‘Assault on our democracy’ — Area residents respond to violence

Thousands of protesters descended on the U.S. Capitol Wednesday before a mob breached the building and reached the Senate floor, forcing lawmakers to be rushed from the building.

It was a scene that many in Connecticut watched play out in horror and confusion, including Gary MacNamara, Sacred Heart

University’s executive director of public safety and government aff airs.

“I’m shocked that we are witnessing this in our country,” said MacNamara, a former Fairfield chief of police. “I’ve been to the Capitol. These are sacred spaces. To watch people invade that building — it’s concerning.”

Wednesday’s ordinarily mundane procedure of Congress certifying Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory was always going to be extraordinary, with Republican supporters of President Donald Trump vowing to protest results

of an election that they have baselessly insisted was reversed by fraud. But even the unusual deliberations, which included the Republican vice president and Senate majority leader defying Trump’s demands, were quickly overtaken.

In a raucous, out-of-control scene, protesters fought past police and breached the building, shouting and waving Trump and American flags as they marched through the halls.

Even though he lives near the White House, James Stockmal still watched the events at the U.S. Capitol unfold on his television set, like the rest of the world.

“If you’re watching on TV, it looks really crazy,” said Stockmal, who is originally from Bridgeport, though he has lived in Washington since 1984.

Stockmal lives just off of 16th Street, a particularly dense part of the city’s downtown. From his home just about a mile from the White House, he walked earlier in the day to Washington’s Black Lives Matter Plaza at 16th Street and K Street, which became a hub for racial justice protests during the summer months.

“That’s when I saw a number of Trump supporters walking eastward,” he said, watching the gaggle of Trump supporters retrace the same route that Black Lives Matter protesters had walked less than six months before.

Many on social media were critical of the fact that the police seemed to be far less aggressive with those who invaded the Capitol Wednesday than they were with Black Lives Matter protesters over the summer.

As a former police chief, MacNamara said he was reluctant to judge how Capitol police responded to the chaos that descended on Washington, D.C., but he does have questions. “Why didn’t they lock the building down immediately?” he said. “Why didn’t they stop people from getting inside?”

Others were also stunned by Wednesday’s scene, including Alex Plitsas, chair of the Fairfield Republican Town Committee, a conservative columnist and former Pentagon official. Plitsas, who was actively tweeting about the situation in D.C., said he’s been incensed by the situation.

“What’s taken place has been disgusting, embarrassing and criminal,” Plitsas said. “It’s been a violent assault on our democracy and democratic institutions,

and it needs to be condemned in the strongest possible terms.”

Regarding a video released by the White House, in which Trump told people to leave the Capitol building and go home but continued to speak about baseless claims of election fraud, Plitsas said Trump’s words are not particularly helpful.

“He started talking about how the election is stolen at a moment when we’re looking for someone to stand up and condemn the violence,” he said.

Plitsas, formerly a member of a U.S. Army special operations unit, said he and other members of the military voluntarily donned the uniform after the 9/11 terrorists attacks to take the fight to the enemy and defend citizens’ right to free speech and peaceful assemblies.

“I certainly didn’t do that to support what’s nothing short of a violent, anarchist assault on our democracy and democratic institutions,” he said. “Occupying the U.S. Capitol by force is not peaceful protesting, and attempting to enforce your will on others using force has no place in a peaceful, democratic society.”

Rosa Correa, a Bridgeport activist and Republican who voted for Biden, also spoke out against Wednesday’s events.

“The president incited this,” Correa said. “This sedition, that’s what I’m calling it, has me heartbroken.”

Correa called on all Republicans to defend the legitimacy of Biden’s win. “All the Republicans I know of in this city and beyond have to make a commitment to the truth,” she said. “The truth is this election was won legitimately by President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, and stand by that. If they take that away, they’re taking away our citizenship, our rights; they’re destroying our democracy.”

Fellow Republican Leonard Paoletta criticized Wednesday’s disaster, but not Trump himself.

Paoletta served as Bridgeport’s mayor in the early 1980s — a rarity in this heavily democratic city. Paoletta called the scene in Washington D.C. “disgraceful.” But as a Trump supporter, he was hesitant to place any blame on the outgoing president.

“I would say no,” Paoletta said when asked if Trump bore some of the responsibility. “But when it started, he should have been out there and insisted the standards of the Republicans and especially the Trump base is far from what’s going on, they should pack it up, go home

and leave it as is.”

Paoletta also argued that Trump has the right to question Biden’s win, particularly given how Democrats treated him over the last four years: “Trying to undermine this president and make him an illegitmate president.”

“Everything Trump is doing (to challenge the election) is by law,” he added. “But for four years they were doing every possible thing they could do to undermine him. They never accepted him. He’s not accepting this (and) he’s the bad guy? They did not accept it for four years.”

On the other end of the spectrum, Arlene Carpenter, of Fairfield, is a longtime, politically active Democrat, who said she sat down to watch Wednesday’s proceedings looking to be entertained by what she thought would be a contentious, but ultimately peaceful, certification process.

“What we got is an insurrection,” Carpenter said. “I’ve never seen anything like this, and I’m a child of the ’60s.”

Even some local residents who are too young to vote were taken aback by what was happening.

“As Joe Biden said, this is an attack on Democracy,” said Rohit Gunda, 17, a senior at Trumbull High School. “I’m kind of speechless.”

Gunda is a member of We the People, a constitutional competition team run as part of an Advanced Placement government class at Trumbull High. They have won the state competition 24 times since 1987.

“Our generation is known to be a generation that fights for what we believe in, and I feel like our generation can stop the stuff that is happening,” Gunda said. “We’re known to be a politically active generation, and that goes hand in hand with being informed, and I feel like that will make us good advocates in the future.”

A fellow senior and We the People student echoed those sentiments.

“I honestly can’t wrap my mind around what’s happening right now,” said Amaya Mikolic, also 17. “This just shows why it’s so important that I and my peers get involved. The general feeling among my friends is that we’re just disappointed. We’ve learned to appreciate this nation, and it’s disappointing to see how some people act.”