Joseph Rushmore

I left Tulsa and crossed out of Oklahoma on the fourth. I would drive until I got tired then pull off somewhere and sleep a few hours then wake up and drive some more. I had peanut butter sandwiches and a gallon of water. The next day I came up through Virginia and pulled off the highway towards some little hamlet with a small gas station. There was an old man on the side of the road waving a Trump flag and screaming. I pulled into a gravel parking lot, the place was teaming with trump supporters and their trucks. Men everywhere, yelling and backslapping. Brothers upon first meeting. I came upon this and I was scared, it was some kind of bacchanal in the hills and it was, I could tell, an omen. The air was sour and I was too afraid to get out of my car. I left and I felt very alone.

That night some friends put me up in their hotel room and we talked about what the next day might look like. I said I was excited to see this particular crowd finally feel the sting of tear gas. It was petty, but a real feeling. We assumed they would attempt to take the capitol, they spoke of it on Telegram and Facebook, but there would be thousands of cops lining the perimeter, the result would be a few skirmishes, just like the numerous proud boy rallies we had all covered, only scaled up. On the morning of the sixth I woke up when it was still dark, stepped over my friends sleeping on the floor and headed towards the national mall.

A man was screaming at us. I think it was around Noon. People had been playing a livestream of the speech Trump was making down the hill from us at the Ellipse and he told his supporters he was going to lead a march to the Capitol. We had been waiting at the building all morning, we had no interest in the rally where trump was talking, we knew it would all happen right here, so we arrived early and we waited. It was me, Christian, Dan and Mariano. Or, so, I think Mariano was with us at this point. My memory fades. 

We looked down the hill and saw thousands of people marching towards us. And here, still, was this man  screaming. He kept saying that the police weren’t letting the march through, but I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about, the police presence was so incredibly sparse that day and there certainly weren’t any cops blocking the march that was now headed towards us. 

But he was screaming, waving his arms and I heard tears in his voice, he was so afraid and bewildered, but what was he even seeing? I was amazed to witness this level of delusion, to experience a whole other reality than the person next to me. There just weren’t any cops and the march was plotting along directly towards us, thousands of them in a long river coming up the hill, but still he screamed and he pled. Then he saw our cameras. He forgot the cops for the moment and started screaming at us instead. We were liars, we were sick, demented and we were evil. Dan being the calmest one in the group and the one that can somehow handle people at their worst better than me or christian tried to talk the man down, tried to engage, but he was not having it. Dan is so kind and gracious, but this man was not in our world, he was absolute elsewhere. I said, “fuck this,” I can’t take that bullshit anymore, I’m always getting screamed at or pushed around or talked down to or punched and and I realized some time ago I just don’t have to take it, sometimes I scream back, sometimes I push back, sometimes I just leave. Fuck it- I started walking away and Christian came with me- I don’t know what happened to Dan and Mariano (first regret of the day is getting separated from them.), but Christian and I took off towards the east side of the building. A large group had been standing at the barricades all morning, sometimes making lots of noise and yelling at the few cops that stood there, but mostly nothing had happened, we ghosted our way into their ranks. Shadows, others. 

The air was thick with tension and we thought that this place, where the barricades were closest to the building, would be where a breakthrough might happen. We walked into the crowd, Christian said he was going south to see if any marchers were coming that way. I told him I would stay back and we would meet up when he circled back this way. I watched him walking into the crowd and suddenly had this realization that if I lost sight of him now I wouldn’t see him again and I would be all alone. I saw him drifting further away and I got scared.  I ran to catch up to him and put my hand on his shoulde, he turned around, I told him I was coming too. (One of the better decisions I made that day.). For the rest of the day he and I would occasionally lose track of each other but somehow always stumble back together and spend a great deal of time relying on each other.

