The FBI put out a call to the public to help identify the criminals involved in the chaotic coup d’etat insurgence at our nation’s Capitol on Wednesday. Very quickly the public and local news began providing names and more than enough evidence. They even got fun quotes from criminals who want to believe that they were mostly cosplaying revolution and not really staging a revolution. Of course, Lonnie Coffman, the 70-year-old Alabama man arrested with a gun and ton of ammunition as well as 11 Molotov cocktail devices “ready to go” in his truck seems belie that.
But whether you brought weapons or just broke into public officials’ offices while looting things and vandalizing in the name of “America,” you broke some very serious federal laws. Below are some of the arrests that have begun to get made after the strangely impotent national security response from Capitol Police and our government on Wednesday. On Thursday night, reports came out that Capitol police had made 14 arrests, none of which were residents of Washington, D.C. The Los Angeles Times reported that this has brought the total number of arrests—mostly for “curfew violations” and “unlawful entry”—up to 82 people. The Washington Post says that about half of those were charged with violations stemming from the actual assault on the Capitol building.
The Tennessean reports that “multiple Tennessee Republican House members’ homes and state offices” were searched for evidence by federal agents on Friday. A lot of Tennessee legislative staff members are being put on leave as they are investigated for their part in Wednesday crimes. …
On this day, 9 January 1973, Durban, South Africa, workers at the Coronation Brick and Tile factory came out on strike. By the end of March close to 100,000 mainly Black African workers, and approximately half the entire Black African workforce in Durban, had come out on strike. By the end of February the brickworkers had won a doubling of their wages, and the strike represented a turning point in South African struggles to build multiracial, integrated trade unions. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1626043217580822/?type=3
The heat wave is pushing the last of the spring weeds like the chickweed out in a hurry. The clover is very wilted but will recover as soon as it rains. We’ve accumulated at least four useless clothes racks over the years, so we’re putting them to good use as bean trellises this year.
