Happy new year! My read of the week feature is back in 2021 with a small change: It’s no longer “best” read of the week, but simply “read of the week,” as in: one particular piece that spoke to me, encouraged me, tapped into the zeitgeist of the moment. One piece out of many possibilities that I’d like to pass on to my friends.

This week, what a week in American politics. Out of the endless scroll of Twitter and the seemingly endless scroll of analysis, this article in Vox, “The catastrophic police failure at the US Capitol, explained,” digs into a basic question of January 6, 2021: How did a mob of Trump supporters break into the Capitol building, interrupting a joint session of Congress vital to ratifying the results of the 2020 election?

It was reported quickly and damningly and quotes Sabrina Karim, a Cornell government professor who studies policing and security.

“The police might have been complicit because many sympathize with President Trump’s cause, or because many of the insurrectionists are the same people that support the ‘blue lives matter’ counter-movement,” Karim said. “They have been supportive of the police, and thus arresting ‘allies’ may not be in the larger interests of the police.”

This Vox article and Karim’s bold statement about complicity helped me begin to sort through the riot on January 6 and the many revelations the day has started to uncover.

Image by Tony Hisgett, Creative Commons 2.0 license