I had to take a step back from doom scrolling on Twitter, but didn’t want to stay silent after White supremacists stormed the Captiol this week. So here are five thoughts I’ve had.

1. The police are not neutral, and we need to stop treating them as such. Based on the last year alone, everyone should be seeing this. Black people spent an entire summer protesting over being shot at, kneeled on, beat up, tear gassed, and unfairly treated by the police and thousands were arrested for being out past curfew or participating in overwhelmingly peaceful protest. We’ve now seen an angry group of domestic terrorists storm the Capitol, a federal building, with guns and explosive devices and only a few arrests were made that day. Not to mention countless videos of police letting the mob through multiple layers of security or the fact sworn officers participated in the destruction of public property while threatening democratically elected officials, their staff, and all of the workers. The icing on the cake is that police departments will argue that they were underfunded, and Biden will probably sign some bipartisan police spending bill to show “unity” or whatever.
2. There are imposters among us. We (collectively people left of the center) keep treating radicalized Trump supporters as if they’re all uneducated rural “hillbillies” who just need to experience a different culture or perspective to have a change of heart. While there may be some Ebenezer Scrooges out there, they distract us from the radicalized supporters in powerful positions who uphold the systems in place. I’m talking about cops, doctors, lawyers, CEO’s, school board members, landlords, and, yes, urban planners. No industry, profession, city, or state is safe from this fascist ideology. 
3. Is DC the most White supremacist city? Let’s not pretend to be surprised by what happened this past week. DC was built by slaves. The area surrounding the mall was used as sites for slave trading and “housing” – if you could call it that. Post slavery, segregation persisted and numerous KKK rallies were held there, some of which received police protection (again, police are not neutral). Obviously, DC was an important site for the Civil Rights Movement, including the March on Washington, and it has a large Black population. But DC has different rules than other cities: they don’t get the same city government structure, there’s no voting members of congress because they aren’t a state, and they don’t get control over their own budget because it’s a federal entity. All policies which disproportionately affect DC’s Black residents and help to uphold White supremacy. Resistance to DC statehood also comes from the same people who trashed the nation’s Capitol on Wednesday, as it would likely add two Democratic senators and chip away at Republican power. 
4. Speaking of parties, the two party system needs to go. We just had the highest turnout for a presidential election in a long time, and there are still tens of millions of people who didn’t bother to vote. Obviously there are many voting reforms that need to be made, including the restoration of voting rights to incarcerated individuals and policies that make voting easier and more secure without decreasing accessibility. I also think immigrants, who live here full-time and pay taxes, should be able to vote (no taxation without representation, anyone?). But I digress… The idea that every American can be separated by ideology into two parties is false. Especially when one party consists of White people, Candace Owens, and various 2000’s hip-hop artists, and the other party is less White people, but literally everyone else. Individuals have a much greater variety of opinions and funneling them into two parties enables the politics we see today. 
5. Congress is soooooo slow. Seriously, it’s been 3 days and 0 people have been held accountable for an attempted coup. Even Twitter banned the President before the House could hold a vote on impeachment. Get it together already. If BLM did this… I’ll leave it at that.