PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Activists gathered in Park Square on Friday to say "never again" on the two-year anniversary of the U.S. Capitol insurrection.

 

On Jan. 6, 2021, supporters of former President Donald Trump breached the House chambers attempting to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College vote and the election of Joseph Biden.

 

Shirley Edgerton, a local community organizer, said she is deeply concerned about the right-wing faction under the leadership of the former president and is even more concerned about their actions.

 

"It was horrendous. It wasn't another country attacking us. It wasn't an outside organization. It was Americans attacking our congressional home. Americans. Do you understand what I'm saying? Americans. Americans attacking us. How destructive can that be?" she said about the attack.  

 

"And the leadership started with the former president. Get it right, former president. It started there, the denial, the divisiveness, the deceit, the lack of integrity, and that's what we're experiencing."

 

Edgerton was one of two speakers at the noontime event organized by the Four Freedoms Coalition. State Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier also spoke on behalf of local legislators.  Around 20 people attended to hold signs in support American democracy.

 

NAACP President Dennis Powell feels that the current events in Washington, D.C., mimic those of two years ago. The current  three-day stalemate over the House speaker vote lead by a small group of Republicans is paralyzing the legislative branch of the government. (The House adjourned until 10 p.m. on Friday after GOP leader Kevin McCarthy failed to secure the 218 votes for speaker after 13 ballots.)

 

"It's Jan. 6 all over again. The difference is the mob is inside the chambers instead of outside trying to get in. They're inside," Powell said. "It's a continuation of Jan. 6 so that's why we really need to be aware of it, be mindful of what's going on around this and until we, the people start taking charge, things are not going to get any better."

 

Farley-Bouvier recounted her attendance at former President Bill Clinton's inaugural festivities nearly 30 years ago, which was far different from the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

 

"At one moment I had this realization, and I really do think about it often, that we were experiencing at that moment a peaceful transfer of power.  A peaceful transfer of power when the outgoing president and the incoming president drove together in the same car down Pennsylvania Avenue," she said.

 

"There were no guns involved, there was no storming of a capitol, there was no helicopter ride to an undisclosed location because somebody had to get their family out and we hear about that all the time across the world, but not here in our country."

 

At this time, Farley-Bouvier thought to herself how lucky she was to live in a country where this was the reality -- even though she did nothing to earn it.

 

"But what I didn't realize at the time was people work so hard for this right to be in this country and this privilege to be in this country," she added. "I didn't get that at all."

 

On the day of the insurrection, she and her colleagues were sworn into office for the 192nd biannual session of the Massachusetts Legislature.

 

"And we were at the same time starting to hear about these crazy things that were happening at another capitol and we didn't really get it and I couldn't help but to go back to that day 28 years before and realize that not only did people work before us, decades, centuries ago, but we have to work every day to preserve democracy," Farley-Bouvier said.

 

"Democracy is fragile. Democracy is not given to us by God but rather something that God has given us as an opportunity, and that we have to work for it and in order to preserve this right, we have to hold each other and especially our elected officials to account to get to the truth of what happened and hold the people responsible to account because nobody, nobody is above the law in the United States of America."

 

Sherwood Guernsey has retired from the law but said he has committed himself to protecting democracy in ways that he can. He said that the key is to elect people who will abide by the rule of the people, not deny elections.

 

"Otherwise, our democracy is lost," Guernsey added.

 

"And so we need to have groups that stand up and promote that and say to everybody, you've got to join with us in this and you've got to get out and work to make sure that people vote for people who will actually represent them and not deny elections."

 

Retired Pittsfield Public Schools counselor Marietta Rapetti Cawse said many people marched in support of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms in 2017 at the time of Trump's election: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear.

 

"Those things are timeless and prevail and we need justice," she explained. "So it's very important to me to defend democracy, to defend our four freedoms, to defend our right to vote as a woman, to defend our choice, to end any slavery in any form, so I'm here because I believe democracy must prevail."

 

As of December, approximately 900 individuals have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including more than 280 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement. The investigation remains ongoing.

 

A Pittsfield man, David Lester Ross, 33, arrested in Washington on Jan. 6 and charged the next day with curfew violation and unlawful entry.  Another Pittsfield man has been sentenced to prison for involvement on that day and a North Adams man was sentenced to three years of probation.