Today I’d like to share a beautiful piece of writing from my publicist and new friend, Leann Schneider Webb. Over the last few months, she and I have been talking a lot about how to communicate the deeper themes within my book, 24 HOURS AT THE CAPITOL. Yes it’s a history of the January 6 insurrection, but the book also says a lot about policing, race, and white supremacy. It’s a nuanced conversation, though, without easy catchphrases (not helpful for publicity lol). Somehow Leann totally got it though, and rather than have her ghostwrite some post for me, I asked if she’d be willing to write an essay herself about her takeaways from my book. Here are her words:
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I’ve had a couple weeks to let this book settle in my brain and body. Unfortunately for me, the book is just simply too good to settle. I have a nagging, perhaps misplaced, sympathy for a group of people in an institution which I find rotten: the police. It turns out, white supremacy doesn’t even protect the people who are protecting it the most!
I knew a major theme of 24 HOURS AT THE CAPITOL was the danger of the rising white supremacist movement in America and how the Jan. 6 riot was directly linked to the Unite the Right March in Charlottesville in 2017. I also knew that the conversations about Jan 6 almost always hinge on a binary of “the cops were heroes!” / “The cops would have massacred that crowd if it were Black Lives Matter.”
Never trust a binary.
The needle Nora manages to thread in this book on covering the police on Jan 6 is remarkable. She uses an incredibly light touch and lets the facts and direct quotes speak for themselves. After reading, I’m convinced that:
- The Capitol police were put into a bad and dangerous situation because their leadership did not take the threat of a white mob seriously
- had the rioters been Black Lives Matter protestors, the police would have shot them with guns
I was shocked that the police on Jan 6 had such little institutional support that day, especially after learning that the leadership of law enforcement agencies at every level knew a threat of violence was likely if not imminent. The plight, terror, and violence the police suffered was tremendous and to sweep that under the rug by blanketing them with the term “heroes” is dehumanizing. A staggering number of police quit the force after Jan 6 and four police officers died by suicide as a result of their experiences. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the instigator of the riot and president of the United States, has pardoned their attackers, who again walk free.
So why didn’t the police use lethal force on Jan 6? Most of the police people interviewed in the book have reasonable answers to this question. For example,
DANIEL HODGES, DC Metropolitan Police officer: “The reason why I didn’t shoot anyone, and I imagine why many others didn’t, [is] there were over nine thousand of the terrorists out there with an unknown number of firearms, and a couple hundred of us maybe. So, if that turned into a firefight, we would have lost, and this was a fight we couldn’t afford to lose.” (pg 154)
It nagged at me. Like, why was I so frustrated with a response like this? Did I want them to open fire? Do I wish it had been a massacre?
No. I’m extremely glad they didn’t and that it wasn’t.
The subtext for me, however, was that for these police officers, life is precious and it is worth saving at any cost. It was worth colleagues dying, it was worth getting beat in the head, it was worth throwing up for hours because of the bear spray and tear gas, it was worth being called traitor by people with Thin Blue Line t-shirts, because better experience all of that, because they would rather die…than kill someone.
In the context of police brutality against Black and Brown people in this country, especially in 2020, it makes me sick.
The police can do better, but they’re consistently not doing better. Why is that? White supremacy. January 6 highlights our racism to a horrifying degree.
Because, who is considered human enough not to kill? Who is human enough to die for?
The book deftly illustrates how dangerous white supremacy is for everyone, including, get this, the cops whose very institution was built to defend it! By valuing whiteness over all else, by believing that the most dangerous thing to be is anything but white, our leaders–Capitol Police leadership, Donald Trump, Republican lawmakers–set the stage and permitted Jan 6 and the loss of life that day.
I’m still grappling with this book and I hope you pick up a copy so we can grapple with it together. It was compelling without being sensational and not easy to digest. That’s the trouble with excellent journalism: we’re not spoonfed an easy answer or opinion.
I’m left with this overwhelming sense that I need everyone in America to read this book TODAY but I also don’t know how to move forward with what I’ve learned. I am surprised that the book reminded me strongly of my shared humanity with the rioters, lawmakers with whom I have personal beef, and the police, an institution I hold in very dubious regard. I suppose it encourages me to rededicate myself to fighting white supremacy in myself and in our nation, at all times. I do believe it is the root of all of our evil.
