Juxtaposing Capitol mob, Women’s March
“BAlbany uild that wall! Build that wall! Build that wall!” A crowd of nearly 15,000 Donald Trump supporters took up the snarling, enraged chant that shook the rafters of the Times Union Center at a Trump campaign rally on April 11, 2016. It was a louder and more ferocious sound than any I had heard during dozens of rock concerts, arena football games, basketball tournaments, hockey matches and even a monster truck spectacle I attended in that venue.
Trump’s supporters seemed drawn in by the primal ritual of the mob and a blind allegiance to a man who admires autocrats and who told reporters: “I am the chosen one.”
Fast-forward four years. I am trying to process what I watched unfold on CNN last Wednesday as an angry mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol,
desecrated the symbol of American democracy, tried to overturn a free and fair election and engaged in a mindless melee that left five people dead and scores more injured.
They waved Trump banners and Confederate flags, flashed logos of white supremacist groups, wore red MAGA hats and a hoodie labeled “Camp Auschwitz” and built gallows with a noose. They carried pipe bombs, firearms, Molotov cocktails and pepper spray. They spit violent threats against Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, hurled racist epithets and yelled “You work for us!” and “This is our house!” They referred to themselves as patriots.
It was a reckless riot, followed by meandering vandalism without a list of demands, a manifesto or anything substantive. They smashed windows, gawked at the grandeur of the architecture, took selfies, defecated in corners, rifled through files, flipped some chairs and desks, walked off with a lectern, livestreamed the failed insurrection and slunk off.
Watching CNN felt like viewing a Dali painting, a surrealist landscape unhinged from the rational world.
I kept thinking back to that Trump rally four years ago. I saw a lot of people like myself in the crowd at the Times Union Center — white, middle-aged and male. The demographic was not unlike the lawless horde that attacked the Capitol, incited by Trump.
The president promised that he would join his MAGA marauders on their uprising, but of course he lied. He added one more falsehood to the 30,000plus lies or misleading claims he has made as president, according to The Washington Post’s Fact Checker database. Trump instead returned to the comfort and security of the White House while his minions committed crimes, for which dozens of them are now being charged and prosecuted.
I juxtapose the Capitol mob of several thousand and the wide swath of destruction they left with the Women’s March on Washington. I covered that event on Jan. 21, 2017, a day after Trump’s inauguration. The march drew hundreds of thousands of protesters, perhaps a million, to the National Mall. Both the Trump mob and the women marchers were angry and aggrieved, insisting that the election had been stolen from them — by a dark conspiracy of fraud in the case of Trump supporters and by Russian hacking and an FBI probe into emails by backers of Hillary Clinton. Their responses differed dramatically.
I rode with a busload of women from Albany to D.C. and wrote this: “It was at turns hilarious, moving, collaborative, peaceful and inspirational. I never witnessed a single act of aggression, rude gesture or angry word. The security presence was very light.” The women in a sea of pink “pussy-hats” ignored a scattering of Trump counterprotesters that I saw. The women did not respond violently when they discovered dozens of padlocked port-a-potties along the mall used for Trump’s inauguration just hours earlier.
The marchers’ signs were creative and clever. “Hands too small. Can’t build a wall!” and “We need a leader. Not a creepy tweeter!” and “Grab Him by The Policy.” One of my favorites inspired a singalong: “You’re so vain — you probably think this march is about you.”
They chanted a call and response as they marched: “Tell me what democracy looks like. ... This is what democracy looks like.”
As I left, I was trapped for nearly two hours in a jam-packed, sweaty transit train that broke down while leaving D.C. Instead of reacting with violence or anger, the women sang versions of “We Shall Overcome” and shared mints and water.
The D.C. marchers were joined by millions of women worldwide who rolled up their sleeves and got to work. They organized. They raised funds. They lobbied. They supported progressive female candidates. They helped fuel the 2018 blue wave in the midterm elections, the Biden-harris victory and the Democratic sweep in Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoffs that flipped the Senate blue.
They did it the right way. They did not resort to mob violence.
Four years ago, I went to the Trump rally after covering the Bernie Sanders rally at the Washington Avenue Armory the same day. That evening, bitter partisans spewed angry insults at each other across metal barricades on South Pearl Street. A large police presence, including mounted cops, kept the war of words from spilling over into physical violence.
When a couple of Sanders supporters lifted campaign signs inside the arena and tried to disrupt the rally, Trump bellowed: “Get ‘em out of here!” Security moved in and averted a brawl.
I wonder: How do we talk to our kids about the Capitol mob attack and teach them to heal our political vitriol?
This summer, day after day, I saw a boy of 11 or 12 ride his bike up a small hill behind an elementary school where I walk our dog each day to play fetch. The boy always came alone. He spent hours hauling dead tree limbs, discarded construction debris, large rocks and salvaged scraps into a stand of trees.
I took a peek one afternoon. The kid had constructed an intricate adolescent engineering project, a sim city. It reminded me of an ancient Greek polis — from which politics is derived — with an urban center and public space built on an acropolis. His creation was an expression of hope in the pandemic.
A couple days later, I saw a gang of teenagers on mountain bikes hollering and popping wheelies down that hill. I walked on.
The next afternoon, the hillside was strewn with the broken, scattered remnants of the boy’s creation. It made me want to cry. I thought of that mindless destruction behind the school when I watched the Capitol mob and the desecration of the symbol of the fragile experiment that we call democracy. And I wondered who had raised those men when they were just boys in the woods?