It feels as if everything is happening at once. The air has broken. The confusion begins. There is a certain glow a thunderstorm takes on before a tornado hits. Its not a color so much as a glowing atmosphere, it is green and sickening and you know if you have seen that color as a storm rolls in then a tornado is near. In my memory, at this moment in the day, the air had that sick, green atmosphere. 

A small group of police running out of a side door on the building, there was no sound, they were so far away, a lone dispatch of officers, themselves doomed, but that would come later, for now they were a silent movie. We walked further south and then we saw It. The massive march had broken through the barricades and was on the west lawn moving towards the building. We began to run. I was out of shape and my body armor was steel and too heavy. Christian stopped for me and I told him to keep going because I didn’t want to slow him down. There was the crowd and there was the building, there were flags everywhere and an absolute rush of the wind. I felt hot. It was like some kind of invasion and there was too much noise. My memory of the run across the lawn is broken and jagged. My chest hurt. I came to a stone wall, I began to try and climb it and a guy standing on top of the wall held his hand out and offered to help me up. I grabbed his hand and began to pull myself up like I was climbing a rope, but this put all my weight on him and he began to fall forward on top of me, “Goddamn!” He said, “don’t pull me down on you, let me pull you up.” I realized my mistake and let him do the work of yanking me up the wall. Maybe I said thank you to him and I kept moving forward. In the coming weeks and months as I would lay awake unable to sleep night after night and I would focus on this slight moment of embarrassment as I almost pulled this man down off the wall. It would stick with me and I would feel such deep intense shame at this innocuous thing that meant nothing. I would run it over and over in my mind, agonizing, crumbling. 

I moved through the crowd to the front and my mouth was dry. I had 4 bottles of water on me. As I ran forward I saw a robed man in a grim reapers mask. He stood on the stairs with his back to the capitol building looking down the hill at the mass of humanity roiling below him. He held his arms open to the sky, welcoming. I pressed the shutter button once. From behind me someones hand reached forward clutching a King James Bible. Death grasped it, pulled it close to his body and held it tight, the longed for embrace. I pressed the shutter again. At the time I had no idea how much this moment would haunt me. An instant possessed forever. Vampire on the steps. An Omen. Do you know what the killer means when he speaks? 

I moved forward and thousands moved with me, the great wave began to crash on the steps. I got to the front as the first rioters began to push against the meager police line. I could see officers on the front, few of them had any riot gear, just night sticks, and they were engaged in hand to hand fighting. I smelled pepper spray and put on my gas mask. At the podium that was already erected in anticipation of Joe Biden’s inauguration that was set to take place in less than two weeks, where he would be standing with his hand on the Bible and proclaim the Oath of Office, stood a group of about five officers with guns and shields. They began to lay down a pelting barrage of pepper balls into the growing crowd. But the rioters didn’t fall back, they surged forward. Several officers had devices that looked like fire extinguishers and they shot out a continuous flow of pepper spray, covering the entire crowd and many of their own. It looked like rain coming down and the clouds in the sky were gray. 

It started to get really bad. Rioters were throwing the barricades and anything else they could find at the police line. They pulled cops to the ground where they would beat and kick and drag them. A man, who I would later learn was Joshua Black of Leeds, Alabama, walked past me with a gaping, bleeding wound in his cheek. You could see his teeth through it,  he had stuffed gauze into his mouth. He wore sunglasses and I snapped a few photos as he walked towards me. “What happened?” I asked, but he did not answer. 

Later, After he was arrested at this home, he told the FBI that he wanted to get into the senate chamber and plead the blood of Jesus over it. He accomplished this and there is video of him lazily strolling around the senate later that day, sitting and praying. This was around the time I started thinking that the cops might start shooting people. Rioters were standing up directly in front of the police line, backs straight, sturdy, strong as police laid down jets of pepper spray into them and they wouldn’t budge. It was terrifying. Their eyes closed, totally incapacitated but refusing to fall back. A cop from the line would jump out and grab them to try and pull them into the perimeter, but other rioters would descend and de-arrest them. 

