Capitol Police Testimony (8/1/21)

The emotional testimony this week of the four Capitol police officers was a stark reminder of how close we came to losing our democracy. If you haven’t watched the opening testimony, please take the time to do so. Speaker Pelosi should be commended for barring any unindicted coconspirators and purposefully creating a serious bipartisan panel to investigate the events of January 6th. This select committee will guarantee that we will have a permanent record in history of what led up to the insurrection on January 6th, and what happened on that day.

It has become patently clear that the Republican leaders do not care about our democracy and care solely about maintaining control and power. Their defense of people who wanted to overthrow our government and screamed the N-word in the face of Capitol officers in uniform defending the Capitol is despicable. As elected officials, their disrespect and dishonor to the true heroes, the officers who held the line, is reprehensible. And it is also clear that those officers, American citizens, represent the best of us. We saw it from the video from January 6th and we heard it in their testimony this week in Washington. They put their lives on the line to protect the people who are out there lying and saying that the officers are traitors.

“Telling the truth shouldn’t be hard,” U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn said this week in his Capitol Hill testimony about defending the building on the day of the insurrection. “Fighting on Jan. 6 — that was hard,” Dunn said. “Showing up Jan. 7 — that was hard.” But it is baffling to him that any American — let alone Americans who are supposed to be leaders — could look at hours of video, thousands of photos, hear from hundreds of witnesses, see the broken glass and the feces-smeared walls, the death and the bloodshed, and still say that day was a “loving crowd” of “normal tourists.”

Thank you to every one of those officers that held the line to defend our democracy. They saved democracy on January 6th, but that was temporary. We must keep fighting to hold the people accountable who were responsible and remove from elected office all who continue to support Trump's big lie and are still trying to dismantle our democracy. We must also ensure that Mitch McConnell, who was too busy to watch the Capitol Police officers' testimony, and Kevin McCarthy, who wanted to put "Big Lie" supporters (and potential material witnesses) on the committee, do not get their hands on the gavels of the Senate Majority Leader or Speaker of the House in 2022.

Let’s write thank you postcards to the four officers who testified. They deserve our heartfelt thanks for their bravery and patriotism and our postcards will help to counter the hate mail they receive. Their addresses are listed below in the “Action Items” section of the newsletter. Let’s reach out to family and friends to join our giving circle in support of the Virginia House of Delegate candidates. Invite them to join our event tomorrow evening described below. Virginia is a bellwether for the 2022 midterms. The Virginia Democrats flipping seats in 2017 helped pave the way for the blue wave of 2018 and their flipping both chambers in 2019 laid the groundwork for Democrats' success in 2020. If Democrats lose the majority in the House in Virginia in November, we will endure a year of articles bolstering Trumpism as a lead up to 2022. We must use every opportunity to cut the head off the snake if we want to rid ourselves of the rot. Continue to write postcards (lots of options listed below) to get out the vote and register voters.

Join us to resist, work together, and be vocal as our democracy depends on it.