Every time Harper White looks at the U.S. Capitol dome, he thinks back to the day, one year ago, when he barricaded himself inside a congresswoman’s office a few steps from the House floor and heard the sound of gunfire.
He remembers trying to hide in a wooden storage unit half his size. His job as a Capitol Hill staffer was his first full-time work after graduating from the University of Kentucky, and he was trapped during a violent attack — one that many Republicans and right-wing groups have defended by pushing false and misleading accounts.
White, a 25-year-old legislative assistant and correspondent for Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), will be speaking to an anticipated crowd of hundreds on Thursday outside the Capitol on the anniversary of a violent mob’s entry into the building to try to stop Congress from ratifying the 2020 electoral college vote.
Less than three miles away, a smaller crowd is planning to gather outside the D.C. jail to support people who were charged in the insurrection and are being held there —people the demonstrators call “political prisoners.”
These rival events reflect the fact that a year after the Capitol riot, much of the country remains divided on what happened.
As most Democrats and many others have condemned the violent attack on the country’s democratic process, a majority of Republicans continue to believe that President Biden was elected illegitimately or fraudulently, and some have sought to recast those charged in the Jan. 6 attack as martyrs.
Thirty percent of Americans say there is solid evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, according to a recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll. Almost 3 in 10 Americans say Biden’s election was not legitimate. Among people who voted for Donald Trump in 2020, 69 percent now say Biden was not legitimately elected, according to the poll.
This counternarrative is not only untruthful, experts say, but dangerous.
Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger acknowledged the events planned for Thursday at the D.C. jail and outside the Capitol but said during a news conference on Tuesday that he did not anticipate security concerns.
“We’re aware of several events that are planned for Thursday. Most of them aren’t of much concern to us,” Manger said. “There’s no intelligence that indicates any problems for us.”
D.C. police issued a permit to Look Ahead America, the right-wing group behind the widely anticipated but sparsely attended rally outside the U.S. Capitol in September, for its event on Thursday, D.C. police spokeswoman Kristen Metzger said Wednesday.
“As with all First Amendment demonstrations, [the Metropolitan Police Department] will be monitoring and assessing the activities leading up to and on January 6 in collaboration with our local and federal law enforcement partners,”Metzger said in a statement in response to questions about security concerns. “MPD members will have a visible presence around the city during this time.”
Organizers for both groups of demonstrators said they do not plan to engage with each other.
The vigil outside the Capitol, near the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, is being organized bya coalition of more than 100 groups to denounce last year’s insurrection.
This vigil is one of hundreds organized across the country to reject false claims of election irregularities and push legislators to pass federal voting rights protections and expansions, organizers said.
