Lawmakers stood before the House late Thursday to tell their personal, often stunning accounts of the siege of the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, preserving for the record their own memories of the most violent domestic attack on Congress in the nation's history.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, led colleagues in the hourlong session days before the former president's impeachment trial, saying their stories need to be told at a time when some in Congress and the nation are trying to minimise the damage of January 6 and "move on."
"Sadly, this is all too often what we hear from survivors of trauma," said Ocasio-Cortez, who was criticised by detractors this week after sharing her own harrowing story of hiding that day, fearing for her life.
She said, "Twenty-nine days ago, our nation's Capitol was attacked. That is the big story. And in that big story lie thousands of individual accounts, just as valid and important as the other."
One by one, the Democratic lawmakers - no Republicans participated - shared their remembrances: seeing the hundreds of rioters massing outside the Capitol and hearing the taunts, screams and glass breaking. And then "the feeling," as Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn, put it, "of being trapped."
