Former First Lady Michelle Obama called attention on Twitter Thursday to the racial disparities she said were present during the U.S. Capitol riot Wednesday.
The former first lady tweeted a statement, saying that after she woke up to news of Rev. Raphael Warnock's election victory in Georgia Wednesday, her "heart had fallen harder and faster" than she could remember.
"Like all of you, I watched as a gang -- organized, violent and mad they'd lost an election -- laid siege to the United States Capitol. They set up gallows. They proudly waved the traitorous flag of the Confederacy through the halls. They desecrated the center of American government," Obama wrote.
Obama compared the Wednesday riots in Washington to that of the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer, asking if the rioters would have been treated the same way by police had they "looked like the folks who go to Ebenezer Baptist Church every Sunday."
"Yesterday made it painfully clear that certain Americans are, in fact, allowed to denigrate the flag and symbols of our nation. They've just got to look the right way," Obama wrote.
Obama finished her statement saying that it's up to each individual American to repair what has been broken by reaching out and listening to one another.
"It will be an uncomfortable, sometimes painful process. But if we enter into it with an honest and unwavering love to our country, then maybe we can finally start to heal," Obama wrote.
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Calling it a “moment of great dishonor and shame for our nation,” former President Barack Obama called on Republican lawmakers one day prior to speak out against President Donald Trump after a group of his supporters stormed the United States Capitol.
The former president issued a statement on Wednesday, saying that the actions of the rioters are the “consequences” of the rhetoric used by Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, and said that Republicans and Democrats must work together to “restore a common purpose to our politics.”
On Wednesday, thousands of angry supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in a chaotic protest aimed at thwarting a peaceful transfer of power, forcing lawmakers to be rushed from the building and interrupting challenges to Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.
Both law enforcement and Trump supporters deployed chemical irritants during the hours-long occupation of the complex before it was cleared Wednesday evening.
Four people died, one of them a woman from San Diego who was shot and killed inside the Capitol. Three other people died after suffering “medical emergencies” related to the breach, said Robert Contee, chief of the city’s Metropolitan Police Department.
D.C. police said Thursday that 68 people were arrested, with 25 of those for curfew violations and unlawful entry on the Capitol grounds. Another eight were arrested for curfew violations near the Capitol, D.C. police said.
Capitol police said 14 were arrested, most for unlawful entry, including a man from Illinois.
