On Jan 6, a large group of protesters stormed the U.S Capitol building and broke in by storming security and getting past them.

In weeks leading up to this insurrection, Donald Trump had been urging his supporters to stop the certification of the election results. Then on Jan 6, a large group of Trump supporters assembled on the lawn of the capital, away from where Trump would soon speak near the White House. 

In this group of people, there were many members of the Proud Boys, which is a far-right, neo-fascist and male-only organization that promotes and engages in political violence in the U.S. 

After Trump began his speech, about 15 minutes in, he told the people attending the rally to walk down to the Capitol.

“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong,” Trump said.

Before his speech was over, the supporters began to head towards the capital

As the supporters arrived at the Capitol, there was already another group of Trump supporters, who became only more agitated when they saw the other group coming towards them. Not too long after this, a pipe bomb was found at the Republican National committee building, and not long after another device was found nearby.

Some of the crowd then began to harass officers guarding the barricades and began to get physical, others followed until they outnumbered the police and got into the buildings outer perimeter.

They continued getting past the police and eventually got to the doors on the west side of the building, and continued to breach the barricades. At this time, nobody inside the building had known about what was going on.

The crowd then broke into the building around 2:11 pm, and reached the stairs next to the senate chamber. The senate was called into recess. At this point, police were clashing with the mob in the building while at the same time the police inside the senate chamber were trying to lock all the doors.

After about three hours, the building was declared secure. During this time at the riots, four people lost their lives, including a police officer who was beaten by the rioters, a woman breaking in who was shot by the police, a man who died of a stroke, and a man who was crushed by fellow protesters.

In a recent Instagram live video from Feb. 1, congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recounted the experience and said, “I thought I was going to die.”

This was an incredibly sad day that did in fact result not only in laws being broken, but lives being lost. The FBI has been investigating, and has already caught over 90 people who broke in, and are still continuing the search. This day will go down in history, as something like this has never happened before. Moving forward, accountability and better security in federal buildings are key.  We must learn from this in order to move forward.