"In a surreal scene of chaos and glee, hundreds of Trump loyalists roamed the halls, taking photos and breaking into offices."
"No police officers were in view. In a room where there were images of mountains and maps of Oregon on the wall, a man in a leather jacket ripped a scroll with Chinese characters. A young man put a framed picture of the Dalai Lama in his backpack. 'We’re claiming the House, and the Senate is ours,' a sweaty man in a checked shirt shouted, stabbing his finger in the air. Nearby in the first-floor Crypt, the heart of the Capitol building, the police appeared to be overwhelmed. One wiped tear gas from his eyes. When a man approached to ask where the bathroom was, he said softly, 'We just need you guys to get out of here safely.'... Another officer stood by a stairway, watching everything unfold and answering a few questions, including directing a woman to the bathroom. One protester came up to him and shouted in his face, 'Traitor!' When another man approached to apologize to the officer, the officer replied, 'You’re fine.' 'Everybody’s been OK today, except that guy,' he said, motioning to the yeller. Most of the crowd in the Crypt just milled around. A young man in a red Trump hat smoked a cigarette. Several men shouted and screamed. A man in a backpack with two American flags jumped underneath a chandelier, yelling, 'Whose house,' as the crowd answered, 'Our house.'"
The chant "Whose house/Our house" is very familiar to me from the Wisconsin protests in 2011, when opponents of the newly elected governor, Scott Walker, lay siege to the Wisconsin Capitol building (which looks a lot like the U.S. Capitol building):
The text at that video says:
That's In February, I was deeply moved by the fact that in spite of there being 13,000 Protesters at the Capitol, everyone was allowed to enter. I asked my girlfriend how this could be. She replied that the Capitol was "our House." When I returned from a road trip a couple weeks later I, and the rest of the public were all barred from entering Our House though lobbyists could enter without much problem. Walker had stolen the most profound Democratic feeling I've ever had. He had stolen Our House. The "Whose House? Our House!" chants outside Our House grew as did the crowds (to over 100,000). I felt moved to write this song....
