Hi to our DC neighbors -- we know today may be really tough. Below is our note to our full supporter list about 1/6, but we wanted to acknowledge up top that this wasn’t just an attack on our democracy -- it was an attack on a city where real people, including many Indivisibles, live and work. All our love to you and yours.

Indivisibles,

This morning one year ago started out joyfully. The night before, Senators Warnock and Ossoff had pulled off a stunning joint upset to deliver a Democratic Senate, building on the decades-long work of Black and brown organizers to turn Georgia blue.

Within a few hours, the news from the Capitol had turned our joy into horror. MAGA militants who’d assembled in Washington had stormed the Capitol, at the explicit urging of Trump and some Republican officials, in a violent attempt to overturn the will of the people. They killed a Capitol Police officer and came terrifyingly close to killing many more. 

This was an attack on our democracy, but it’s important to recognize that it was also an attack on the city of Washington, D.C., and the people who live and work there. Thousands of people at the Capitol that day -- legislators, staffers, the workers who make the Hill run, reporters, and more -- endured a horrific trauma, one that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. We’re holding everyone who is suffering in our hearts today.

I recount what happened on January 6th because even now it can feel surreal to say it out loud. But it’s important to keep saying it.

There’s a very powerful impulse to respond to earth-shattering events by seeking a path back to normal. To treat January 6th as an anomaly, to reject or minimize or erase it. For many, it’s easier to pretend that it didn’t happen or that it wasn’t significant than it is to truly grapple with what it means. 

We see this in the Republicans who quite literally pretend that January 6th didn’t happen; the Republican leaders who’ve done everything they can to block investigations into what happened that day. But we also see it among our own friends. The hesitance to fully investigate and hold January 6th perpetrators accountable. The desire to write January 6th out of the narrative, to focus instead on a narrative about Washington working and life getting back to normal. To celebrate bipartisanship without ever recognizing the dangerous rot growing within the Republican party.

We have to be clear about what happened on January 6th, and what it means. MAGA militants assembled in Washington to violently disrupt the democratic transfer of power. They were egged on by the lies, and in some cases, the direct planning and encouragement, of Republican leaders. They are part of a political faction that quite simply does not believe in multiracial democracy. And while the mob was eventually dispersed on January 6th and the transfer of power proceeded later that night, the MAGA attack on democracy was only beginning. 

For the last year, Republican leaders and the MAGA faction have continued -- and expanded -- the fight. They’ve turned the Big Lie into an article of faith within the Republican party. They’re using this falsehood to attack our freedom of vote, introduce hundreds of election sabotage bills to control election outcomes, give partisans a blank check to harass voters at the polls, and attack election officials for doing their jobs. They’re part of a long and terrible history of the suppression of Black and brown voters that stretches back to the end of Reconstruction and the days of Jim Crow. They’re determined to take power by any means necessary.

But there are more of us than there are of them. We showed that in November 2020, when we voted Donald Trump out of office. And we can come together now to remind the nation of what happened on January 6th, and to demand the reforms needed to protect our democracy and the sacred right to vote.

That’s why tonight, Ezra and I, along with Indivisibles nationwide, will be joining a vigil for our democracy to remember January 6th and demand action to protect our democracy. 

Five years ago, a movement of people across the country came together because we understood that our democracy was under attack and that it would take all of us to fight back. We knew the stakes then, and we know them now. Today, we’ll stand together to observe the anniversary of this devastating attack -- and we’ll remind the nation that a better, fairer, and more inclusive democracy is possible if we fight for it.

In solidarity,
Leah Greenberg
Co-Founder, Indivisible