One by one the police started to become overwhelmed by their own pepper spray that hung thick in the air. Where were the riot cops? where was the tear gas? what the fuck was happening? I saw a rioter struggling to wash his eyes out after taking a massive dose of pepper spray. His buddies were dousing him in water, but he wouldn’t open his eyes to let the water in. After months of covering protests and washing countless eyes out I went into automatic and yelled at the man, “open your eyes. You have to open your eyes for the water to get in.” He wouldn’t do it. I grabbed the water bottle from his buddy and screamed in the mans ear. “Open your fucking eyes,” he did so and I began to pour the water in. Why did I help him? I don’t really know, a person in pain, I guess? It bothered me for months that I had helped an insurrectionist, but now I don’t care anymore.  

Flash bangs were erupting everywhere. I looked towards the inauguration stage and saw police lobbing grenades into the crowd. They were flying through the air. Some exploding on the ground, others right at head height. People were screaming all around me, unintelligible cries, it was becoming a roar, an ocean of noise. Every so often from the din I would hear individuals crying their desires to the world. 

Stop teargassing us, were patriots 

Hold the line

Murder all cops

A woman in hysterics, tears falling down her face screaming into the sky, eyes rolled back, saying they needed to find the tunnels and free the children. The word ‘pedophile’ jumped from the mouths of people all around me who were convinced that congress had secret chambers full of kidnapped children under the building. Screams, bawling.

It was a dark mood and it was a roar. A melee would break out on one part of the line then a hole would open in that spot as the police and rioters broke apart from each other, litter from the fight would be left on the ground, a tiny battlefield and a broken engagement, then the gap would close and others moved forward to take the place of the injured or overwhelmed. But the police had no one to take their place on the line. They were alone and the crowd wanted death. The mob had been taken over. The Reaper, Death himself, had control of the pitch and the lust ran deep. There was a love of death in the crowd that had been stoked for months or years and now it was time to take it upon them. The man in the mask was here, the liar, the betrayer. 

I ran into Chris, he said, “you good?” My eyes may have taken on that huge, terrified, quality. Open to the world and the terror, take it all in, open the aperture completely, let every bit of light from the world pour into my eyes, see it all because nothing ever happens twice and if you miss it you miss it, that’s it and there are regrets that never heal. 

I moved down the steps where a new fight was breaking out. I made a few photos of the rioters. Someone pushed me from behind. I saw angry men surrounding me. I said ‘fuck off’ though Im sure they couldn’t hear me and I turned to photograph the police line, hoping they would leave me alone. Something hit me hard in the back, the blow tampered by my ballistic vest, I collapsed forward onto the steps. I turned, still on the ground and saw a man reeling back, swinging a board over his shoulder like a bat, ready to bring it down on me. I saw nails sticking out from the end of it. Hands grabbed my jacket and pulled me backwards to some kind of safety. Someone with a gas mask and camera had hold of me, he bear hugged me and pulled me away from the group of rioters trying to attack me, we walked away and disappeared into the crowd. I may have said thank you or maybe not. I don’t know who that was. 

I began walking to another section of the front line and away from that group who so obviously had it in for press. I saw Chris walking towards them. I put my hand on his chest and said “no don’t go down there, they’ll kill you.” Or maybe I said, “they’ll kick your ass” or maybe I said “They hate us.” Or maybe it was, “Someone is going to die here, don’t you feel it? I wonder if it’s already happened?”

Later I would question my memory of the man with the board. I hadn’t read any stories that mentioned a man with a board with nails sticking out and I didn’t see him in any of the countless hours of videos I forced myself to watch later. I wondered if my mind was inventing a memory. Then, nearly a year later, I saw the FBI had raided a mans home and arrested him because he had beat capitol police officers with a table leg with nails sticking out of it. It was a calming feeling because it meant it was real and that my mind wasn’t making up new terrors in an attempt to create a greater and more lingering fear worse than I already had. 

