‘I Did Not Feel Safe’: How the insurrection at the Capitol affected D.C. essential workers

After pro-Trump insurrectionists fought their way into Congress and essentially shut the city down Wednesday, stories began emerging of restaurant workers, hotel, and hospital staff getting caught in the fracas. D.C.’s essential workers, it would seem, were once more put in danger. For the third time since the election, cohorts of Trump supporters, alt-right groups, and Proud Boys instigated violence in D.C., disrupting the lives of residents, before leaving the Capitol and surrounding area in disarray. One Washington Post reporter shared a firsthand account of Capitol food staff handing out boxed lunches of chicken and beef in the middle of the insurrection, while Congress members sheltered within the depths of the building. Meanwhile, essential staff on and near the Capitol grounds, many of them Black and Brown workers, were left to clean-up from the violence. By early Thursday morning, crews of National Park Service and Capitol employees were out collecting the discarded MAGA gear, beer cans, and other trash littered across the grounds of the National Mall.
- Adapted from a report by Colleen Grablick and Elliot C. Williams on DCist; photo WAMU/DCist / Daniella Cheslow

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