‘This is the image I can’t forget’: Warren aide shares the impact on Black Hill staff of seeing the Confederate flag carried in Capitol
“We will keep marching forward. But for now, it’s OK to acknowledge that no, we are not OK.”
Josh Delaney watched in horror on Wednesday as the Capitol was stormed by a mob of Trump supporters, who breached the government building in a day of violence that left five people dead.
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Like many across the country, Delaney, who is the deputy legislative director for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, watched the assault on the Capitol unfold on television from home, fielding frantic messages from loved ones to assure them he was safe.
But seeing images emerging from the attack — in particular a photo of a man carrying a Confederate flag through the halls of the Capitol — Delaney recognized that he was not “OK.”
“This is the image I can’t forget,” he wrote on Twitter Thursday. “I’ve walked this hall 100s maybe 1000s of times w/pride & sense of duty around being a Black staffer in this space. But this message is loud & clear.”
https://twitter.com/jddelaney/status/1347180527657373700
Delaney shared more about his experience Wednesday in an op-ed for The Boston Globe.
“I feared for the safety of my colleagues and friends who were in the complex, as well as the thousands of staff — especially the Black and brown support workers — who dutifully keep the sprawling Capitol complex humming every day,” he wrote. “We never pass without a smile and sometimes a gentle nod that signals, ‘I see you, brother, I see you, sister.’ This exchange is spiritually familiar to every Black Hill staffer who is accustomed to going long stretches without seeing another Black face in their workday. I feared for them on Wednesday.”
Hill staffers are always working quietly in the “wings of history,” and seeing his colleagues flee the mob was “almost too much to watch.”
In his six years working for Warren, Delaney wrote that he’s always been proud to be both a part of her staff and to be Black within the “halls of power,” carrying a “profound sense of duty and responsibility to my community” with him in his work.
Seeing the Confederate flag carried proudly through the Capitol has shaken him, he shared.
“Historians have noted that not even during the Civil War did this violent symbol of white power and oppression penetrate the halls of our Capitol,” Delaney wrote in the Globe. “And yet, a white mob had successfully and violently ushered this hate into the bowels of Congress. The chilling contrast between these images and the images of violence used against mostly peaceful protesters for Black lives last summer was profound.”
Growing up in Georgia, he saw the flag on display at homes, stores, and restaurants multiple times a week, presenting him with the message of hate that he was not welcome, Delaney wrote.
“This was the first time I’d seen that message on display at my place of work,” he said. “I’ve walked the halls of Congress so often that I probably take for granted how my very presence in the building is a miracle — the result of years of hard-fought civil rights victories and justice work. And consequently, a threat to racists and white nationalists who wish to take us back to whenever they perceived America was ‘great.’”
Delaney expressed hope in his piece for the Globe that together, there will be healing from the trauma of the events of Jan. 6.
“We will get back to the quiet, important work of the nation,” he said. “We will keep marching forward. But for now, it’s OK to acknowledge that no, we are not OK.”
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