By Lori Perkins
It’s January 6th. I have dreaded this anniversary.
This time last year my son and I were looking up the recipe to make a King cake, the annual Epiphany cake with the tiny statue of Jesus inside. We were all still pretty deep in pandemic hibernation, glad to usher in a new President and hoping that a vaccine was on the horizon.
There was some low buzz about the possibility of a demonstration by the MAGA horde to reverse the electoral votes, but I didn’t understand how rabid and large that online conspiracy theory universe was. Of course, now we know all too well.
We could all write articles about how frightening and surreal it was to watch domestic terrorism unfold in real time against our elected officials, and watch a woman shot and killed before our eyes in our national Capitol building, but that’s just playing a record with a scratch.
What surfaces now as I remember that day is how much more frightened I was than even watching the twin towers fall in 9/11, because on 9/11 I KNEW that attack was by foreign terrorists. I will never completely feel safe in America again.
But that is as it should be. When 9/11 happened a lot of people were saying that they couldn’t believe terrorism could happen in America, and I remember telling people who had never been outside this country that every other country in the world deals with terrorism every day. I remember the shock of seeing the covered trashcans outside of Harrods in London after a bombing.
We are not immune. We are not special. We are not entitled to democracy. If January 6 taught us nothing else, it should be that those of us who believe in democracy have to fight for every day by being educated about the issues and candidates, voting, contributing both money and time, and an understanding that this is a constant in our lives like work, and exercise, and sleep, if we are to remain a true democracy of the people.