Pictured: Congressman Robert Aberholt of Alabama and Nadia Blayer ‘18. Both were present in DC during the Capitol Riots.
The Tartan spoke with two people who were in D.C. on January 6, 2021. They, an alumna of Gordon, and a Congressman representing Alabama’s fourth congressional district, shared their insights and stories in a way that is often missed when talking heads buzz about the larger picture.
The story is obvious now; it’s hard to imagine living in America without grappling with the Capital Riots. On the afternoon of January 6th, 2021, the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. was stormed by a mob of armed men and women, bent on causing chaos and, in many cases, murdering public officials. Men were found carrying pistols, assault rifles, Molotov cocktails, smoke bombs, bulletproof armor, and, in one instance, a crossbow.
The Tartan spoke with Congressman Aderholt via Zoom on Valentine’s day; he was willing to share his experience of the day in intricate, step-by-step detail for upwards of an hour.
When speaking about the timeline of the day, he said this:
“We were in the house chamber for a 1:00 joint session, where we began counting the electoral votes. The first votes counted were from Alabama, then we moved onto Alaska, then Arizona’s votes were objected. After this, each chamber debates on whether or not this objection is founded, and, as the senators were leaving, I talked briefly with Vice President Pence…at 2:15 I saw someone whisper in a Congressman’s ear.
I asked somebody what was said, and they responded, ‘Did you hear that? The Capitol has just been breached and the police are using tear gas.’ I got a notification from Capitol police on my iPhone (public officials in DC are given security updates on a special app to keep them informed of any possible threats to their safety), saying ‘Internal security threat—everyone must move inside, lock doors, seek cover, and remain silent.’ At this point we were all checking our phones for news coverage of what was happening outside, and it just looked like there were a lot of people around the Capitol, not a battle army…We stopped debating Arizona and someone said, “We may need to get down between our seats” in the House chamber.
There were escape hoods under our seats, which are devices you put over your head if there are gases in the air…We left the chamber at 2:45, went down the stairs to the tunnel between the house office building and the Capitol building, to a secure room on the house side. Then, they held us there until it was safe to go back to our offices, around 7 or 8:00. At 9:00, we started back in our joint session, continuing to count the electoral votes. We just picked up on Arizona and continued until about 2 or 3:00 in the morning. It was unnerving; you just didn’t know what was going to happen.”
When asked what was going through his mind on this day, especially for the multiple hours he spent in the “secure room,” he responded:
“I felt like it was going to be ok, I just didn’t know what the extent of it was. I never felt like ‘This is going to be the end,’ or anything like that. I thought, ‘It might take them a while to get all the folks there,’ but I’ve been around the Capitol long enough…the security is so tight, I was just wondering if they’d get there fast enough…My wife and daughter were actually in my office…there was a bomb that was found at the Republican National Committee, near my office, and my family had to be evacuated. I reunited with them around 5:00 in an office near the holding room, and we stayed there until we could get back to my own personal office.”
I asked Rep. Aderholt if he would be comfortable sharing his opinions on President Trump’s impeachment and the cause of the riot that day, as the riot was led by a group of people who firmly believed that the former President was a target of political injustice. He answered with this:
“I did not support impeachment…You don’t remove a President from office if he’s no longer the President. I think President Trump could have handled the situation better if he had known what some of the people there were going to do…I think most of the people there did not anticipate that there would be a storming of the Capitol. I don’t think he wanted to see harm come to Congress.
“Obviously, there was a lot of blame to go around on everybody’s part, a lot of frustration…People will be destructive if they get frustrated enough.”
Just yesterday, the last of Trump’s court appeals related to election fraud were thrown out of the Supreme Court.
Nadia Blayer, a Gordon grad who now lives and works in DC and Robert Aderholt, of Alabama’s fourth congressional district, experienced the events of the day firsthand within the Capitol Building.
Nadia Blayer began by recounting the ways that her day-to-day was interrupted by horror:
“I was grocery shopping three literal blocks away from the Capitol while it was happening... I was noticing a lot of Trump supporters in the Metro. I’m the only white person in my neighborhood and seeing waves of white folks draped in flags and ‘americana’ was a horrible pit in my stomach…I cancelled my afternoon tutoring sessions as soon as I realized what was unfolding. I was only five years old when the events of 9/11 were aired on live TV, but the feelings were very similar.
Like, I could picture what everyone else was doing—frantically calling loved ones, eyes peeled to the live coverage. I have a really terrible short-term memory but I was so very aware that I was going to remember everything about that day. The feeling of collective grief and rage and the desire for closeness that we’ve become all too familiar with, especially in these last four years.”
She then shared a story about her housemates’ experience:
“My housemates are people of color who work for the Trump hotel group. They worked that night and I was terrified for them, they were terrified for themselves, their coworkers, for the rest of us back at the house. Surreal is such a stupid word because nothing about this was even shocking. And that’s where the center of the grief really came from for me. Just knowing that them having to plan their work day around the threat of violent white supremacists just comes with the job.”
“I’m angry but that doesn’t cover it. I’m sad and also not surprised and also convinced even more now than ever that the system isn’t broken, it was built this way. The system is protected from the inside, protected by apathy, protected by unnecessarily politicized takes on issues of human thriving, protected by complacency and useless rhetoric. Why do things literally have to be on fire to get anyone’s attention? And once it is on fire, how in the actual fuck do we just move on from it weeks later?”