In a Washington Post op-ed former nurse and organizer of Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, MO, Congresswoman Cori Bush, tells a chilling tale of protesters being tear-gassed, beaten by police, shot with rubber bullets, and rushed by police wielding batons and shot guns.
The Democrat, who was recently sworn in to represent Missouri’s 1st Congressional District in the House, wasn’t talking about the recent gang of domestic terrorists that staged an insurrection at the nation’s U.S. Capitol. She was talking about the police response to peaceful protests last summer after a police officer ran over a Black man with his car. Rep Bush juxtaposes her harrowing experiences during peaceful protests against the treatment of violent mob that attacked the Capitol threatening to kill the Vice President Pence and members of Congress.
That night was no different from any other night. The officers rushed out of the station in riot gear, slapping their batons against their shields, holding shotguns loaded with rubber bullets and chanting commands. They chased us into the middle of the street, forcing us to backpedal blindly in the dark. The police were pushing with such force that people began falling to the ground all around me, finding themselves swarmed by officers who began hitting them with batons. I reached in to try to pull a woman away to safety.
…. But it’s clear to me that top law enforcement leaders on Capitol Hill had little interest in preventing this attempted insurrection. Videos have emerged of police taking selfies with protesters, walking them down the stairs and even opening gates for them. The front line of officers were not in riot gear, they were not wearing gas masks, they were not holding guns loaded with rubber bullets. And, above all else, there were no police dogs.
We faced police dogs when we fought for justice for Mike Brown in Ferguson in 2014. There were police dogs at protests for Black lives this year, from the East Coast to the West. The president himself tweeted in May that the “most vicious dogs” awaited protesters standing up for Black lives at the White House.
But there were no police dogs awaiting the white supremacists who gathered outside the Capitol. It was no coincidence that this tool of racial control was absent Wednesday, as rioters carried the flag of the slave-catcher’s Confederacy — and its modern manifestation, the Trump flag — through the House Rotunda.
Many have said that what transpired on Wednesday was not America. They are wrong. This is the America that Black people know. To declare that this is not America is to deny the reality that Republican members of the U.S. House and Senate incited this coup by treasonously working to overturn the results of the presidential election.
Read the full op-ed at The Washington Post, washingtonpost.com.