Capitol riot casts pall over State House, Baker signs police reform bill
Photo | Sam Doran/SHNS
Sen. Sonia Chang-Díaz
On her way into work this morning, Sen. Sonia Chang-Díaz thought about what pieces of furniture she could use to barricade her office door in the event of an emergency like the one that unfolded in the U.S. Capitol building yesterday.
"What could we physically move that would hold this door shut?" Chang-Díaz told the News Service on Thursday. "And our first floor window would not be hard for someone to scale into that, just thinking about all of the vulnerabilities in particular, I mean I was distraught yesterday."
The events, chaos, and deaths that unfolded in Washington Wednesday hung over Massachusetts' own seat of government like a dark cloud — casting a pall on almost every proceeding that took place in the State House on Thursday. After a ceremonial bill signing for police reform legislation on Thursday, Chang-Díaz said her staff is feeling "reverberated vulnerability."
"Seeing those images of Confederate flags being paraded through the halls of the Capitol in a way that never even happened during the Civil War, it's sobering, it's really sobering and it shakes you," she said.
As reporters, lawmakers, and staff made their way to their offices on Beacon Hill, it was not lost on anyone that they were walking into a building that functions similar to the U.S. Capitol. While the political temperature of Massachusetts is significantly cooler than Washington, many State Houses across the country have increased security following Wednesday's violent events.
Rep. Russell Holmes, a Boston Democrat, said he was thinking on his way in this morning how if those surging the Capitol building were people of color, law enforcement "would have stopped Black people, who are Black Lives Matter protesters, or whatever, long before they got to those steps."
"To me again, as we sign the police reform bill today, it just shows a disparity of how folks treat Black people and white people," he told the News Service on Thursday.
Chang-Díaz put it more bluntly, "Dead, they would have been dead, bodies everywhere. There's no doubt in my mind."
While events were unfolding in Washington, Senate President Karen Spilka was giving her inaugural address to the Senate after being reelected for the 2021-2022 legislative session. She said on Thursday that she was "horrified" when she got back to her office and found out what was happening.
"Then last night, I think probably all of us went home and were glued to the TV to watch the horrors of what was going on," she said.
Wednesday's swearing-in ceremonies of Massachusetts lawmakers, which followed a 16-hour overnight session packed with legislating, were "the way our government should run. As I said in my speech too, good government matters. It matters for the people of our Commonwealth."
Sen. William Brownsberger said he is looking forward to Jan. 20 -- the day that President Donald Trump leaves office in accordance with the U.S. Constitution.
"I think we have someone with a big megaphone who is completely reckless and has no regard for the truth and is only concerned about preserving his own place in the world," he said. "He does enormous harm every day. This is just the latest consequence of his recklessness with words."
In a statement, Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr called the events that unfolded in Washington "violent lawlessness" and condemned both the acts and inspirations for the breaching of the Capitol building.
"Peaceful and purposeful acts of protest will have, and should always have, an important core function in the people's ability to express their wants, needs, and hopes," the statement said. "In contrast, the marauding and mayhem, fueled by misleading and inflammatory rhetoric, that took place yesterday, at the very location where President-elect Biden will raise his hand to swear an oath to protect the Constitution, was instead, a debasement of that document and its principles."
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