WASHINGTON (AP) – Legislators stood in front of the House late Thursday to tell their personal, often astonishing versions of the siege of the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, preserving for the record their own memories of the most violent domestic attack on Congress in the nation’s history.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., led colleagues before the indictment hearing of the former president, saying their stories should be told at a time when some in Congress and the country are trying to reduce the damage. January 6 and “go on.”
“Unfortunately, this is all too often what we hear from the survivors of trauma,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who was criticized by critics this week after telling her own sad story of hiding that day, for fear of her life.
She said: ‘Twenty-nine days ago the Capitol of our country was attacked. That’s the big story. And in that great story lie thousands of individual accounts, just as valid and important as the others. ”
One by one, the Democratic legislators – no Republicans took part in it – shared their memories: they saw the hundreds of rioters gather outside the Capitol and hear the tart, screams and glass break. And then “the feeling,” as Representative Dean Phillips, D-Minn., “To be trapped.”
Lawmakers were voting the Electoral College to confirm Joe Biden’s victory in the election when President Donald Trump, who refused to concede, encouraged a crowd of supporters in the White House to go to the Capitol and for him to fight like hell.
Phillips said that when he heard the screams, he realized that a pencil was just about everything he had for defense. He thought about moving to the Republican side of the House “so we could merge.” He and others believed the rioters would “save us if they only mistaken us as Republicans”.
Then, he said, he realized something – for his colleagues who are not white like him, “interference was not an option.”
Five people have been killed, including a protester, Ashli Babbitt, who was shot dead by police in the Capitol, and US Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick, who was injured for life. Three other people died in medical emergencies.
Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., Called on colleagues to understand that white nationalists are a serious domestic threat; Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Burst into tears.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat, DN.Y., said the attack on the Capitol as representatives in Congress was an attack on their constituents.
“We are their voice here,” he said. “We must not sweep it under the rug.”