Whether you’re a democrat, a republican, an independent, or anywhere else on the political spectrum, there’s no denying that the attack on the capitol on January 6th was an attack on democracy. Watching people break into the capitol while capitol police officers stood by and watched, or seeing the lack of capitol police officers against an angry mob was honestly something incredibly worrying. In the United States, we often like to think of ourselves as a beacon of democracy to other parts of the world (which can also honestly be debated), yet there we were, watching an angry mob attempt and succeed in breaking into our capitol building. 

It’s safe to say that most Americans are aware of what happened on January 6th and why politics after has been a bit of a mess. It’s important though, to reflect on that day and go over what happened. On that day, the entirety of Congress was convened to vote to certify the votes of the electoral college, which would officially certify Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. As Congress was busy inside listening to each other’s opinions, Donald Trump was outside, at his very last MAGA rally. Trump, along with his other famous disciples, Rudy Giuliani and of course Donald Trump Jr., spoke to the crowd, telling them to defend their country and democracy. 

Just as he’s pushed the idea of voter fraud for the entirety of the election, he continued to push it during his speech. He questioned if Joe Biden was capable of receiving so many votes, he claimed that Democrats committed mass voter fraud and have done so for years, and he incited fear in his listeners when he said, “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Then, of course, his loyal followers marched right into the capitol, many of them armed, disrupted the senate, and went into the offices of officials like Nancy Pelosi. They stole things like lecterns, laptops, and random documents from official’s offices. In the midst of all the chaos, a few people died, including a police officer.

All of this has happened, and yet some Republicans still say we just need to move on. Ted Cruz wants us to move on. Lauren Boebert wants us to move on. Josh Hawley wants us to move on. We just witnessed an attack on our country, and our democracy, with little to no repercussions for the people that committed the crimes, yet they want us to move on? Didn’t they always claim to be the party of law and order? But suddenly law and order doesn’t matter, and we’re all supposed to forget and move on?

People were traumatized during this event. It is, in a way, traumatizing to the average American citizen to see their country so close to having democracy taken from them. It’s traumatizing to see people armed with weapons and zip ties breaking into some of the highest government offices. Yet we can’t even fathom how traumatizing this must have been for the senators, representatives, and the staff of these officials to have their safety directly infringed upon.

New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Instagram live on February 1st, giving a detailed account of her experience on January 6th. She claims a man came into her office yelling “Where is she?” and she hid behind her bathroom door. She genuinely believed she was going to die as she heard that man step into her office. Luckily it was a capitol police officer, yet he offered AOC and her staff little direction as to where to go for safety. She ran in her heels, unsure of if where she was going was even safe. 

She can’t be the only congressperson with this sort of story. Countless others hid in closets and barricaded the doors of their offices with nothing more than the chairs in their room. It’s incredibly disappointing to know that our elected officials did not have proper security or routes to safety.

The reason that we can not move on without addressing this is because of the fact that it was traumatizing, never should have happened in the first place, and because people should be facing consequences for inciting this violence. Donald Trump needs to be punished for the way he incited this. Ted Cruz needs to be expelled from Congress because of the way he enabled these violent protesters. Capitol police and the FBI need to be better organized, especially given the fact that right-wing groups had planned this attack for some time over social media. On top of all of this, we need a shift of energy in this country from division to some type of unity. Unity in our democracy is one of the most important and powerful parts of being an American; it’s best that we recognize the events on January 6th as a direct attack on that very democracy that we share.

To clarify, unity in our democracy doesn’t necessarily mean that we can just listen to people’s violent ideas and accept their harmful actions and just move on. This isn’t a call for unity in the sense that we should be accepting the people who violently stormed the capitol – these aren’t good people in any sense, and they don’t represent American ideals. There’s no way either side can reach unity with the other when one is so ready to break down something as fragile and sacred as democracy. To me, unity for the United States right now means coming together to make sure these people face consequences for the political violence they’ve incited, and that the people who broke into the capitol, vandalized it, and stole from it, face the repercussions that they deserve. 

We can’t witness this and pretend like it’s not a problem. This is political violence – political violence that we’ve seen happen in other countries and never imagine it could be us, yet here we are. While it’s no surprise to most that America isn’t perfect, this insurrection truly revealed the ugly underbelly of the American mind. Whether through protesters at the capitol, or the way some have refused to treat it like a serious problem, America’s most ashamed parts have been exposed. 

We need change in America – deep, structural change that will uproot us and plant us in a better place. To start with this change, we need the government to properly address what happened on January 6th, and we need them to actually do something about it.