Employees (Staffers) quietly carried the box containing the United States Electoral College votes to safety when armed invaders stormed our Capitol.
Media reporters who were offered no protection or cover of any kind from Federal agents retreated to safety and continued to tell the story and report the news of what was happening.
For hours, a coup was launched on our Constitution while police and the National Guard were nowhere in sight, and a largely white crowd freely and violently raided the Senate Hall. If these had been black or brown people they would surely have been killed. Police reaction was held at bay for hours while the mob persisted, authorized and emboldened by a President who instigated violence and invited fear in people who are desperate for hope by showering false promises and lies.
A leader (POTUS) has been failing and deteriorating in front of our eyes while his protective inner circle has protected and defended him, fanning the flames of his demagogy in front of the whole wide world.
In this blatant insurrection today, the heroes are the staffers. The leaders are aiding and abetting a despot and a ruler, telling lies about what is true, and defending their own interests at the expense of regular people. The ambition of these leaders has run amok and their self-interest has reigned supreme.
But the people at the front line are still doing what must be done.
Today, it has been the people who ushered Senators to safety. The unnamed Secret Service men and women who put their bodies in front of line of fire. Those who brought water and food to people in hiding for their safety. The janitors who swept up the glass shattered by the mob. The medical staff who tried to revive the dying. The reporters who found a way to tell the story and show us what was actually happening. The Senate staffers who carried those big boxes containing the votes to safety to avoid them being burned. Literally.
These are the real leaders who did what must be done when it really counted because it was their job and they chose to do the hard thing.
Out here in the rest of our nation, not at the Capitol, more heroes are putting in tracheotomy’s on COVID 19 victims who can no longer breathe. These heroes are going to work every day despite the risk to ensure that our power, our electric, our water, our food, and our emergency services are running amidst this pandemic. They are the parents teaching their kids while also doing their job from home. They have counted votes in dark rooms and tight quarters over and over again. They are the teachers calling students personally and trying to teach over Zoom. They are the court staffers hearing cases, the police supporting communities, the food harvesters, the cashiers at the grocery. They are the ones delivering food, shepherding the grief stricken, ministering the lost, and picking up garbage.
Would your staff do the right thing when it really matters?
Would they stand by real values and the common good when the decision they had to make was theirs alone and they had to choose now?
Thank you to the staffers, the ones who did the right thing today when it mattered, and the ones who show up and show up and show up.
You, the front line, are the leaders now.
You always have been.
