who wanted to stop people of color from casting a ballot for the candidate of their choice in Mississippi,” Thompson said. “I saw the kind of hatred in the eyes of the people who broke in the Capitol. 6 and among those stuck in the gallery, said that day specifically brought back “unpleasant experiences” from his early days as a Black politician in Mississippi. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chairman of the panel investigating Jan. She added: “And so many of the members of color that I know did not take off their pins.” Because it was either you get recognized by the insurrectionist or you don’t get recognized by Capitol Police as a brown woman or Black woman,” Jayapal told the AP in December. “I thought there’s no way I’m taking off my pin. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., removing the pin was not an option. Jason Crow of Colorado decided the best thing members could do was take off their congressional pins identifying them as lawmakers.īut for lawmakers of color like Rep. Meanwhile, as the attack unfolded at the Capitol, a handful of lawmakers remained trapped in the House and Senate galleries with no escape as rioters fought to break in.Īfter a gunshot killing Ashli Babbitt, who was among the rioters and attempting to leap through a broken window, rang out in the House chamber, Democratic Rep. Later that night, Dunn said, he sat in the Capitol Rotunda and wept.
He said no one had ever called him the N-word while he was in uniform. “Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 people, joined in, screaming, ‘Boo! F-ing n-!’” he testified. “One woman in a pink MAGA (Make America Great Again) shirt yelled, ‘You hear that guys, this n- voted for Joe Biden!’” said Dunn, who has served more than a dozen years on the Capitol Police force. When Dunn said that he had voted for Biden and that his vote should be counted, a crowd began hurling a racial slur at him. Harry Dunn, a Black officer, recalled an exchange he had with rioters who disputed that Biden defeated Trump. More than 100 officers were injured, some severely.Ī group of officers testified to Congress in July about the physical and verbal abuse they faced from supporters of former President Donald Trump. While Bush managed to escape the Capitol and barricade with her staff in her office in a nearby building, dozens of police officers faced down the violent mob in hours of frantic hand-to-hand combat. The history of this country has been that type of language and imagery is directed right at us in a very negative and oftentimes violent way.”
“But it’s especially different for Black people because of our history. “First of all, as a Black woman, that is already just tough on a level that’s different from what a white person would experience,” Bush said of the imagery and rhetoric surrounding the attack, especially the Confederate flag that was carried by a rioter inside the Capitol.
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The insurrection by pro-Trump supporters and members of far-right groups shattered the sense of security that many had long felt at the Capitol as rioters forcibly delayed the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.īut for people of color, including many in Congress, the attack was more than a violent challenge to a free and fair election - it was an eerily familiar display of white supremacist violence, this time at the very seat of American democracy.
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