I want to get all of this in writing before my memory of the day starts to fade or be influenced by what I see and hear from others. I was there. I watched it happen. I am going to try to explain what was seen and heard from my perspective. I understand that my perspective isn't the only one from that day but I think it is important to have first hand accounts so that others may sort out fact from fiction.
I arrived by Amtrak at 10:45. My friend Mark had talked me into going and we stayed inside the station for a bit to eat and get ready to head out. We knew that Trump was speaking on the Ellipse at 11:00 and there was no way we could make that. Our general plan was to attend the "Wild Protest" rally which was set for 1:00 to 5:00 near the Capitol. We assumed that everybody attending the Trump speech would make their way to the stage set up for those speakers later in the day. That turned out to be totally incorrect. The Wild Protest stage was behind the Russell Senate Office Building and had sparse attendance. One could not see the Capitol itself from that venue.
As we made our way toward the Capitol, we saw crowds gathering in the East lawn of the Capitol. There were barricades to keep crowds back, but within sight of the plaza where high profile people would arrive. We watched Mike Pence's motorcade arrive and park near us at about 12:30 PM.
If you are unfamiliar with the National Mall, take a look at the map. From West to East, there is the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument and then the US Capitol. The White House and the Ellipse are just North of the Washington Monument. The main entrance of the Capitol is on the East side of the building which faces a plaza, a lawn and then across the street are the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress. The West side of the Capitol is where the inauguration takes place. It is ornate and majestic looking but there are no real entrances there. At least none that are open to the public nor used on a regular basis. It is a stage prop for the most part but that is what faces the Mall and the Washington Monument. You'll see why this is important later.
On the East side, there are three sets of stairs. One to the Senate side, one to the House and one up the middle. I don't think the House and Senate side actually uses those stairs and there is only one small door at the top. The center stairs lead to the main entrance into the Rotunda. There is a large porch at the top of those stairs. Beneath the stairs is a driveway where dignitaries can unload out of sight from the public.
Things were jovial for the most part. The crowd wasn't exactly diverse but not totally homogeneous either. There seemed to be an inordinate number of older, Asian women which I found a bit odd. There were young and old, but tended more toward the old. I am 52 and I would guess that there were more people older than me than younger. I met people from all over the country. There were groups from CA, NC, TX, MO, NJ, NY MD and VA that I ran into but I'm certain it was even more geographically diverse than that.
Let's address the elephant in the room about skin color. Yes, there were black people in the crowd, but not a lot. I had a great conversation with an older black man from Ocean City MD. He was just as upset as everybody else at the idea that some states had changed their election procedures without legal justification and that shenanigans clearly went on in several jurisdictions that he and others felt altered the outcome of the election. He was just as passionate as everybody else I saw on this matter. I saw other "people of color" but didn't have the opportunity to engage with them. At no point did I ever see or hear anything resembling racism or white supremacy. Not even a hint of it was observed by me. If this is a white nationalist movement, they did a really good job of hiding that from me.
I did observe a single act of violence. A young man walked through the crowd spewing vulgarities about Trump. "F- Trump! F- Trump" earned him a blindside hit to the side of his head that knocked him to the ground. A brief scuffle ensued and both parted with no other interaction. The reaction to this was split: Younger people cheered and the older ones looked at each other like "I didn't sign up for that."
Between 12:30 and 2:00, things were relatively quiet from our position on the East side of the building. We observed men in black uniforms on the roof but saw no guns. There was one guard walking around the steps of the Senate side with an M4 rifle. The rest only carried pistols. I did see one guard emerge at about 1:30 or so carrying a single tube grenade launcher. He moved around the side and out of my sight quickly.
As 2:00 approached, I also noticed a group of construction workers gathering at ground level at the North end of the building where I had just seen the grenade launcher guy moving. I also noticed that the guys on the roof were no longer there.
At 2:00, things changed quickly. I heard and saw a crowd massing near the North side and they were inside the perimeter that I knew was sectioned off from the public. I noted that, unlike most attendees around me, some of these people had face coverings. I figured that the crowd from the Ellipse had walked and were now arriving at the West side of the Capitol. That crowd quickly moved toward a second set of barriers and paused briefly. I noticed a group of young people who were not part of the protest moving VERY quickly... they had suits, short skirts and had some sort of ID badges around their necks. As I watched them scurry away, the first breach happened and I got it on camera.
There were literally hundreds of people that just walked up and the first few casually removed the barricades before the cops on the line could react. Those cops quickly retreated. Some moved to secure the stairs to the Senate and the others to the main stairs.
