“Let’s be clear, this was a domestic terrorist attack perpetrated by rioting mobs of white, armed supremacists and many experts in police and military tactics who came to cancel an election in which their candidate Trump lost,” the representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus said during the group’s hearing.
“Madam President, St. Louis and I stand up to support the impeachment article against Donald J. Trump. If we fail to remove a white supremacist president who has instigated a white supremacist insurgency, it is communities like the first district in Missouri to suffer the most, ”Bush said during his speech.
People marched by the thousands in both after believing that a wrong had been done to them. Calls for racial justice across America over the summer were bolstered by the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and the pain of subsequent generations of anti-black sentiment. Unlike the BLM protests, the insurgency on Capitol Hill was sparked by deep-rooted racist lies and stereotypes, experts say.
Convinced that the presidential election had been stolen, the rioters boasted of themselves as “patriots” and repeatedly chanted “USA, USA” while vandalizing and destroying the building at the heart of American democracy. Trump, who has adopted dog-whistling tactics such as branding Mexicans “rapists” and called the words Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,” prompted them.
“Once something like that seems true, you can’t deter them with the facts,” said Ian Haney López, author of “Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class” .
Here’s a look at what drove the Black Lives Matter movement for almost a decade and why Trump supporters broke into Capitol Hill:
False and denied claims have drawn thousands to Capitol Hill
After weeks of hearing false claims that the presidential election was rigged, Trump supporters have rallied in Washington to fight the ceremonial electoral vote count that would confirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
Hours before the insurgency, Trump addressed a crowd of supporters gathered on the Ellipse near the White House, stoking false allegations of electoral fraud and telling them to “fight like hell.”
“I absolutely 100% support what happened here today,” Todd Possett, who was in last week’s crowd, told CNN’s Donie Sullivan. “It’s terrible how this election was stolen. I had to come here and do my patriotic duty.”
Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, said Wednesday the crowd was driven by racial resentment and “a conspiracy theory rooted in the effort to invalidate black people.”
“The crowd was greeted with empathy and deference from some in the police and others in a military establishment that houses white supremacists, let’s say it, in its own ranks,” Morial testified. of the Congressional Black Caucus hearing in response to the riots.
After the election, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey were among the cities that the Trump campaign had falsely accused of voter fraud and corruption. These cities are either predominantly black or have large black populations.
At a press conference in November, Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, said: “You knew if you lived in Philadelphia. Unless you’re stupid – that’s an Italian expression for stupid – unless to be stupid, you knew a lot of people were coming from Camden to vote, ”he said.“ They do it every year. It happens all the time in Philadelphia. … And this is allowed because it is a corrupt democratic city (sic), and has been for years. Many years. And they did it in places. where they could get away from it. “
According to Haney López, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, the rioters believed in a narrative deeply rooted in racist stereotypes that has been consistent throughout the Trump administration and used by other politicians over the years. Last 50 years.
“What they are mainly trying to trigger is the feeling that dangerous people of color are coming to take over the country,” Haney López said.
“They believe it because in their hearts it seems true that this multiracial coalition is taking power,” he added. “It is simply wrong for them that blacks in coalition with Latinos and Asian Americans and whites take power.”
Political leaders have long used dog whistle phrases to exploit the racial fears of white America. Some of these terms are “illegal alien,” “thug,” and “welfare queen,” which was used by President Ronald Reagan when he ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976 to attack the chasers. well-being during campaign speeches.
In his first public remarks to reporters since the insurgency, Trump insisted that his riot-inciting speech was “entirely appropriate.”
He claimed the “real problem” was what other politicians said about the protests over the summer in Seattle and Portland, Oregon.
The insurgency on Capitol Hill has also been a stunning show of force for fringe movements with several symbols of white supremacist and extremist groups on display.
A global rallying cry for black lives
In 2013, the unexpected murder trial verdict in the murder of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old black teenager who walked in his father’s Florida neighborhood, led to the birth of Black Lives Matter – one of the best – well-known organizations fighting for the well-being of black people.
What started as a hashtag grew into a website, an organization, and later grew to over a dozen locals across the United States and Canada. They were driven by the series of deaths of black Americans at the hands of police and vigilantes.
According to the BLM site, its mission is “to eradicate white supremacy and strengthen local power to intervene in the violence inflicted on black communities by the state and vigilantes.”
But BLM’s goal is not just to protest police brutality. At the local level, the organization advocates for mutual aid, the removal of police funding and access to housing and health care for black and brown workers.
“We live in a country built to pull ourselves away from these resources that we need,” says Kailee Scales, Managing Director of the Black Lives Matter Global Network. “Members of the movement have consistently fought to reverse this trend, to raise awareness that this is not how we are supposed to live.”
Studies show that segregation persists in many American cities, leaving predominantly black neighborhoods behind. Black communities do not have the same access as whites to health care, quality education, good jobs and other resources.
“You know, for a lot of us in this country, we know what it’s like to be treated differently. And we also know what it is to tell ourselves that all the things we experience every day don’t exist or that if they do exist that it’s our fault (and) that we’ve somehow created the conditions for it. inequality, ”said Alicia Garza, who co-founded the global Black Lives Matter network with Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi.
Following Floyd’s murder last summer, large crowds took to the streets of several cities in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. The protests were larger and more sustained. The BLM signs that appeared in the courts of many were just the first signs of a nationwide racial reckoning.
People marched against police violence, systemic racism, to be seen and heard.
“If you don’t talk and say nothing, you’re just like the officers standing next to watching,” Kansas City protester Randy Fikki told CNN affiliate WDAF-TV. referring to the officers involved. in Floyd’s death.
Critics have responded to the phrase “Black Lives Matter” by inventing their own slogans, such as “All Lives Matter,” which some say downplays the current struggle of blacks against systemic racism, and “Blue Lives Matter,” referring to the lives of the police.
Last week, Trump supporters came under fire on social media after using another phrase known for years as a call for racial justice.
They used the hashtag #SayHerName when referring to Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old white woman who was fatally shot as the mob tried to make their way to the floor of the house.
They seemed oblivious to the #SayHerName campaign, which aims to educate black women and girls who are victims of police brutality – and who are often overlooked and forgotten.
The campaign, launched in 2014 by the African American Policy Forum and the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies, has worked to highlight the cases of dozens of black women, including Atatiana Jefferson and Michelle Cusseaux, both killed by the police at their home.