I take a picture of man yelling, holding an American flag. He sees me and gets in my face and I think he’s very angry with me. “Was that a good picture?” He screams into my ear. “Yeah, you looked really cool.” I tell him. He asks if i’ll send it to him. “Sure,” I say, “Whats your insta handle?” He yells back to me, “Rust Covered Patriot” I still haven’t sent him his picture.

Flash bangs rained on top of us everywhere. To the left there were stairs covered in scaffolding leading to the building, more evidence of the coming inauguration stage being built. A group was trying to fight their way up the stairs. Chris and I  worked our way under the scaffolding and started climbing to the front of the fight. Midway up the stairs a small group of police were making a last stand, holding back, for now, the storming herd. Someone ( later I would learn his name, Dominic Pezzola, he would be sentenced to ten years in federal prison for smashing through the capitol window with the same riot shield he was using to beat officers on these stairs.) had stolen a riot shield and was using it to beat the officers blocking his way. Rioters were climbing high into the rafters. This was a bad zone. maybe the worst zone. We were crushed together in a mass of human bodies writhing, collapsing, spitting, clawing. The roar was reaching unknown decibels. Nothing could be heard. Individuals did not exist. The mob. I began to feel real fear, it was claustrophobic. I think everyone in that place thought about it.

The police began to take back ground under the scaffolding and we started to fear we may get trapped in there so we moved back into he open along the front line on the steps. 

I collapsed in a flash of light. Chris grabbed me under my arms and helped me up and we moved back a few feet. My leg felt like it was on fire, I could feel the pain all the way up in my stomach. I saw the flash bang as it fell from the sky and I saw it come right down on me then and that was that. Adrenaline to new heights. I grasped at my belt buckle, unbuttoned my jeans and dropped  my pants. I could see my leg already in discolored black, blue and reds, I could see my skin split open, I could see the swelling and the burns. I pulled my pants back up, my leg on fire, swollen

We were back under the scaffolding and it was unbearable under there, it was terrifying, but Chris had been smart, he said, “If they’re going to break through the police line it’s going to be up there.” And so we found ourselves back again and we could see the cops were done for. It was the moment that had been coming. And then it was over. The line broke and we were running up the stairs, breathing, running, panting dogs. Pushing and running and wow it was quieter up here at the top of the stairs right at the front doors of the building. With the melee behind us, the air up here was clean and clear. There were no police. Not one officer. Nothing at all. I saw a package of plastic water bottles on the ground and grabbed a couple to put in my bag and one to chug. I was dying of thirst.

Later that night in the hotel after we had finally found food I wouldn’t be able to eat because my throat hurt so bad. It wasn’t from pepper spray or tear gas, it was from fear. My mouth fully dried out from hours of edged out adrenaline. I would be sitting on the hotel floor and I wanted to eat so badly, I was so hungry, but the food trying to go down was so totally painful that I decided it best to give up and stay hungry. 

The crowd at the top was sparse, but a churn of rioters was close behind coming up the stairs. We were at a door on the Northwest side of the building, it was locked, banging on the windows all around, someone yelled ‘let us in,’ someone else yelled, ‘we’re here.’ Someone hit a window with a board, then someone hit it with a confederate flag, then Pezzola hit it with the riot shield, cracks and breaks, then shatter, glass on the ground. It was here.

Rioters started climbing inside. I hesitated and went into my mind. “this is when they start shooting, there will be police right inside the building and they’ll start shooting these fuckers like rats as they file in through this window.” A few seconds elapsed over a few years, I saw Chris go in. But maybe I didn’t see him go in? I thought it was him and maybe it was, but god knows, I don’t know. Go then. I pushed my way into the line of rioters clamoring into the shattered window. I grabbed the sill, bits of crushed glass under my fingers, and pulled myself up, getting a foot onto the window and jumping inside. 

