Uneasy quiet at Arizona Capitol

State on alert for violent protests, but none arise

The messages were hauntingly reminiscent of the color-coded terror threat warnings from the early days of the millennium.

FBI intelligence analysts and other law enforcement agencies said they had detected high volumes of chilling extremist “chatter” on the Internet. All signs pointed to unrest, or worse, in the days before Wednesday’s inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States.

All 50 state capitals went on high alert.

From Lansing to Sacramento and from Montpelier to Phoenix, authorities began boarding up doors and windows, erecting barricades and installing cyclone fencing — in Washington, D.C., even concertina wire — around government buildings in response to the threat.

There was ample reason.

The Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol building had caught security forces there unprepared, and the impeachment of President Donald Trump a week later on charges of inciting an insurrection had only added to worries of a repeat.

But there was no obvious second insurrection on Sunday.

As scenes from the Jan. 6 riot continued to play on cable television channels and newspaper columnists demanded accountability for right-wing politicians, evangelical enablers and the president himself, only scattered handfuls showed up around the country.

In Phoenix, where the copperdomed state capitol and its majestic winged victory were fenced off and streets were barricaded, the 10 or so protesters who filtered in and out throughout the afternoon were far outnumbered by the media.

Two men who identified themselves as the hosts of the rally complained that the FBI warnings had kept people away from the rally, which they said had been planned since November.

“The FBI and, you know, everybody else made this to be some big huge thing like we’re terrorists or something like that for wanting to bring our communities together,” said one of the men, who identified himself as Brandon Jackson.

Both men said they were members of the Boogaloo Bois, which the FBI has classified as a loosely organized farright extremist group with ties to white nationalism. Both wore Hawaiian shirts, a signature of the Boogaloo movement, and one of them carried a rifle.

As they stood in front of a boom box they’d set up to play patriotic songs, they denied any connection to the socalled “stop the steal“movement or the events at the U.S. Capitol.

“We are mostly a group of libertarians, we’re not right or left, we’re not Trump supporters, we’re not Biden supporters,” one of them said.

“We’re just your average American people that are kind of fed up and tired of things and want to come out and talk to the community, bring them together.”

They said they had passed out flyers to a number of pro-Trump and pro-Biden groups, including the extremist

Proud Boys and antifa: “We sent it to everybody, so nobody was excluded from it.”

Arizona Department of Public Safety state troopers were among those who’d been placed on alert and could be seen behind the fencing at the Capitol, but DPS spokesperson Bart Graves said no incidents had been reported.

The scene was much the around the country.

In Lansing, Mich., where armed extremists stormed the state Capitol building last year and several were arrested in a plot to kidnap the governor, The media and police vastly outnumbered the 100 or so protesters who showed up Sunday. Several dozen Boogaloo Bois were in the crowd, along with several counterprotesters, but no incidents were reported by Sunday afternoon.

In Georgia, one of the key states Trump supporters accused of manipulating votes, a heavy cordon of National Guard troops was stationed around the Capitol building in Atlanta as well as near the historic statue of Dr. Martin Luther King on the Capitol grounds. Many of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists had ties to racist or white nationalist groups, and while authorities feared the monument to the civil rights icon could be vandalized, no incidents were reported.

In Jackson, Miss., 100 National Guard troops had been called up to help secure the Capitol building, which is modeled after the U.S. Capitol, but their services were largely unneeded.

A counter-protester who showed up with a banner reading “Trump lost, Biden won, Wear a mask, Shut up,” was disappointed because there were no protesters there to see it.

In Columbus, Ohio, about 50 protesters, some of them armed, protested the election results while a pro-peace counterprotester showed off his dance moves in front of them.

And in Montpelier, Vt. few protesters showed up at the state Capitol, though a group of about 50 “antifascist” demonstrators turned out at City Hall to eat pancakes and wave to passersby.

None of the protests bore any resemblance to the size and intensity of the Jan. 6 riots.

On Sunday morning, The New Yorker magazine released an edited 12-minute video that detailed the movements of a pro-Trump mob under the U.S. Capitol dome and highlighting the bravery of the U.S. Capitol Police Officers who feared for their own lives

same

while struggling to protect members of the House and Senate.

Against that backdrop, and in spite of the apparent quiet Sunday, authorities were expected to maintain tight security precautions for government buildings around the country for days to come, as the worry over domestic extremism persists.

There are still three days until Biden’s inauguration, and Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, is our only national holiday honoring a Black man.