This is when the rumors started. We heard that there were 2 million people at the Ellipse and that they were headed this way. We heard that they were shooting tear gas into the crowd on the West side. We heard that there were Iranian planes about to crash into the Capitol. I had texts from several friends and family telling me to get out NOW! The things I was witnessing didn't seem to require immediate retreat. I kept the phone recording and made sure I was not in the middle of a riot. I never was.
Within a few minutes, there was another rush from the front of the crowd. The cops defending the stairs were being routed into retreat and the crowd advanced to the door of the Capitol. The entire plaza was now entirely overrun. People were walking past armored SUV's and cop cars. Many got on top of a tactical truck and were dancing. There was no law enforcement presence in the plaza. I noted one officer on the roof run and check something and then run toward the West side. I never saw another one on the roof. The cops guarding the Senate stairs were still there and holding that line successfully, but the ones on the House side were unsuccessful and protesters made it to the single door at the top.
At this point, Mark and I looked at each other and wondered what to do. Is it safe to move forward? We saw little old ladies with walkers in front of us so we decided to move closer for a better look. We did hear a flash-bang go off near the entrance but it caused little reaction from those near the door. We moved as close at 30 feet from the beginning of the steps.
Every once in a while, there would be a surge in the crowd and I observed dozens of people streaming up the stairs toward the door. I never saw them after they reached the top so I assume they made it inside. Things would die down for a bit and then another surge.
At this point, things had settled into a less frantic feel. Again, things felt up-beat. The crowd broke into a rendition of the National Anthem, followed by chants of "U. S. A! U. S. A!" It was really remarkable and that event really epitomized my experience that day.
https://youtu.be/3o4XjMO2Dd0
I continued to get texts from people outside watching the news who urged me to leave. They were seeing things that didn't match my experience. Things apparently were pretty ugly on the West side.
We ran into three guys who had been on the West side and they looked shell shocked. One had a burned leg... like his pants were literally burned off. The other guy had a welt on his forehead and his hair was singed badly. The hood of his parka was burned. They had both been on fire. They said they were not advancing or even on the barricade when they were hit with flash-bang or tear gas grenades. We heard several others in the crowd with similar stories but without the visible evidence. All claimed that they were not part of any advancing riot. True or not, stories from unrelated individuals were all similar. They were fired upon.
Finally, Mark and I looked at our watch and knew it was about time to leave. We had tickets on Amtrak which would depart at 3:45 so at 3:00, we started to make our way back. We made a loop around the plaza and noted that no cop cars nor armored SUVs were vandalized or burned. No fires were set. We did observe one act of vandalism when a guy dressed in black pulled out a crowbar and broke a window on the ground floor of the Capitol near the valet drop-off. He was tackled and arrested.
As we left, Constitution Ave was lined with cop cars. Several cop cars came racing through the intersection with sirens blaring and we would see large crowds to our West. We made it to Union Station without incident and headed home.
https://youtu.be/-3vjhPdM7y8
Just a couple of notes to finish this off. My cell phone battery did something odd. I was having no issues with any web site, including FB until 2:00 PM. My battery was at 78% and suddenly, things got bad. I couldn't access some features on Facebook. I could send and receive FB massages, but could not post nor live stream. My battery dropped to 20% almost immediately. A little later, I got some functions back but not all.
We also saw a military flare drifting down over the South wing. I'm not sure who launched it but it was a red flare and it drifted down, taking several minutes to reach the ground.
I'm glad I went. I'm not going to get into the politics of the situation or what precipitated this. I only wanted to report my first-hand observations. I hope this is enlightening.
Edit to add 1/12/2021: I have had several questions regarding Antifa and BLM. Did I see anybody that I could identify as being part of an outside group of agitators? Well... not exactly but some things were very obvious. The vast majority of people around me wore no face mask. The vast majority were just your typical middle class Americans. There were some who stood out. Yes, they had Trump hats but they wore face coverings and not medical style ones for protection against Covid. They had darker clothing than was typical and they had the look of predators. They had skinny jeans. It is hard to quantify, but they just didn't fit in. Is that proof that they were Antifa? Obviously no. But hearing snippets of conversations and watching crowd reaction as they committed crimes made it clear that they were not one of the crowd.
I did see a few people with identifiers from Q-Anon. Again, they were not part of the mainstream. They were really the outliers.
As of this date, I still have not seen any crowd estimates which I find baffling. Since I did not see the main crowd on the Ellipse, I don't know if it was tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions. It makes it hard to fully understand the crush that happened on the West side of the building without knowing the size of that crowd.
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