Con­cerns about COVID-19’s delta vari­ant led to a late change to the for­mat for Net­roots Nation, the annu­al gath­er­ing of pro­gres­sive lead­ers that NPI par­tic­i­pates in every year. Rather than being held in a hybrid for­mat as orig­i­nal­ly planned, with an in-per­son com­po­nent in Wash­ing­ton D.C., the con­fer­ence is tak­ing place exclu­sive­ly online, with atten­dees gath­er­ing vir­tu­al­ly via Socio and Zoom.

One of the ini­tial ses­sions at this year’s con­fer­ence was a fea­tured pan­el mod­er­at­ed by Melis­sa Ryan that exam­ined the last­ing attacks of the Jan­u­ary 6th attack on the Unit­ed States Capi­tol by a ter­ror­ist mob incit­ed by Don­ald Trump.

Ten months have passed since that awful day, and it remains trau­mat­ic for many peo­ple who only viewed it from a dis­tance on tele­vi­sion or social networks.

But there are those for whom the impacts rever­ber­ate even stronger, for whom it isn’t an event they can push aside — and that is the thou­sands of peo­ple, from ser­vice work­ers to mem­bers of Con­gress, who work on the Hill every day.

The pan­el, gath­er­ing to dis­cuss these effects and how our nation can move for­ward from this attack, con­sist­ed of Sarah Groh, Chief of Staff for Con­gress­woman Ayan­na Press­ley; Ted Lieu, U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Cal­i­for­ni­a’s 33rd Dis­trict; Sarah Iddris­su, Chief of Staff to Con­gress­man Jamaal Bow­man: and Matthew Fuller, Senior Pol­i­tics Edi­tor at the Dai­ly Beast.

All four pan­elists were present on the Hill when a vio­lent mob, incit­ed by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, laid siege on our nation’s Capitol.

“I want to make plain,” said Groh, “that these threats are persistent.”

The dis­cus­sion start­ed with each pan­elist recount­ing their expe­ri­ences before, dur­ing, and after the event.

“I was enraged that there was no trans­porta­tion plan,” said Iddris­su, describ­ing a moment fol­low­ing the attack with a woman who had no means to go home aside from tak­ing the bus, despite the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty the attack posed on staff mem­bers. “The lack of pro­tec­tion that our staff and ser­vice work­ers felt reverberates.”

Those vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties were sec­ond­ed by Fuller, who was one of the last peo­ple to be evac­u­at­ed. While the sto­ries of mem­bers of Con­gress have been wide­ly report­ed, the lack of sup­port and pro­tec­tion was keen­ly felt by the cus­to­di­ans, food work­ers, and ser­vice work­ers on the Hill, who, in his words: “don’t have the perch or priv­i­lege to make their sto­ries known.”

Fuller gives tours of the Capi­tol, and talked about how jar­ring it was to come to work every day with glass still shat­tered, and blood still on the floor for weeks fol­low­ing the attack. It was “like liv­ing and work­ing in a crime scene,” he said.

Lieu, who was in Can­non House when the attack occurred, described the moment he real­ized the nature of the attack.

“Not only was this mob attack­ing Capi­tol Hill, they were incit­ed to do so by the then-Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States,” he said.

It was then he and his col­leagues start­ed draft­ing the arti­cles of impeachment.

“The then-Pres­i­dent was still going to be in office until Jan­u­ary 20th. We [did­n’t] know what oth­er crazy things he was going to do.”

In addi­tion to the trau­ma of work­ing in this envi­ron­ment, secu­ri­ty on the Hill has been upgrad­ed too. Mem­bers of Con­gress like Lieu are now giv­en ²⁴⁄₇ secu­ri­ty by Capi­tol Police, mea­sures that weren’t seen as nec­es­sary before.

While all pan­elists expressed a per­sis­tent feel­ing of a lack of safe­ty on the grounds, they stressed that this threat was dou­bly so for peo­ple of col­or on the Hill.

“It was white suprema­cy and trib­al­ism that attacked our iden­ti­ties, not just the Capi­tol,” Iddris­su said.

Ryan then asked the pan­elists how they approach what their staff needs in terms of support.

Iddris­su said that nor­mal­iz­ing men­tal health was nec­es­sary in con­tin­u­ing to work in a site of ongo­ing trau­ma. “We need to be nor­mal­iz­ing ther­a­py in our workspaces.”

Groh added that account­abil­i­ty was “crit­i­cal” fol­low­ing these attacks.

Though many, includ­ing Press­ley, drew com­par­isons to the attacks to Sep­tem­ber 11th, 2001, Groh expressed con­cern that the pub­lic nar­ra­tive was­n’t address­ing the issue with the grav­i­ty it deserved. She not­ed that for her and oth­er mem­bers of Press­ley’s staff, these sorts of threats were not new.

Ryan then asked Fuller how real­is­tic it was to expect reporters to remain objec­tive. Fuller described a shift in the land­scape of jour­nal­ism fol­low­ing the attacks–where before, there seemed to be an expec­ta­tion for reporters to prac­tice neu­tral­i­ty and objec­tiv­i­ty, that pres­sure has shifted.