In security camera footage shown to congress during Trump’s second impeachment you see an inside birds eye view of a window and an empty hallway. In the next frame the window is shattered and glass litters the floor. The first man climbs in from the outside. About eleven more men stumble in through the window. One of them lifts his hands into the air in a victory pose when his feet hit the floor, then you see me stumble inside, helmet with large letters reading PRESS across the front, gas mask, long black jacket and green shoulder bag. The footage continues as our group casually begins to walk down the hall, I’m looking down at my camera adjusting my settings.

I’ve never been in the capitol before and I’m astounded by how much it fits what I imagined it would look like in my mind. Austere, soft, orange light. I follow a group of men north up a hallway towards what I would find out later was the senate chambers where congress was cowering under chairs behind barricaded doors. I regretted that I hadn’t studied the layout of the capitol before today, but I never imagined they would actually get inside. I assumed we would show up to the capitol on January 6, 2021 and see the building surrounded by ten thousand riot cops, there would be some skirmishes and tear gas and that would be that. But now I was inside. I saw a group go down another hallway, but I got scared and didn’t follow. I felt that at any moment squads of cops would round a corner and open fire on all of us. 

I suddenly became very afraid that I might be arrested. I had left my car in a parking lot and only paid for the one day. I had come to D.C. with about $150 to my name, just enough money for round trip gas and peanut butter sandwiches. I dipped into that money to spend $18 dollars on a parking spot for the day. If I was arrested and spent the night or maybe longer in jail then they would tow my car and I would be fucked. I don’t know anyone in D.C. and I don’t have a dollar to spare. I cant afford to get my car towed, my car is my home, its where I sleep on the road, I have to have it. If I’m in jail they’ll confiscate my phone and this isn’t a regular arrest. I’m in the fucking capitol and yes I’m a journalist, but fuck man this has never happened before what are the rules here? 

it’s weird where your mind will go. Im in the middle of the insurrection and I’m worried about my car getting towed? I have fucking friends. I have a girlfriend. Someone will help me. Im going insane, why am I thinking about this? I plan to ask Dan if I can borrow twenty bucks from him as soon as I find him so I can pay for another day in the parking lot for my car. This fear about my car getting towed and me being stranded will stick with me all day and I will base several of my future decisions on whether or not it seems I’m more likely to get arrested for this reason, this will lead to several regrets about not pushing further to document certain things, the list of regrets I have on this day is growing longer and they will stick with my doggedly in the months to come.

A man kicks an office door. I snap a photo. He kicks again. The door crashes open and a man in a suit is standing inside the office holding a fire extinguisher. He sprays it through the open door, hitting the man in the hallway and the man doing the kicking falls back. The man in the suit slams office door closed. I turn and go down the hall and end up in a sort of small rotunda room where a group of cops is holding a line. I think there is maybe one hundred people in this room. I see Christian, we check in. Two men behind me ask if I’ll take their picture. They put their arms around each other, I step back a couple feet, focus and snap, their eyes showing smiles above their masks.

I walk down another hallway. A man pushes me into the wall and says something about killing me. Another man sarcastically yells, “Here comes the press.” as I pass him and people laugh. I feel like things are getting sketchy and with so few cops around people are starting to realize the media is here and they are turning to their other enemy, which is us. I can feel the mood collapsing. I tell Christian I’m getting out of here and going back outside. Or maybe I text him. I don’t remember. I think I see cops back the way I came in. As far as I know the window I came through is the only way in or out still. In my memory there are now riot cops by this window beating people with nightsticks and I walk through that gauntlet and feel blows on my head and shoulders. I climb back through the window. But were there cops there? This memory is so incredibly foggy and hazy that I don’t trust it. I got out of the building because it felt to me like we were being kettled. I couldn’t imagine it would become what it did and the entire building would be breached. I thought the police had stopped the inside advance and were going to start arresting or shooting the people still left in there. But were there cops back at the window? Did I walk a gauntlet of nightstick blows? I see it min my mind, I can read the text of my memories and its there, but its covered in such a haze. I fear it’s not a real memory. What does it mean? 

