Did You Forget Who Built The Capitol, Did You Forget Who Perfected The Art of the Coup

The Capitol was built by enslaved hands. This is the one fun fact left out of by pundits yesterday as white supremacist fascist militia stormed the Capitol. I sat and watched the live coverage, along with millions glued to their screens in fear, in anxiety, in wonder of the whiteness on display. As we watched white men scale fences and break windows pundits were waxing poetically about the beauty of the Capitol. President Elect Biden gave his own love song to the pillar of American democracy, and all I could think — was wasn’t this building built by force.

I thought about the deaths legalized in her chambers as this angry white mob stormed this building we have been conditioned to view as sacred. As they blew past Capitol Police I remembered being sixteen and the murder of Miriam Carey a Black woman murdered with her baby in the backseat for running a checkpoint at the Capitol.

Each time a pundit hesitantly asked was this a coup, the word seemed to burn in my ears — remembering all the times around the world America was the coup. Each time they said this is unprecedented I wanted to scream what about Tulsa, Charleston, Hawaii, what about each time a Black person dared to move outside of the lines of Jim Crow, what about this summer.

I write this to ask if you care? If you care when the angry white men come for us? Or if you only care when it is so visible, so horrifyingly in the spot light that you can not look away lest ignore it? Will you care when it is our windows they break?