History Lesson: When Protestors Took Over Federal Buildings

John Rappoport
No More Fake News

CBS News, October 4, 2018: “Protesters opposed to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh took over a Senate office building on Thursday, with actresses Amy Schumer and Emily Ratajkowski among the demonstrators detained. The Senate will hold a procedural vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination on Friday, setting in motion a possible final vote on Saturday.”

“New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand addressed protesters, telling them, ‘This is a moment about all of you — all of you are speaking truth to power because you care about the future, you care about our children, you care about who is leading this country and who sits on the highest court in the land’.”

“Capitol police said about 300 people were detained. In a video shared widely on Twitter, Schumer said ‘I think we’re going to get arrested’.”

Women’s March tweeted: “We were planning to shut down the Capitol Building but the authorities were so scared of this #WomensWave that they shut it down for us. 1000+ women, survivors, and allies have gathered in the Hart Senate Building. Every hallway. Every floor.”

Very easy-going press coverage. No problem. No outrage. No accusations of Insurrection from the mainstream press.

It was a protest from the Left, covered by the Left. And the Capitol Police promptly shut down the original target: the Capitol Building. They didn’t lead the protestors INTO the Capitol, as they astonishingly did a few days ago, on January 6.

Here’s another item from 2018 on the same protest—ABC News: “Capitol Hill police said 128 people were arrested for ‘unlawfully demonstrating’ outside of senators’ offices and in the main rotunda of the Russell Senate Building. About half as many protesters were arrested for protesting Kavanaugh on Thursday.”

Ho-hum. Another day at the office. Not a word about “the desecration of our democracy.”

Now if you really want to revisit a chaotic moment in federal-building takeovers, let’s go back to 1954. The US House of Representatives Archives has an account:

“On March 1, 1954, while Members gathered on the House Floor for an upcoming vote, three men and one woman entered the visitor’s gallery above the chamber and quietly took their seats. All four belonged to the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and only hours earlier had traveled from New York City to Washington, DC.”

“The United States had annexed Puerto Rico in 1898, and the island’s relationship with the federal government had long been a point of contention. Some Puerto Ricans sought to maintain their relationship with the mainland, and others, like the four visitors in the House that day, argued for an independent Puerto Rico.”

“The Capitol had few security protocols at the time, and the four Puerto Rican nationalists entered the gallery armed with handguns. Around 2:30 p.m. they indiscriminately opened fire onto the House Floor and unfurled a Puerto Rican flag in a violent act of protest meant to draw attention to their demand for Puerto Rico’s immediate independence.”

“Five Congressmen were wounded in the shooting.”

“Members, House Pages, and police officers quickly helped detain three of the assailants outside the gallery, while the fourth escaped the Capitol and was apprehended later that afternoon.”

Joe Bartlett, a House Page at the time, recalls: “I had just had a bundle of bills and had just stepped out the center door, on my way to the Senate, with these bills. I heard what sounded like, a stack of folding chairs falling—these metal folding chairs…I turned around and ran right back into the chamber, and they were sorting out the casualties. They were scrambling in the gallery…it was a helter-skelter scene. I went down the center aisle, and as I went down the aisle, [Clifford] Davis of Tennessee was sitting there…Davis had been shot through the calf, and he had his foot up on the seat in front of him and holding both sides of a bullet wound…I walked right into the well, where poor Al [Alvin Morell] Bentley was stretched out there…the wound contributed to his early death years later. Bentley had been shot through the abdomen…Representative [Kenneth Allison] Roberts of Alabama probably suffered more, maybe longer than anyone. He was shot through the knee. And that bullet had come through the chair that Sam Rayburn, as the Minority Leader, had regularly sat in. Fortunately, Mr. Rayburn was not sitting there at that moment. The bullet shattered Roberts’ knee…Ben Jensen of Iowa was shot in the shoulder, and the bullet followed under his hide to his waist…”

The House of Representatives survived.

After what happened on January 6, 2021, Congress will survive.

So will the endless pompous posturing of the legislators and the press about the Capitol Building being “The People’s House.”

The squalid deals contrived and voted upon in that House have nothing to do with The People.

For the place to become The People’s House, a revolution would have to occur. I’m not talking about the January 6, 2021, false flag.

I’m talking about a vast decentralization of federal power, which would return the central government to its original role, as laid out in the Constitution.

In that revolution, individual liberty and freedom would be paramount. Again.

The main river of human history reveals a war for freedom has been fought from the beginning.

It is still being fought.

Pacified humanity is the disease.

We are the cure.

***
Jon Rappoport author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

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