WASHINGTON (AP) – Lawmakers appeared before the House Thursday afternoon to tell their often-surprising personal accounts of the siege of the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump crowd, keeping to remember their own memories of the most violent domestic attack on Congress in the history of the nation.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., addressed colleagues during the one-hour session days before the former president’s dismissal trial, saying their stories need to be told in a moment. in which some in Congress and the nation try to minimize the January 6 damage and “keep going”.
“Unfortunately, this is all too often what we feel about survivors of a trauma,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who was criticized by detractors this week after sharing her own harrowing story of hiding that day, for fear of his life.
She said: “Twenty-nine days ago, the Capitol of our nation was attacked. This is the great story. And in this great story there are thousands of individual accounts, as valid and important as the others ”.
One by one, Democratic lawmakers (Republicans did not participate) shared their memories: they saw hundreds of riots massing outside the Capitol and hearing taunts, screams and broken glass. And then “the feeling,” as Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., Put it, “of being trapped.”
Lawmakers had been counting the Electoral College vote certifying Joe Biden’s election victory when President Donald Trump, who had refused to grant, encouraged a crowd of White House supporters to head to the Capitol and “fight like hell” for him.
Phillips said when he heard the screams, he realized that a pencil was all he had to defend himself. He thought of moving to the Republican side of the House of Representatives “so we could mix.” He and others believed that riot police “would save us if they simply confused us with Republicans.”
Then, he said, he realized something: for his non-white colleagues like him, “mixing was not an option.”
Five people were killed, including a protester, Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by police inside the Capitol, and U.S. police officer Brian Sicknick, who was mortally wounded in the face of the crowd. Three more people died in medical emergencies.
Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo, called on colleagues to understand that white nationalists are a serious internal threat; Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Cried.
Representative Adriano Espaillat, DN.Y., said that as representatives in Congress, the attack on the Capitol was an attack on its electorates.
“We’re their voices here,” he said. “We don’t have to sweep this under the rug.”