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Journalists inside the Capitol captured rioters smashing windows and trying to replace a American flag outside the building with a Trump flag. They recorded Trump supporters wandering the halls of the building. And the way the Capitol Police handled it – or not – hasn’t gone unnoticed on social media, where journalists, historians and activists have spoken out against what they see as hypocrisy. : A predominantly white crowd acting violently was treated kindly to peaceful protesters in Washington and across the country during protests against the murder of Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
Representative Cori Bush (D-Missouri), a veteran of the Black Lives Matters protests in Ferguson, Missouri, appeared on MSNBC Wednesday night and criticized the disparate treatment.
“It was almost like there was this call [for the police] not to use force, ”Bush said. “There are photos and videos of police walking away. …. If they were people who looked like me. If it was the same number of people but if they had been black and brown. We would not have invented these steps. We wouldn’t have done it to walk in the door and smash the windows and step onto the desks of members of Congress. We wouldn’t have gotten that far. We would have been shot. We would have been gassed with tear gas. … We have to call it that. It is white supremacy.
Politicians, former officials, activists and others on social media expressed their fury, tweeting “#ThisisAmerica” as they posted photos and videos highlighting the different ways black and brown protesters were being treated by police compared to insurgents from the Capitol.
Police treatment of rioters “says a lot about who is an enemy fighter and who is not – and how Capitol Hill police were not ready for it,” said Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization. .
“This is an example of all the ways these people who at every turn put forward some of the ugliest, most hateful, and most violent interactions – they always got the benefit of the doubt when they showed up in Washington.” , ”He added.
Robinson said the extremists who stormed the Capitol should not be seen as protesters. “It was domestic terrorism,” he said.
Representative Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), responsible for funding the Capitol Police as chairman of the House Appropriations Legislative Division subcommittee, vowed to investigate the response from the forces of the House on Wednesday. order to the rioters who seized the Capitol building. Ryan said officers made “strategic mistakes” and promised there would be “a number of people who will find themselves out of work very, very soon.”
Videos of the chaos inside the Capitol Building showed extremists sitting in the chambers of the House and Senate, walking around the building – and one particular case that was widely shared online showed a man sitting with his feet on Pelosi’s office, leaving a note that said, “We’re not going back.
This man, later identified by a New York Times reporter as Richard “Bigo” Barnett of Gravette, Ark., Was outside the Capitol later to recount his time in Pelosi’s office. At the time of his release from the Capitol, he was not in police custody. Reports did not confirm whether he was among the rioters arrested Wednesday evening.
Another clip on Twitter showed a rioter taking a selfie with a law enforcement officer inside the Capitol.
“It’s a dark day in America when a US Capitol policeman decides to take a selfie with a TERRORIST!” And they wonder why WE don’t feel safe! The NAACP posted on Twitter with the video.
Trump, for his part, waited about an hour after his supporters began wreaking havoc outside Capitol Hill to send out a tweet asking them to “stay peaceful.” After hours of chaos scenes broadcast live on television, he finally tweeted a video falsely claiming the presidential election was stolen from him and urging his supporters to return home.
“We can’t play these people’s game,” Trump said in a video that Twitter later deleted from his account, which was locked until 7 a.m. Thursday. “We must have peace. So go home. We love you. You are very special. “
In a tweet, he said: “Remember, WE are the Law and Order Party” – a message he repeated repeatedly during the election campaign as he described Democrats as violent protesters.
In contrast, the day after his photoshoot last summer, Trump celebrated the “many arrests” and boasted that “Washington, DC was the safest place in the world last night!”
As of Wednesday evening, 13 people had been arrested in connection with the riots, Metropolitan Police Department chief Robert Contee told a press conference. Contee said several officers were injured. A woman was also shot dead on Capitol Hill and later pronounced dead.
More than 14,000 arrests were made during George Floyd’s protests across the country last year, according to Public citizen, a progressive advocacy group that monitors corporate influence over policy.
Representative Karen Bass (D-California) excoriated Trump supporters – who have widely criticized the Black Lives Matter protests – for attacking law enforcement officials.
“The people who enter the Capitol are the same people who scream about law and order when there are Black Lives Matter protests,” she posted on Twitter. “The people attacking the Capitol cops right now are the same people who say they stand with the police.”
Democrats and activists on Wednesday afternoon were quick to point out that the Capitol Police response to protesters was markedly different even their daily enforcement actions. When asked on CNN whether Black Lives Matter protesters would have been treated the same as rioters had they stormed the Capitol building, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser did not answered.
#AmeriKKKa was all the rage on Twitter Wednesday night, with thousands of posts highlighting the difference in law enforcement response to the Black Lives Matter protests and the extremists that stormed the Capitol.
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