![]() This time, though, the intense frustration and anger of the stop-the-stealers brought me face-to-face with a huge cultural divide in this country-a divide lodged in my mind when I got on a business call on January 6. And two months prior, it was the setting of a solemn, flower-strewn memorial for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court Justice who had once been a professor at Rutgers Law School in Newark. But the worst I’d witnessed on 1st Street were no more than spirited shouting matches between opposing factions. Like anyone living in D.C., I was accustomed to marches and protests. Which is when I said to myself, OK, I’m done, then spent the next hour or so walking off what I’d just witnessed. Plus, we were in the middle of a pandemic, and most of the protesters were unmasked.Īs the throng increased in size and gathered in front of the Supreme Court, I stuck around long enough to hear the rallying point’s first speaker, who, after taking the podium, incited the crowd by spewing conspiracy theories and claiming that a revolution as significant as that of 1776 was at hand. Even though police officers were present, they, too, were outnumbered, and violence was a possibility. Over the previous few years, far-right groups had staged protests in D.C., with their numbers outmatched by nonviolent, albeit vociferous, counter-protesters.īut standing not far from the Supreme Court, I watched with trepidation as hundreds of stop-the-stealers who’d marched from Freedom Plaza, about a mile and a half west, streamed onto 1st Street with placards raised, flags flying, and epithets hurled at counter-protesters, who, this time around, were the ones outnumbered. That day, November 14, was something of a wake-up call. I had also witnessed, back in November, a Stop the Steal protest in front of the Supreme Court, just across the street from the east entrance of the Capitol building. into a militarized zone.Īs a freelance journalist and communications specialist, I keep an eye on the news and was aware of the rumblings about potential violence on the day that Congress was set to count the Electoral College votes: January 6. What you don’t imagine is what ended up recently taking place and turning D.C. But for the sake of keeping the peace, you play by the rules and occasionally offer a wave or a “thank you” to the men and women simply doing their job. Capitol, mostly by the presence of waist-high barricades and police officers on the east and west entrances’ steps. Meanwhile, across town, not far from where I live, a perimeter of sorts was established around the U.S. ![]() The following June, as Black Lives Matter protests heated up, Lafayette Square was fenced in completely. In the summer of 2019, after decades of complaints about the ease with which the daring or deranged could jump the White House fence, a heightening project began. It’s also where, a year and a half ago, D.C.’s backdrop began moving to the foreground. ![]() It now served as an extension of nearby Lafayette Square, a park where people could snap photos, peacefully protest, or simply admire the north portico of "the people's house." ![]() The stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House was closed to vehicular traffic in 1995 after the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City. One, it turns out, was a stroke of genius. ![]() But for a suburbanite moving to the Capital, these fixtures were just backdrop and easily skirted as I worked my way, usually on foot, from one monument, museum, or neighborhood to another. When I moved to Washington, D.C., five years ago, they were all part of the landscape, a collection of mostly post-9/11 precautionary measures intended to repel potential acts of terrorism. Alumnus and freelance journalist Rich Shea shares his account of life in the nation's capital during the fraught two weeks leading up to Inauguration Day. ![]()
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