In the last hour my brother has called me. My mother has called me. My grandmother has called me. It is not my birthday. It is not because I won the lottery. It is not New Years or Hanukkah.
They are all calling to make sure I am safe. They are worried because I live near DC. They are worried because domestic terrorists broke into the Capitol building, ransacked offices, and fired shots. Some of my family are worried because they don’t understand the geography of the area and how far I actually am from the Capitol, but they also worry because chaos, like illness, tends to spread.
Friends I have who do live near the chaos have packed to-go bags and are sheltering in place. It is January 6, 2021 in the United States of America. No leader has yet addressed the nation.
This didn’t have to happen. Security in riot gear lined the Capitol steps when BLM activists came to peacefully protest in the same city. When I marched during the impeachment proceedings of a year ago the police followed our group around the capitol and the visitor’s center inhibiting our legal movements and making sure an old woman in our group didn’t use her stool to sit down because it wasn’t “a wheelchair”. DC residents were warned not to travel if we didn’t have to yesterday and today. What has happened is shocking. That this happened, given the circumstances that are now apparent, is not.
Again, it is January 6, 2021.