Statement on the Violence at the Capitol
Like many of you, we watched the riot at the Capitol this past week with a mix of fear, rage, and sadness. The violence we saw, and the response to it, are powerful reminders of why the work to build an inclusive society and actively fight racism and discrimination are so important. We saw the vivid contrast between consequences for the mostly White participants and the arrests made during Black Lives Matter protests (as of yesterday evening, 79 individuals have been charged in the events around the Capitol riot, while 400 were arrested during the summer’s Black Lives Matter protests in DC). We saw rampant anti-Semitism, with rioters wearing “Camp Auschwitz” shirts and slogans extolling the Holocaust. We were reminded of the far harsher response in past years by Capitol Police to disabled advocates and sexual assault survivors, who were dragged out of the building during healthcare and Supreme Court protests. And we’ve seen a sustained and shameful insistence that votes from predominantly minority areas are fraudulent and should be held to a greater level of scrutiny, simply because of who cast them.
Amidst this, there has been disbelief and a recurring sentiment that “this is not who America is.” But our history and the experiences of minority and marginalized groups in our country say otherwise. That is a hard, hard thing to grapple with. It’s easy, and maybe even comforting, to watch from a distance and think “I’m so glad that’s not happening in my community.” But just this week, we learned of a swastika and anti-gay slur drawn in a Cranford park on the afternoon of January 6th, the latest of many such instances. We’ve heard over and over from Black and Brown friends and neighbors in Cranford of their experiences being diminished, suspected, feared, and even hated. The dynamics and beliefs we saw expressed in violent form at the Capitol are everywhere. They may be quieter or more subtle, but we need to listen to those telling us that they are here and we need to stand up against them. We can respond to this moment with defensiveness, deflection or seeing it as an outlier. Or we can confront privilege, racism, discrimination and hate head on, with our words and actions. It means challenging the “politically incorrect joke” your neighbor tells. It means widely and loudly talking about the things that happen in our town so that people aren’t blind to the issues and can start working to solve them. It means identifying when people are being treated differently by our institutions and fixing it. Most importantly, it means working, even when it’s uncomfortable, to make Cranford into the community we hope it can be.