Back outside. I pull off my gas mask for the first time in a while. There is no need for it anymore. There are no cops, no more teargas and no pepper spray. I grab a water out of my bag and chug it. 

Time means nothing in my memories of the next hours. It has collapsed and expanded so much of the months after the riot as I laid awake in bed unable to sleep because the constant loop of the sixth wouldn’t stop playing and my memories have broken and I have no grasp on when events occur from here until the end of the day. I was in a really bad way in the months after the capitol. In the weeks after the riot my partner Emily telling me about one of her relatives making some innocuous comment about the capitol, I cant even remember what it was, but it was nothing really, and I lost it, I started laughing and said something like, “I swear to god if anyone tries to tell me what fucking happened there I am going to lose it, I will fucking lose it, tell them they better not say a fucking word to me about any of this shit…” I continued, I have no idea what I said, but I suddenly realized I was yelling. Emily was looking at me and she looked sad and nervous and she was crying. In February my friend Liz helped me find a therapist that specialized in trauma in journalism. This therapist had helped journalist who had covered the Murrah building bombing in okc in 1995. In an initial interview she asked me what I wanted to accomplish with therapy. I told her, “I just want the loop to stop, I’m so exhausted, I just want it to stop.” “Okay.” She said to me. 

The following is a non linear account of moments form the rest of the day because I cannot put them into an orderly time frame. 

-Christian and I found each other outside at some point and I pulled him in and we took a selfie, we wanted to remember. In the image we are both in gas masks and the walls of the capitol are behind us. 

-Me and Chris and Chris are standing by a bush on the north side of the building, were taking a break, we need to breathe and re-assess. A white haired man and wife walk up and ask us if there are people inside the building. We tell them that there are. The husband, holding a rolled up trump flag, his polo shirt tucked in, looks towards the building, “Thats bad.” He says. Another man stumbles up. “Antifa.” He moans. He tells the couple that these are not Trump supporters storming the capitol, but rather, Antifa. Confusion comes over the couples face. “Really?” The husband says. The Antifa Doomsayer stumbles off and we tell the couple that no, it is not Antifa, this is a Trump riot. They seem to believe us, they seem deeply distraught. The man looks back at the building. “This is bad.” He says.

-Im on the ground with my pants around my ankles. Christian and I are across the street from the building and he is helping me treat my wound from the flash bang to the leg I took some hours before at the beginning of the melee. Its swollen and huge now, there are burns and dried blood. I reach out to touch it and Christian bats my hand away as he is digging through his trauma kit. “Don’t touch it, you’re going to get infected.” he says to me. “Oh yeah,” I think to myself, “Its still a pandemic and I don’t have health insurance.” He cant find any anti-bacterial in his bag, just then someone in fatigues, totally kitted out like an absolute operator walks by, stops for a second, pulls a can of anti-bacterial spray and tosses it to us. Savior from above, insurrectionists nurse to the rescue. 

 -Two America First looking young kids in pea coats start giving us shit about being press. One of them looks at the camera around my neck and says, “is that a manual focus lens? What are you going to do with a manual focus lens?” And they begin to laugh and they are talking shit and then they start walking away and one says, “were just joking, you’re good.”  And in some attempt to say something back I say, “I know I’m good motherfucker.”  what a ridiculous thing to say, I’m never good in a confrontation. He turns around, calls me a faggot and they walk away. 

-There is an old woman in a cloud of pepper spray, she’s holding a cardboard campaign sign over her head that says ‘Jesus 2020’ and she’s having no reaction to the pepper spray, she’s looking up towards the building. Everything on this side of the capitol is perfect for giving you impressive views. You are either on the stairs looking up the hill towards the massive building or at the top near the building looking down the hill towards the massive riot. And there she is, one with the moment, mouth twisted into this grimace, holding her sign, Holy War in her eyes.

