Source: United States Senator for Illinois Dick Durbin
WASHINGTON – On the first anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, spoke on the Senate floor regarding the anniversary of the insurrection and the continued threat to our democracy posed by Donald Trump’s “Big Lie.” During his speech, Durbin paid his respects to the law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol on that day.
“The videos don’t lie. The facts are the facts. Individuals are paying a criminal price and their lives will be changed because of their bad decision to leave a Trump rally and follow his instructions to come up to this building. That is the reality of what happened that day. But the grimmest reality was the death of five of our law enforcement officials who have been named and should be named every time we stand on this floor: Officer Brian Sicknick, Officer Howard Liebengood, Officer Jeffrey Smith, Officer Gunther Hashida, and Officer Kyle DeFreytag—and 140 other law enforcement officials who were assaulted, many of them seriously and still paying a price for that day in their lives when they stood in defense of us and defense of this building. That is the reality.”
Durbin continued, “If nothing more comes of this speech and commemoration today, I hope that all of us, regardless of our political persuasion—the most conservative Republican to the most progressive Democrat, independents in between, Black, white, and brown, men and women, rural, urban, across America—will finally come to an agreement on one thing: violence has no place in a democracy.”
Durbin concluded, “This is a sacred place. It is not sacred because I serve here or anyone else does. It’s sacred because it was built to be a symbol of this great nation. It was during the administration of a man from Illinois named Lincoln who completed the Capitol dome in the midst of the Civil War so that this building would always be a symbol of the unity of our nation and the promise of our nation. That symbol was desecrated on January 6. And now the question rises – will we summon the courage to come together and lead, to extend the opportunity to vote to more and more Americans, to make this democracy more complete and more just? Or will we step back and accept the verdict of history that we are going to go back in time instead of forward as a nation? I trust we’ll move forward… We are blessed to live in this country and we each bear a responsibility to its future.”
Video of Durbin’s remarks on the Senate floor is available here.
Audio of Durbin’s remarks on the Senate floor is available here.
Footage of Durbin’s remarks on the Senate floor is available here for TV Stations.
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