January 2021 : From darkness, to light
Written by: Anjali Mehta
Crowds of unmasked people swarm the Capitol building, police being overrun, hateful signs waved everywhere, this stuff may seem sadly familiar to you. That’s because last month our very own Capitol building in Washington D.C was raided. The once beautiful, historic and well preserved federal building that is home to our Senate and House of Representatives was violently overtaken by hostile protestors. This was a very scary event, and if you are interested in learning what went down, then continue reading. WARNING: there is alot to keep up with, I mean this drama is even crazier than the drama with the Kardashians!
It started when our President (former President) Trump, lost the 2020 election. He subtly started to encourage his followers to “be there, and be wild!” This encouragement led to serious matters because his followers on January 6, 2021 got together and stormed the Capitol building. This type of encouragement is called incitement. Incitement is basically provoking someone to do unlawful and bad things by saying things that will trigger these violent emotions. We don’t know if this is Mr. Trump’s real intentions for sure, but we can leave that for you to decide after this article. Here are some things our then President said, “ you will have an illegitimate President. That is what you will have, and we can’t let that happen.” and “we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you… we are going to the Capitol.” But as we now know, Trump wasn’t there with them, he was safely tucked away in the White House. On the contrary though, perhaps Trump hadn’t realized how out of control his followers could get, he did say, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
During the riots, he told the protestors that they were brave and patriotic, he thought they were special but that they should go home. After the riots, there was no word from our President. His silence had everyone on edge. After some time he broadcasted that he had not done anything wrong. This statement was controversial and some people disagreed.
After these riots some arrests were made and the terrible news about a few loss of lives came out. Conversation broke out about impeachment, and for those of you who don’t know what that is, impeachment is when you legally accuse someone of doing something wrong when you hold a public office position, like being the President. The impeachment process is taking place right now, but we don’t yet know the outcome.
On January 20, 2021 Joe Biden was sworn into office as our new President. This was a wonderful moment for many people for many reasons but for me it was the fact that just a few weeks prior the building had been violated and destroyed but then transformed to a traditional event that took place on a sunny day, filled with happiness, joy, music, and poetry.