FBI Seeking Information Related to Violent Activity at the U.S. Capitol Building
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>The video shows a crowd surging through a Capitol door, past security, while an alarm repeatedly blares. As Evans enters an area called National Statuary Hall he celebrates and states his own name: “We’re in! We’re in! Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!”
https://wvmetronews.com/2021/01/09/derrick-evans-resigns-w-v...
When I was far too young to be told this, in modern terms, my father, who had won multiple free trips to Asia from the US gubmint explained the recipe for homemade napalm.
Imagine the maximum sentence for someone who wanted to napalm the US Capitol for reasons other than white rage.
This is the thing we choose to soft play.
There is a youtube video of a young woman expressing her utter shock and dismay at being maced as she literally tried to storm congress and disrupt the national democratic process. It is amazing to watch, just for how weirdly naive and entitled she is while right up saying they were trying for a revolution. What the hell did you think was going to happen?
Anyway, for another example of "they also didn't seem to understand it was serious," the quote from the feet-up-on-the-desk guy:
> "I'll probably be telling them this is what happened all the way to the D.C. jail," Mr. Barnett said.
He's glib about it the same way you might be about spending a night in the drunk tank after getting a little too crazy at Mardi Gras.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/elizabeth-knoxville-onion-...
Reality comes at you fast.
WTF...
It's not clear that you should bring such a mitigation with you, though, as that might help make the case that what you were doing that got you gassed was premeditated, which can up the seriousness of what you might be charged with and the potential penalties.
People are more shocked about the *reason* they stormed the Capitol than the violence. If women in pink hats stormed the Capitol during the Kavanaugh confirmation vote (well they did, but not in enough numbers to overwhelm security), the parties would be having polar opposite reactions. GOP saying it was a coup and democrats saying it was justified outrage.
These people don't realize they were pawns in Trump's bad faith attempt to steal the election. They believe they are doing the right thing. *That doesn't justify their actions, but it explains their actions.*
Ayers being famous for admitting he doesn’t regret setting the bomb. Instead of being labeled a terrorist, he was made a professor and launched a lot of the social justice movement in education.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/03/02/a-...
https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign...
So... to say counterproductive isn’t taking into account history and possibility. Ayers and Obama didn’t suffer from association to each other or this domestic terrorism.
Now, obviously, Trump Supporters (notice I didn’t say GOP) will find this to all have been counterproductive, agreed there in this specific case. My point about Ayers is that this is all a matter of who writes the history.
It's a far stretch to even imply the highly limited interactions between Ayers and Obama were in some way responsible for his rise to the presidency or that Ayers in any way influenced Obama to regard violence as the correct path for social change.
In fact, considering the ridiculous guilt-by-association he was subject to, it's more accurate to say Obama became president despite that limited connection, not because of it.
In short, the overblown Ayers-Obama link doesn't contradict my statement regarding peaceful protest.
I wasn’t trying to refute your point. Only offering a recent historical perspective where an actual terrorist organization was considered as... not that. Where the perspective is set by who is in charge.
>It's a far stretch to even imply the highly limited interactions between Ayers and Obama were in some way responsible for his rise to the presidency
I also didn’t imply that at all.
Perhaps you are just too used to arguing with people on the internet?
There are many people who stand up for what they belive in. What is clear, to me at least, is a group of people that belive they are protected from their actions because of what they are or what the belive in
They think of themselves as patriots, as John Wilkes Booth did:
> He had spent so much time among like-minded people who hated Lincoln, and he had read so many accounts denouncing Lincoln as a tyrant bent on destroying the Constitution and "personal liberty" that he expected to be hailed as a hero.
> Instead he was stunned to learn that he was being hunted down like a beast, while Lincoln was held up throughout much of the nation as a martyred saint.
> Source for this: The bibliography in my biography of Lincoln.
* https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/134722988063564595...
> “This is not America,” a woman said to a small group, her voice shaking. She was crying, hysterical. “They’re shooting at us. They’re supposed to shoot BLM, but they’re shooting the patriots.”
* https://archive.is/tZVFs (for paywall)
* https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/capitol-trump-ins...
There is no plan.
EDIT: Thank you! I didn't mean to spawn a big subthread, but I'm happy to have learned that today. I somehow missed that there were multiple sections.
> No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Derrick Evans was a member of a State legislature when he participated in what Congressional leadership has labeled as an insurrection. So the 14th amendment prohibits him from being a state legislator or holding any other state or federal office ever again, unless Congress decides otherwise. This constitutionally-imposed restriction is separate from any statutory restriction that could be imposed through criminal prosecution, and removed by a presidential pardon.
"No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."
