PRESS RELEASE: SPTP-DC Condemns Response To January 6th Fascist Violence
Media Contacts:
Sean Blackmon
Stop Police Terror Project DC
(850) 982-8176
press@sptdc.com
Valerie Wexler
Stop Police Terror Project DC
press@sptdc.com
Stop Police Terror Project DC Condemns Response To January 6th Fascist Violence
Military Occupations And Increased Policing Only Make Us Less Safe
Washington DC—The events of January 6th have proven unequivocally that police don't keep us safe, nor do they have any interest in doing so. Real threats will always be ignored while Black and Brown communities are occupied and traumatized, because that is what the police were created to do.
Police in DC chose to take selfies with white supremacists, to ignore constant warnings about the threat they posed, and to stand by as they broke into the Capitol. Just as they chose to violently assault DC residents protesting the murder of Deon Kay by police, or of Karon Hylton-Brown, or D'Quan Young, or Marqueese Alston, or Jeff Price, or so many others. Giving them even more power and funding will not change these intentional choices. “Stricter rioting laws, domestic terror laws, and more funding to law enforcement—all are tools of white supremacy and will only enable and strengthen the people and institutions that perpetrated this violence,” said SPTP-DC organizer Natacia Knapper.
Mayor Muriel Bowser and the DC Council had months to prepare for the violence they were repeatedly warned was coming. Fascists and white supremacists had descended on DC numerous times before January—burning Black Lives Matter signs and stabbing multiple people. Yet our mayor and our government refused to make it clear that violence and terror against DC residents would not be tolerated by closing hotels, revoking permits for not wearing masks, supporting organizers defending DC, or even explicitly condemning the perpetrators of the violence.
Because of our leaders’ refusal to act, DC is now living under military occupation. Our movements are restricted, our safety threatened. Those who work in downtown DC can't get there, unhoused community members can't get out. And yet we know, even as we write this, that Mayor Bowser will try to twist her failure into success, her police department’s utter incompetence and malfeasance into a reason it should get even more money, and her administration’s apathy into an excuse for new restrictions on protest and free movement.
“The mayor refused, at every single turn, to make a single decision that would ensure the safety of our most vulnerable community members,” said Knapper. “She has even gone as far as to encourage private citizens to give their money to the same police forces that brutalize the people of this city time and time again.”
January 6th and its aftermath are a direct result of racist, militarized, and unaccountable policing in DC and throughout the country. It was no shock to learn that dozens of police officers and at least one police chief participated directly in the attack on the Capitol, supported by many more. Fascists and white supremacists thrive in police departments because the institution of policing was built to support fascism and white supremacy. Police get and maintain their power through their authority over, and vilification of, the less powerful, including Black and Brown people, trans people, disabled people, and people experiencing homelessness.
“On several levels the fascist assault on the Capitol was astounding, but hardly surprising,” said SPTP-DC organizer Sean Blackmon. “The clear level of collusion, extending to the highest levels of federal government, our local government exploiting the attack to further rob local peoples of desperately needed resources—all of it serving to further complicate life for the already struggling poor and working people of DC. In order to ensure that resources that should be dedicated to securing people’s basic needs aren’t, once again, dumped into the coffers of a murderous and ineffective police force, our movement must grow its numbers and strengthen its capacity.”
DC law enforcement chose to not take the open threats of violence made ahead of January 6th seriously because those making the threats represented much of what they stand for. They trusted the mob of fascists and white supremacists because they saw them as the "right" kind of protestors. That many of those protestors viciously turned on them when they met any kind of resistance does not, in any way, change the fact that they enabled it to happen in the first place.
The same type of horrific violence experienced by a few DC Metropolitan Police and US Capitol Police officers on the 6th is inflicted on Black and Brown DC residents regularly at the hands of police. Beatings, assaults, being tasered, being shot—none of these experiences are uncommon in DC.
“We urge the officers who were hurt in the fascist attack on the Capitol to think about the violence and brutality they are complicit in, to recognize that the institution of policing will always place white supremacy over anyone and anything—including those who work for it—and to quit their jobs,” said SPTP-DC organizer Hayatt Mohamed. “It’s not too late to choose to be on the right side of history.”
Our government and our police force have proven definitively that we cannot rely on them for safety. The only ones we have been able to rely on have been each other. We will continue to work to keep each other safe, to support our local mutual aid systems, and to defund the DC Police Department.