“You won’t see peo­ple quot­ing [peo­ple like] Josh Haw­ley with­out acknowl­edg­ing their role,” he said. For him, part of the work of account­abil­i­ty was this sea change in the work of the press to be hon­est, and acknowl­edge the dam­ages caused by these events.

The pan­el then moved onto what account­abil­i­ty should look like in Congress.

Lieu empha­sized his­toric account­abil­i­ty — this was one of the rea­sons he and his col­leagues draft­ed arti­cles of impeach­ment. In addi­tion to being “the right thing to do,” this action gives per­ma­nent record that a for­mer Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States incit­ed an insur­rec­tion on the Nation’s most hal­lowed grounds.

He also stressed polit­i­cal account­abil­i­ty through the bal­lot box, mak­ing sure that Democ­rats win midterms. And final­ly, he said there must be account­abil­i­ty through some of the com­mit­tees that have been set up.

At the time of the record­ing, the Jan­u­ary 6th Com­mit­tee is con­tin­u­ing to inves­ti­gate the insur­rec­tion, call­ing wit­ness­es, to even­tu­al­ly present a “fuller pre­sen­ta­tion to the Amer­i­can peo­ple to make sure this nev­er hap­pens again.”

Ryan then asked the pan­elists about staff mem­bers work­ing along­side mem­bers who were part of the efforts to incite the attack.

“Those who had a role [in the attack] do not have an inter­est in gov­ern­ing,” said Groh. “They don’t spend their days in com­mit­tees or intro­duc­ing bills.”

Iddris­su added that the actions of Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress beyond the insur­rec­tion con­tin­ue to con­tribute to a hos­tile work environment.

“Lit­tle things like not wear­ing a mask, or pre­tend­ing to cough as a joke […] that make it impos­si­ble to work with peo­ple who don’t care for the well­ness of our coun­try,” she said.

Both Lieu and Iddris­su acknowl­edged that Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress seemed to be exist­ing in a dif­fer­ent real­i­ty alto­geth­er, one where the events on Jan­u­ary 6th isn’t a big deal. Lieu said this sort of incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty did­n’t exist dur­ing his nine years in the Cal­i­for­nia State Leg­is­la­ture pri­or to his tenure in Con­gress, and it’s only in the last four years that this style of Repub­li­can­ism has emerged.

“We would work with the same set of facts,” he said. “But when some­one tells you an apple is actu­al­ly a banana, you can’t work with that person.”

But despite the dour depic­tion of the dynam­ics inside the Capi­tol, the pan­elists expressed opti­mism and hope for the future.

Ryan not­ed more and more offi­cials hold­ing white suprema­cist, patri­ar­chal, and xeno­pho­bic views are fill­ing leg­isla­tive seats in states across Amer­i­ca, before ask­ing: “Can democ­ra­cy sur­vive if the things that are hap­pen­ing in the halls of Con­gress are also hap­pen­ing in state halls across country?”

The answer across the board was a resound­ing yes.

Lieu acknowl­edged the impor­tance of draft­ing con­gres­sion­al maps, and cit­ed numer­ous instances where mea­sures of account­abil­i­ty have held strong or been suc­cess­ful, such as the Mueller report.

These, he said, are proof that our democ­ra­cy may still hold.

Groh said that it was impor­tant that we acknowl­edge the facts of the event — that we con­tin­ue to call the insur­rec­tion exact­ly what it was: “an infil­tra­tion by orga­nized and vio­lent white supremacists.”

Iddris­su agreed that this attack was not new — indeed, events in our his­to­ry, from slav­ery to Tul­sa, to the ongo­ing threats of police bru­tal­i­ty against Black peo­ple, Latine peo­ple, Native peo­ple, and Asian Amer­i­cans are part of our nation’s story.

Through­out the dis­cus­sion, pan­elists men­tioned an accu­mu­la­tion of aggres­sions, from the paint­ings depict­ing vio­lence against Indige­nous peo­ple in the halls of Con­gress, to the white suprema­cist rhetoric present online, that sug­gest and under­cur­rent of the sen­ti­ments that moti­vat­ed the attacks. But by acknowl­edg­ing this, the pan­elists seemed to say, we can con­tin­ue to hold our nation accountable.

Fuller, who works as a jour­nal­ist, added that his pro­fes­sion needs to pro­vide ongo­ing scruti­ny of Repub­li­can can­di­dates going forward.

“If you’re a Repub­li­can,” he asks, “what’s moti­vat­ing you to run for office? Are you try­ing to fix things, or are you going along with the Trump narrative?”

The pan­elists round­ed off its dis­cus­sion by empha­siz­ing the need to ele­vate ser­vice work­ers and vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple who make up the Capi­tol staff.

While there is a lot of uncer­tain­ty, and every­one is till recov­er­ing from a trau­ma that will clear­ly take time to heal, the mes­sage is clear that as long as there are mem­bers of Con­gress and jour­nal­is­tic integri­ty to com­bat this white suprema­cist vio­lence, there is opti­mism for the future.

“I look for­ward to the day when I can look at the E front door and say “that’s the East front door — that’s where the Pres­i­dent walks through,” said Fuller.