> Anarchists, Agitators or Protestors who vandalize or damage our Federal Courthouse in Portland, or any Federal Buildings in any of our Cities or States, will be prosecuted under our recently re-enacted Statues & Monuments Act. MINIMUM TEN YEARS IN PRISON. Don’t do it! @DHSgov
..I doubt that a Presidential Pardon is in the cards. But maybe I'm missing something. I thought those "Qanon" folks were really obsessed with following everything Trump tweets?
That tweet is from July 2020, and was aimed at BLM protestors. To say the least, the president has never demonstrated any special concern for philosophical consistency.
[1] https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/protesters-enter-the-se...
[2] https://images.foxtv.com/static.fox5dc.com/www.fox5dc.com/co...
[1] https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/2021/01/10/nashv...
New video shows Capitol riot was way worse than we thought
https://www.npr.org/sections/congress-electoral-college-tall...
Tech platforms fear revenge from congress for enabling what took place, and it suddenly became a no-brainer business decision to ban Trump from social media.
Violence in the Capitol, Dangers in the Aftermath
From the Cold War to the War on Terror: the harms from authoritarian "solutions" are often greater than the threats they are ostensibly designed to combat.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/violence-in-the-capitol-dan...
Every remaining politician would do everything in their power to not have that happen again, regardless of the constitutionality of those actions.
I've therefore banned your account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. The rules are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
I don’t usually engage in politics on HN, but I think this goes beyond politics. How are we not supposed to be angry, after watching ppl be gassed and shot with rubber bullets, about how the Capitol Police responded 6 Jan? This is much bigger than politics.
I want justice. Protect the weak, help those who are in trouble, prevent violence against the innocent.
That means helping government agencies do their job, when I can. It also means ensuring that the people who we ask to protect us actually DO protect us.
I see no conflict.
thought you guys learned from the patriot act and iraq war and iran contra and million other examples but guess not
> Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police
It’s not some unjustified fearmongering. Anarchists literally took over part of Seattle. At my university, protestors are demanding to completely dismantle the campus police: https://www.wbez.org/stories/northwesterns-president-and-stu...
A fraction want abolition, but they'd also plainly say so. "Defund" by definition doesn't mean abolish.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/colin-kaepernick-abolish-police...
"By abolishing policing and prisons, not only can we eliminate white supremacist establishments, but we can create space for budgets to be reinvested directly into communities to address mental health needs, homelessness and houselessness, access to education, and job creation as well as community-based methods of accountability. This is a future that centers the needs of the people, a future that will make us safer, healthier, and truly free."
Anyone who says it doesn’t mean abolish the police is ignoring the fact that for many activists it does mean abolish the police.
The hashtag does not imply abolishing the police, but that is exactly what defund the police means to many people.
Representing it as such seams misinformed at best, but likely(IMHO) disingenuous.
He defines it as abolishing the police.
I have come across many activists who want to abolish the police.
I would assume that most vaguely left leaning people wouldn’t support that as a policy, but it is certainly not a ‘fringe’ definition from the point of view of the activist community with whom it is most associated.
There is absolutely nothing disingenuous about recognizing that mainstream activists do mean to abolish the police.
We have to accept that both definitions are in use.
What is disingenuous, is to dismiss or deny the idea that anyone other than opponents of it think it means abolish the police.
That is essentially a motte-and-bailey tactic, and all it does is stop honest discussion.
which is about what Colin is literally saying in that quote.
He is saying the police must be completely abolished.
The quote begins “By abolishing policing and prisons...”
You seem to have overlooked this somehow.
The name he has chosen for his project is:
“Abolition for the People, The Movement for a Future Without Policing & Prisons”
It couldn’t be any clearer.
Reappropriating funds does not mean abolishing the police.
You can reappropriate funds without abolishing the police, for example by reducing their duties.
He is saying both abolish the police and reappropriate the funds.
They are plainly not literally the same thing.
There may have been some cops who didn't do their job, maybe even some who helped the mob, but most of them were just put in a horrible place.
I don't know why it's funny that those groups don't conform to the right-wing propaganda about their goals.
The defund/dismantle/abolish movement thinks, broadly, that law enforcement gets too big of a slice of local finding with too broad of a remit, and that there are structural and institutional defects in present local law enforcement, such that funding and functions should be shifted to other organizations, and (and the dismantle/abolish end of the spectrum) existing local monolithic paramilitary law enforcement agencies should be disbanded entirely with all of the lot responsibilities reallocated to other new and existing entities with different structures.
They don't oppose the law enforcement function, nor do they, IME, generally oppose cooperation with existing law enforcement entities, within bounds of care around dangerous institutional biases one may play into with danger to oneself and other innocents while so doing.
Similarly, #resist isn’t anti-government it's specifically anti-Trumpist-extremism. Cooperating with law enforcement rolling up Trump coup participants is pretty much the most on-brand #resist thing ever.