A black Michigan lawmaker came to the Capitol with an escort of armed black citizens, days after white protesters entered the building with guns and cries of “tyranny.”
Sarah Anthony, 36, is a Lansing area state representative and in 2018 became the first black woman elected to the Michigan legislature in her district.
Anthony said she wanted to highlight what she saw as the failure of capitol police to provide adequate security to legislators during an armed protest in the chambers above lawmakers.
One of Anthony’s constituents, a black firefighter, organized Wednesday’s capitol escort. While early reports focused on three black men with large rifles escorting Anthony, there were six participants, including two women, and some of them were armed with handguns, Lynn said. Five of the participants are black and one is Hispanic. Michael Lynn Jr, a Lansing resident, said he was frustrated to see his legislator being violently intimidated in her workplace. He said the escort was the first time he had ever chosen to openly carry his AR-15 rifle.
Lynn said he did not want to see a black woman who had been elevated to political office feeling threatened “because of the white supremacists in the yard” and wanted “to make sure that would never happen again”.
“Being a black and brown female Democrat in the capitol now is a dangerous job,” Lynn said. “This is an environment that Donald Trump has nurtured.”
This story can be seen at The Guardian.