Eyes in S.A. are on the TV.
Former Texas House Speaker Joe Straus
Former Mayor Henry Cisneros was in Sarasota, Fla., shortly before 2 p.m. EST on Wednesday, in a four-person meeting of his new infrastructure development firm when his computer alerted him to the armed occupation of the U.S. Capitol.
The group members quickly abandoned their “charts and metrics” and projected the breaking news from CNN on a 60-inch TV screen in their conference room, he said.
Hundreds of President Donald Trump’s supporters had left a rally after Trump addressed them and pushed aside police barricades as Congress debated the certification of the presidential election.
The rioters halted the proceedings, breaking windows, fighting with officers and calling law enforcement “traitors” and “murderers” after a woman was shot — all visible on live TV and social media feeds.
“I think it will be one of those, ‘where were you when’ moments,” Cisneros said. “Periodically, we have had moments of tension and rage in this country, but, I believe, never have they been instigated by the president.”
An hour later, in his San Antonio home, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff got a call to turn on the TV.
“It looked like a scene from Venezuela or some Third World country,” Wolff said. “I don’t know that we’ve seen anything quite like this since maybe the Civil War.”
“I really don’t blame those individuals as much as I blame the president,” he added. “What happened today is the culmination of everything he had been preaching. I just don’t understand it.”
Leona Riggs, 89, and “an Air Force wife” from her husband’s tours of duty in Germany, the Philippines and elsewhere, said friends hurriedly called her at her Windcrest home and asked in horror, “Are you watching the TV?”
Riggs soon was riveted to the images of Trump supporters climbing the walls of the Capitol.
“We’ve been all around the world and seen scenes like this in other countries, but I never thought I would see this in our country,” said Riggs, who “lives with regret” for having voted for Trump in 2016.
“He instigated and engineered all this,” she added. “He believes he can do no wrong.”
Adrian Reyna, 33, who teaches
U.S. history at Longfellow Middle School, said he had been watching the certification of the Electoral College results when the lawmakers were evacuated.
Glued to his TV, he tried to figure out how to explain what he was seeing to his students when they return to classes next week.
“I’m the teacher who tells my kids, ‘Hey, speak up; hey, stand up,’” Reyna said. “It’s a really hard argument to make to them to say, ‘You have a right to do these things’ right now, but this is a teaching moment for where we drawthe line, not doing it in a way that is just destructive.”
“It is incumbent upon all of us, including teachers — especially history teachers — to help this generation and subsequent generations learn to think critically, disagree respectfully and act responsibly as we work toward the common good,” he added.
Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales was conducting a Zoom meeting with a few staff members in his office when he saw the chaos unfold on television.
The whole thing “gives credence to the argument that words matter,” he said. “It demonstrates that stoking the flames of dissent has consequences, and that it only serves to further divide us at a time when we should come gether.”
Maria, who declined to give her last namefor fear of expressing an opinion on a sensitive issue publicly, said she saw the news on a flight to San Antonio from Florida for a conference. She burst into tears while talking about it.
“I’m sorry I want to cry. It’s not about me, it’s about my kids. We’re older, near the end of our life, but they’re just getting started,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It’s been a rough day.”
Melina Rodriguez and Kalisha Jones, both 18 and friends from high school, were catching up at an outdoor table along the River Walk as the news broke. They had voted for the first time in November, and for them, violence and anger over politics might be scary, but it’s the status quo.
“There was something that was bound to happen after these elections,” said Jones, who attends the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s kind of not surprising. Politics plays a huge part in everyone’s lives now, and everyone is so emotionally driven by them,”
The friends scrolled through Twitter and sighed. They said they feel a burden for all that their generation is expected to endure — and to fix.
At the Pearl toretail and dining complex, Matt Samuel, 33, checked to see if people he knew in Washington were OK, including one who works at the Capitol, after hearing about the riot while working at home and seeing screenshots of tweets from friends. He called it “surreal.”
Seated nearby, Ut-austin student Morgan Mcginnis, 20, was constantly refreshing her laptop for updates.
“It was shocking,” Mcginnis said. “I feel like that’s the immediate reaction — howmuch information can I get about it?”
City Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia was on her way to a doctor’s appointment when her phone started to blow up with text messages. Shewas driving, so she ignored the frenzy, until her father called to tell her, “El capitolino está bajo ataque, hija! Esta muy feo.”
The Capitol is under daughter. It’s very ugly.
Surely it isn’t that bad, Rocha Garcia thought, until she got to the doctor’s office and waded through the flood of messages and images on her phone. “It’s unbelievable,” she said. attack,