Marching on the Capitol, then and now - opinion

The whole sad event dissipated within hours, and will likely be relegated to last week’s news by this week’s headlines.

By KENNETH LASSON
An explosion caused by a police munition is seen while supporters of US President Donald Trump gather in front of the US Capitol Building in Washington, US, January 6, 2021 (photo credit: REUTERS/LEAH MILLIS)
An explosion caused by a police munition is seen while supporters of US President Donald Trump gather in front of the US Capitol Building in Washington, US, January 6, 2021
(photo credit: REUTERS/LEAH MILLIS)
What happened at last week’s demonstration in Washington was little more than media overreaction to a failed police action. The whole incident will likely become but a blip in history.
“Protests are as American as apple pie” might be a cliché invoked by politicians and punsters from Mitch McConnell to Tucker Carlson, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Indeed, such displays of displeasure – the great majority of them peaceful – are part of the everyday national landscape. They come from people as diverse as professional football players kneeling during the national anthem to farmers protesting the price of corn, from Black Lives Matter activists to white supremacists, from women seeking equal rights to LGBTQs demanding fair treatment.
Last year, millions of Americans gathered in solidarity against a Minneapolis police officer’s inexcusable murder of George Floyd, just as they did against nuclear proliferation and in favor of Earth Day a half-century earlier. We witnessed the Million Man March in 1995, the Million Women March in 1997, and the Million Mom March in 2000.
Virtually every day there are demonstrations in Lafayette Park, directly across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, as well as elsewhere around the country, aimed at presidents both present and past. Just last year, crowds toppled statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln in places as far apart as Alabama and California.
The only pertinent conclusion to be drawn from last week’s bum-rush of the Capitol was the abject failure of the Metropolitan Police to guard the building. Not only were local security forces totally absent from the scene, they were unprepared and untrained for a demonstration that had been planned weeks in advance. Worse, they arrogantly refused help from the Pentagon and other government agencies.
Say what you will about a hapless and hopeless (if not presidentially incompetent) Donald Trump, but the blame game here has been too easily played. Mr. Trump was decidedly unwise to call on his supporters to demonstrate on his behalf, and he obviously waited too long before urging them to “go home in peace,” but he did deploy – or allowed Vice President Mike Pence to deploy – the National Guard to quell the violence. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser was even less effective.
The media, on the other hand, immediately fell into knee-jerk hyperventilation mode. In an altogether unnecessary rush to judgment, they too quickly invoked incendiary words like “coup,” “riot” and “insurrection.” Here was rhetorical bombast turned into a saturation-bomb blast.
Perhaps there was some vague editorial justification for speculating that the protesters were racist/sexist/supremacist, though there is no clear indication they were anything more than an unruly herd of sheep without a shepherd. To be certain, their mob-like violation of the hallowed dome was shameful and unnecessary – and the attendant killings of an unarmed demonstrator and a police officer were soul-piercing American tragedies.
But the whole sad event dissipated within hours, and will likely be relegated to last week’s news by this week’s headlines.
The implications for civil liberties, however, are more serious and perhaps lamentably longstanding. Although the First Amendment is designed to protect offensive utterances, including hate speech that does not lead directly to violence, such tolerance will surely be tested in coming days. Fewer people will pay homage to the maxim that “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”
We’ve seen demonstrations at the Capitol before. On a bitter-cold winter evening 50 years ago, during the height of the Vietnam War, thousands of young protesters sat huddled against the chill on the steps of that same Capitol Building in Washington. They sang “The Star Spangled Banner,” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “America the Beautiful” and “We Shall Overcome.” And a veteran there of the same war – ravaged in body and mind by loyalty and conscience – chose to repudiate his blood-earned decorations by casting them away from his wheelchair.
Unlike now, the freedoms of speech and assembly never had a finer moment.
The writer is a professor of law at the University of Baltimore School of Law, where he specializes in civil liberties and international human rights.