-I only remember going into the building that one time during the very first break in, but months later I’m talking to Christian and he tells me that we went back in a second time. He says we debated it outside the building, we talked over the dangers of going in or the dangers of staying outside. It seemed more dangerous inside, but he said, ‘We have to go, this is history, we have to go.’ And the thing is, I remember that conversation and I remember turning around and heading towards the building, but I don’t remember being inside the second time. no memory of it at all.

-Im standing on the bleachers erected behind the inauguration stage looking down at ten thousand people in a roiling white supremacist mob and way back in the distance is the Washington monument and I’m thinking of Tulsa and 1921 and all these feelings are hitting me in that moment and I’m becoming overwhelmed and I can feel tears start to well up in my eyes. I put my camera up to my face and make two pictures. A man comes up to me and says something. I take my gas mask off and say “what?” And he points to my mask and says, ‘That was a good idea.” And I say, “yeah always be prepared.” And we sorta do this little laugh and then we both turn and look over the scene. We shared that moment a little bit longer and then the riot police began to push through the barricades the rioters had hastily erected behind us and it was time to move. 

-Im being crushed, I cant move, my camera is in my hands, but my hands are at my chest. The police are pushing the crowd back and I’ve inadvertently ended up on the very front line. A nightstick is bashing into my head and I’m yelling ‘motherfucker’ a lot and there is quite a bit of blood all over the place and with my head ducked down as far as I can go I see a small woman smashed in the crowd beside me and her eyes are so wide with terror and the police are pushing us from behind and rioters are pushing us from in front. I twist my wrist and my camera is right in her face, I make one image of her horror expression. Theres more blood.

Text messages from me to Emily:

2:02pm

Joe: Im safe. Holy shit

Emily: omg thank god. I was scared but assumed you’d text when you’d get a chance. I love you so much!!!

-A group of rioters is smashing a lot of shit near us. Chris, Chris and maybe Christian and Dan and Mariano are there, I cant remember who all. Its late in the day almost getting to dusk and im so nervous because the crowd has really turned on the media at this point. There aren’t many cops around for people to be mad at and they are remembering how much they really, truly hate us. Im already nervous and we begin to hear this smashing and lots of yelling, almost gleeful in this really sickening way. Someone says, “They’re smashing the AP cameras” which is a little marked off area where a bunch of tv cameras are set up behind some barricades. Every sound I hear from there is nauseating and fills me with fear. I knew a few brave ones went over and photographed the scene as it unfolded, but there was no way I was going, my nerve had just about run out for the day. It was around 5pm or so and I had hauled my heavy ass body armor, cameras and bags for about 5 miles already and been on my feet since about 6am, my leg was swelled up like a watermelon and I was in a lot of pain from it, it felt raw and hard and stiff. We still had to walk about 2 miles back to the hotel. 

The idea of that walk was terrifying. Within that two miles was thousands of trump supporters with the purest blood lust and it was nearly dark and that alone feeling was growing immeasurable. What if a group of proud boys wandering around drunk on violence sees the four of us walking alone with cameras around our necks? Most of us had already been assaulted by these groups before this day and every journalist I know who was at the capitol was assaulted numerous times already that day. The darkness was terrifying to me and I started to float the idea of getting out. I was fucked up. Dan had been pepper sprayed really badly by the cops and was really fucked up and we were all nervous. I tend to stay til the end of the thing, I absolutely despise leaving until it is done because the numbers are usually on your side, it is almost always more likely you will come out of a riot mostly unscathed rather than beat to shit or killed and the pain of living with regret over leaving early can be overwhelming. Christian wanted to stay. I think Dan and Mariano wanted to go. I wanted to go, but I didn’t want to admit I wanted to go. I wanted Christian to say he wanted to leave because then I wouldn’t feel guilty, but he wanted to stay. But it was over for me, my fear was too big. We were standing on the lawn on the west side of the capitol talking it over and we could see a renewed riot going on at the steps. Flashbangs were echoing again and I said, “maybe we should stay, what if we leave and we miss The Thing. Like what if It happens and we miss It.” And Christian said ‘yeah, I think we should stay a little longer.’ I had hoped he would provide the out, but he was willing to stay. I couldn’t anymore, it just became too much for me, I couldn’t handle it and suddenly I found I could talk myself out of all of it, I could talk myself out of the photos I would miss and had already made, I was overwhelmed and it finally caught up to me and I didn’t care anymore about The Thing that might happen. So I talked Christian out of it and we began to walk and it was dark already and I was terrified. My biggest regret of the day is leaving, I wish I listened to Christian. The ghosts come out at night and you should be there to meet them.

