Visitors, residents left to assess the damage
WASHINGTON — Outside the Capitol on Thursday, Sheridan Harvey took out binoculars and gazed hundreds of yards into the distance, looking for evidence of the damage rioters had caused to a complex that is an enduring symbol of American democracy.
“You can see the broken windows,” Harvey, a retired Library of Congress reference librarian, told her friend Merritt Chesley, a retired Foreign Service officer.
On Wednesday, Harvey had devoured a bag of Cheetos as the twowomentexted each other, both watching news coverage of the mob that overwhelmed the landmark at the center of their neighborhood.
“What they’re doing to our country is appalling, appalling, appalling,” Chesley said.
“I was never afraid that the building would fall or that the rioters would take control,” Harvey said. “But symbolically? It was devastating.”
Less than 24 hours after rioters desecrated a singular emblem of Washington power, the nation’s capital struggled to regain a sense of order as work crews cleaned up litter on the Capitol’s grounds and tourists returned to admire its gleaming dome.
Clusters of National Guard troops ringing the complex, along with newly installed security fencing,
signaling the path to normalcywouldn’t be simple or quick.
“It’s reassuring to see it on a lovely, clear day on the one hand, and I’m happy to see the National Guard,” Laird Trieber, 55, a retired Foreign Service officer who lives in the neighborhood, said as he walked his beagle past the east sideof thecapitol. “But what a shame. It’s not something I would expect tosee inmylifetime. It’s the kind of thing you see somewhere else, and it’s usually a sign of real trouble.”
Michael Kanter awoke Thursdayat adowntownhotel, put on his red “Make America Great Again” cap
and headed straight for the Capitol, where he had spent hours the day before.
Instead of voicing more outrage over the election results, as he had when he marched with thousands of other supporters of President Donald Trump, Kanter said hewanted to make sure the building was secure.
The 67-year-old dentist fromflorida still insistedthe election was “stolen” from Trump, who has made unfounded allegations about rigged voting for months.
But Kanter described himself as upset that the Capitol hadbeen vandalized by hordes of his fellow Trump backers, who overtook police, broke windows
and ransacked nal offices.
“I wanted to see it quiet and peaceful,” he said as he gazed at the building. “I just wanted to see the beauty of it.”
As much as the White House, perhaps, the Capitol is a cultural icon, depicted on the $50 bill, in countless movies and on postcards. Storming the complex as lawmakers were certifying the election results was akin to “violating a cathedral,” Georgetown University history Professor Michael Kazin said.
“Our Constitution, the White House, the Mall, the Capitol — they’re like a secular version of religion,” Ka
congressiozin said. “Those are the places people know if they know anything about the country.”
Many of the marauders wore Trump hats or carried Trump flags as they entered the building Wednesday. But on Thursday, there were supporters of the president — like Kanter — who came back downtown and showed reverence for the institutions of government.
Some picked up debris near the White House. At the Capitol, a woman who identified herself only as “Asia” said she hadmarched Wednesday but retreated once the vandalism had begun.
“I didn’t want to be part of that,” she said.
“I’m glad to see there’s not alotof trash,” shesaid after emerging from a van with a Maine license plate, wearing a dirt-bike helmet fashioned tolook like a skull. “I believe inourcountry, but I don’t believe in hurting each other. There’s a way to do it, and we messed up.”
A few yards away, Monica Squires, 35, said she did not think the pro-trump crowd had done anything wrong. She had traveled from California for the Trump rally and saw the mayhem on the Capitol grounds but said she did not enter the building.
“The fact that I sawit with in my own eyes is really so cool,” she said, after returning to the area Thursday in hopes of running into Alex Jones, the right-wing conspiracy theorist. “I feel like I saw history. I don’t see what happened as any kind of desecration. I see it as the government should be afraid of the people. They should listen to our grievances. I thought it was all kind of entertaining.”
Daniel Bell, a social-work student who lives in D.C., visited Black Lives Matter Plaza, near the White House, because he wanted to see the remnants of Wednesday’s “destruction.” He found a largely vacant stretch of asphalt, except for several visitors, some of whom wore Trump hats.
Bell, 27, who grew up in the city, said his ingrained sense of security in his hometown has been shaken by the demonstrations in recent months.
“My neighbors are kind and caring, but the people who visit?” he said. “I’m not feeling so safe right now. I’ve been terrified since November.”
At an intersection where rioting erupted after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, Delontay Ericson, 28, unloadedfold-up tables from his van to sell Tshirts emblazoned with the faces of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice Presidentelect Kamala Harris.
On most days, Ericson said, healso offers shirts and flags promoting Trump, as well as items that invoke an obscenity to express contempt for the president. But on Thursday, those items remained out of sight.
“All the Trump stuff stays in the bag,” he said. “I don’t need no trouble today.”