It's always been bigger than bike racks

Police thought the Jan. 6 rioters weren't a threat. Let's not fall for that shit again.

Cover photo from the House Committee on the Judiciary Report, January 2026

That morning five years ago was fixing to be chilly, so I went for my favorite hockey coat – a huge black puffer that battles ice rink chill and has a high collar to flip up against tear gas. Then I got my thick, blue scarf.

No, wait. That wouldn’t work this time.

The crowd I was diving into could see my black coat and the thick-soled black boots I wear to protests and punk rock shows as the costume of Antifascists. And a blue scarf could signal blue politics.

Or was I being paranoid?

No, it wasn’t paranoia. The biggest fears about that Trump army on January 6 came true. They tried to orchestrate a violent, lawless insurrection. It was bloody, messy and shit-stained. Literally. Saddest of all is that much of America forgets this tragedy, as though it never happened.

I never cared much about dressing for a reporting occasion beyond comfort and respectability, but the “Stop the Steal” march felt different as soon as Trump Tweeted to his supporters: “Be there, will be wild!”

The day before, my Capitol Hill street had some big ole trucks parked between the Priuses and Subarus. The kind I grew up with in the High Sierras, with sagebrush bits in the grills and a layer of Nevada dust.

No desert dust, though. These were decorated with Trump, “Fuck Biden” and Confederate flags.

Capitol Hill trucks on January 6, 2021/Petula Dvorak

My protest bag was still riot-ready after a season of Black Lives Matter demonstrations. It’s a kit I began building after covering the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles when I was still in college.

Back then, it had dimes for pay phones, quarters for parking meters, a tiny tape recorder, extra tiny cassettes and batteries, spare pens, a candy bar and a handheld police scanner.

After an ice storm in New Jersey, I learned to carry felt-tip pens. The ink in ballpoint pens freezes.

Covering hurricanes in Louisiana, I began including pencils – ink runs on notebook paper in the lashing rain.

The addition of mobile phones meant no dimes, but a chunky, extra phone battery.

When hydration became fashionable, I added water and switched to protein bars instead of candy.

During the Black Lives Matter protests, Covid masks became essential – the beak-like KF94 was best. The Post told those of us going out to come into the office and pick up goggles to protect us against pepper spray.

I was thinking I’d finally get a cool, tactical gas mask.

Nope. We got the Bezos, Amazon special, a Speedo diving mask like the kind my kids used in a pool.

No thanks. I switched to ski goggles.

The columnists, for the most part, stayed inside that day. So did the political reporters. What happened to their Spidey senses? Didn’t they feel it in the air? Or maybe they just thought all the trucks on Capitol Hill were cute and quaint.

It was the old-school, Metro street reporters out on this one. And me.

I looked at our messy coat closet. I could grab my husband’s Carhartt jacket with the shearling lining. Nah, that was a signal, too.

Shoved in the back was a grey jacket I bought a while ago, but didn’t love. That’s neutral. And an orange – burnt, not hunting – scarf was an unbiased color. Later that night, my mom said she was able to pick me out in TV footage of the jostling, battling crowd thanks to that scarf.

As soon as I headed out and started walking around the Capitol, toward the White House, I felt a sickening fear.

The riot fencing – tall, heavy mesh, rather than the chain link you can get a toehold on that was ubiquitous during the demonstrations protesting George Floyd’s murder – was nowhere. Windows were not boarded up. National Guard tanks were missing from the corners.

This was the norm during the protests against police brutality.

The most violent thing I witnessed in those days was a bonfire no bigger than the one my high school had for homecoming and a group of kids rolling in from across town, far from the protests, summoned by social media to loot the Sephora on F Street.

Instead, after weeks of public planning, after Trump supporters openly talked about the weapons and mayhem they would bring to the Capitol the day that Joe Biden was to be certified as the next president, the Capitol was circled by the bike rack-style fences used for parades.

What. The. Fuck.

It was clear that folks in charge didn’t see the potential for danger. The folks in town had the FOP stickers on their F-150 plates and Blue Lives Matter decals on the windows. They were almost all white.

It was different for Black protesters.

They prepared for the George Floyd protests like it was the Zombie apocalypse.

The Trump supporters who’d been whipped up for weeks – who openly planned to bring guns and ammo to D.C. – were treated like Cherry Blossom parade marchers.

Oh, the cops knew about the gun talk. It was open and colorful on the alt-right sites. Their response? These signs taped to light poles.

January 6, 2021/ Petula Dvorak

This was white privilege on full display.

I wrote it in my Post column right after:

“...even though we all saw it coming, the headquarters of our government was literally invaded by loud, vaping fools in flannel, surplus-store body armor, animal pelts and face paint. Police seemed powerless to stop it.

After 21 years of covering protests in this town, I have never seen such a flaccid and disinterested preparation by law enforcement as what happened Wednesday.

Trump’s unhinged commands to the people who call themselves “Donald’s Army” led to this riot …Were the people in charge of stopping this blinded by the White, perhaps?”

The crowd was angry, seething. I saw several of the T-shirts Walmart used to sell: “Rope. Tree. Journalist. SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED”

For the first time in my career, I let my press pass slip under my big scarf and didn’t fix it.

The police officers on the ground didn’t have that option.

“They’re not on our side anymore!” I heard someone scream as I got caught in a surge of people shoving through the open space made when a bicycle rack fencing was knocked over on the west side of the Capitol. “Fuck the police!”

January 6, 2021/Petula Dvorak

“Storm the Capitol!” said a guy wearing a Trump flag as a cape.

“Don’t let the police through, they’re drones for a Democratic mayor!” screamed another as he shoved his way deeper into the crowd surging up the Capitol’s steps.

Then, the Blue Lives Matter, law-and-order crowd began beating the officers with flagpoles, dragging them down steps, kicking and stomping their heads.

In the following years, it took some work for Americans to hide from the truth of that day. Abundant video footage showed the beatings, the blood, the hatred and fear. It showed the shit that was smeared inside the People’s House.

Officers testified on Capitol Hill about the damage of that day.

D.C. Police Officer Daniel Hodges, who still wears the badge in our city today, testified that to his “perpetual confusion, I saw the ‘thin blue line’ flag, the symbol of support for law enforcement, more than once being carried by the terrorists as they ignored our commands and continued to assault us.”

The rioters screamed at one of the Capitol Police Officers, Harry Dunn, that no one voted for Joe Biden.

Dunn, who is Black, told a congressional panel that he told the rioters he had voted for Biden.

Then, a woman in a pink MAGA shirt yelled, “You hear that guys? This n***** voted for Joe Biden.”

Dunn testified that the crowd of around 20 people joined in screaming, “Boo, f****** n*****!”

And then Dunn told them the truth of the unleashed, emboldened racism he faced.

“No one had ever, ever called me a n***** while wearing the uniform of a Capitol Police officer,” he said.

In one of the most aggressive and un-American political acts of recent history, Trump pardoned all of the insurrectionists – nearly 1,600 – after he was inaugurated this year.

This week, the House Committee on the Judiciary weighed in with a report on that pardon.

“President Trump and his faithful protectors on the Roberts Supreme Court have constructed an America where political crime pays—at least sometimes,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) wrote in the forward. “This creates a bundle of moral and political hazards. Instead of being met with bipartisan opposition, swift legal consequences and widespread social repudiation, these insurrectionists and coup-plotters are pardoned, forgiven, lionized, promoted, compensated and embraced by the political system.”

But it does not matter what Congress says and what Trump does when We the People have no attention span. America forgets. And when that is the case, how can we ever learn?