We started walking. There were groups of rioters making their way back to their expensive hotels and they were yelling and chanting. As we got further from the capitol the crowds began to thin out and we ended up walking a few blocks with a trump supporter carrying a rolled up flag. We talked with him about the implications of that day. We all agreed, we had never seen anything like that before.

Jen called and said they were on their way down from Philly and could pick us up and drive us to the hotel, but there was no way for a car to get into the area. The city was on lockdown and there was a two mile perimeter around the capitol, besides, I said, we were all doused in pepper spray and it would get all over the car. They said they’d wait for us at the hotel. 

A mass of trump supporters were in the lobby of our hotel in some lounge area watching a big screen TV. The news was on and it was showing images from the day and talking head politicians saying just how awful and terrible it all was and every time one would come on the screen the trump people would yell and scream and stomp their feet in tantrums. We got back to the room and realized none of us had eaten all day and we were in a city that was completely locked down, nothing was open, the tightest of curfews had taken effect. Jen had worked in D.C. for a while though and knew the suburbs so I went with them in their car to find food and drinks to bring home to everyone. We sped through empty, dark streets, winding and curling around road blocks past closed storefronts in a city on edge. I called my Dad and told him I was safe. We talked for a minute and he told me I should call my mom and let her know all was well. I knew I should, but I dreaded it. 

A few days before leaving Tulsa to drive to D.C. I went out to their farm to tell them I was going to Washington to cover the Trump rally. I didn’t want to let on how violent I expected it to be because I didn’t want them to worry, but they seemed to already know and understand what was coming. “We were thinking about going too,” my mom said, “to support the president.” I heard her say it and my mind went into an immediate, deep fog. I couldn’t grasp it. The newly installed trump flag in front of their house worried me, though it didn’t surprise me, but this was a new level of dedication to the man. My mom asked me, “Do you really think Biden will be inaugurated as President?” I said, “I don’t see any way they can stop it.” She looked into my eyes with a smile and said softly, with love, “There is the thinnest veil between heaven and earth and I think its about to be ripped open. There is an Angel army and I think we will see them on the sixth.”

I was raised in the church, I come from that world, and still think of my upbringing in the church with tenderness and love, this sort of talk of angels was not new to me, but it made me so grievously sad to hear her say this because it was heartbreaking to think of my mother, who’s life had been so fully devoted to her faith, would think that angels or god cared about power grabs by politicians. I was heartbroken. The holy war would be fought in the name of trump? I have such a love for my family and my heart was heavy. I felt no judgment and feel none now, heartbreak has no room to judge and I am heartbroken. 

“I just wanted to let you know I’m ok, I’m safe.” I told my mom on the phone. Her voice was calm on the other end of the line, “Oh, yeah well I assumed you were.” I was confused, she had always been so worried about me in these situations and was always so happy to hear confirmation of my safety, but now she was nonchalant about it all. “Well,” I went on, “It was a pretty violent day so I just wanted to let you know I’m alright.” 

“No,” She told me, “There was no violence there today.” 

I hung up the phone and we sped through the city at night.