Pro-Trump protesters have broken into the Capitol and overrun law enforcement there. Congress is under lockdown. And the display of white supremacy is on both sides: the protesters and the police who are letting them run rampant in support of a coup attempt.
Think back to last summer when peaceful Black Lives Matter protests were repeatedly suppressed in brutal fashion by the many law enforcement agencies of the District of Columbia. Those protests for racial justice were met by throngs of police in riot gear with tear gas. This literal assault on the United States Capitol building has been met by outmatched police in windbreakers.
Donald Trump had Lafayette Square violently cleared for a photo op. Law enforcement has failed to prevent violent mobs from breaking into the Capitol to stop Congress from doing its duty under the law to count the Electoral College votes.
We’re accustomed—too accustomed—to seeing police respond with disproportionate violence to Black protesters while allowing violent white supremacists to do their violent white supremacist thing. But this is the United States Capitol, the Congress, the process of democracy. Was it unreasonable to hope that law enforcement would enforce the laws against white supremacists in defense of the Capitol and the Congress? This is white supremacy in action, not just from the mob but from the police who refused to see the threat of the mob until it was too late, because they were white. These people have told us for days on end exactly what they planned, and yet somehow we’re supposed to believe that no one in the leadership of the agencies responsible for protecting the District of Columbia could have anticipated it? No. Again: This is white people getting a pass to a truly outrageous, dangerous extent, and everyone involved in the decision-making about the response has to be held to account.