It's nice to read an honest account of a J6'er. I think history will show there was a small minority of violent bad actors and a lot of people who got caught in the moment but were not trying to do anything other than show their support for Trump. I think the Biden administration has cynically and despicably exploited J6 for political purposes without any regard for the lives of the people present. A compassionate justice system would have let most of these people off with probation.
This was fantastic, Zaid. I'm independent, but have been sympathetic to the "common" Jan 6 attendee. I'm curious how more left-leaning readers will process the piece. Compassion and empathy is severely lacking in today's political discourse. I hope this newsletter/site is successful and helps to ease the polarization.
Not a paid subscriber yet, but if this is indicative of the content you will be offering, I will soon be a subscriber. Excellent post and close to my heart: I work in criminal defense in Orange County and defended an Orange County J6er. I lean into the conservative side and will be voting for Trump this time around (for my 1st time), but I also have an inside view of the so-called justice system and it's not what most people think it is. Denean is correct: We desperately need criminal justice reform just not the way the left is doing it.
"MacAndrews said that during her short foray into the Capitol, she never saw any violence and was actually surprised to hear about it later."
&
"She truly believed that she was allowed to enter the Capitol that day because no one stopped her. And she was willing to go to trial for it."
Gonna have to stop you there Zaid. It's one thing to hear a person's side of the story but to fail to challenge irregularities between her view and that of the charges she was found **guilty of** is a disservice to all your readers.
"If she did not know at that time her presence on Capitol grounds was unlawful,
her awareness must have been stronger when she clambered over dismantled bike racks and
snow fencing even closer to the Capitol building with their own “Area Closed” signs."
"If, after seeing those signs, she did not know her presence was unlawful after those signs, then surely she knew she was unlawfully present when she encountered a line of armored Metropolitan Police
Department (“MPD”) officers marching past Capitol Police officers guarding the Capitol
building behind bike racks affixed, again, with “Area Closed” signs."
"Assuming, for sake of argument, that she still did not know she was not permitted on
Capitol grounds or in the Capitol building, she must have known when she arrived to the Upper
West Terrace and met four individuals she testified she knew to have been pepper sprayed. Or,
to enter the realm of the fabulist, perhaps it was only when she entered the Capitol through a
broken door, an emergency siren blaring. These signs, and others detailed below, undoubtedly
endowed MacAndrew with the knowledge that her presence and protest in the Capitol was
unlawful. Nevertheless, she remained."
=========
So she navigated bike racks and other obstacles and entered the Capitol through a broken door with a siren blaring, but believed she had the right to enter?
She never saw any violence, despite taking photos of people who were pepper sprayed and even "covered her face with her scarf because, she admitted in her testimony, she was worried about encountering pepper spray."
Zaid, I'm sure there is a case to be made about how being in prison was an eye-opening experience. But you completely blew it by failing to have a critical eye.
I think these are all fair points to draw in the story, and I did take a look at how she was actually charged and sentenced, and I agree with you there's no reason to think that her charge was unfair based on her conduct. However, the main reason I described her state of mind as she explained it was because I needed to explain why she didn't take a plea deal, as a very large number of similarly situated people did.
Zaid, in the interest of balance, you might consider a story on the law used to prosecute J6’ers? It stems from Enron collapse in late 2001. Was it judicial gymnastics to use this law aimed at white collar crime against those entering the Capital? Why was MacAndrews (and other non violent J6’s) not charged with just Trespassing?
Can’t tell from your piece if MacAndrews was jailed over obstruction or not. Can see the link to the judicial code however and I think she was? : 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(G)
At any rate, recent SCOTUS ruling seems to imply that if J6’s were not trying to impede the vote count, they can’t/shouldn’t be charged and jailed under obstruction charge.
Perhaps at this point, MacAndrews doesn’t care about this any longer. Because point of your story (and hers) is she would not be the changed individual she is, without being incarcerated (regardless of whether charge was just). She made lemonade out of lemons and that is the greater lesson for all of us to heed.
He was telling her story. This piece was from her perspective. Nowhere did he offer any opinion on her guilt or innocence. You missed the entire point of this article
A few items of MacAndrew’s story behind bars that stood out to me. First and perhaps most important was the emotional support the women prisoners offered each other. As a man, I can recall boot camp and later deployments where similar caring occurred because we were all ‘in this together’.
But does this occur among men prisons in similar circumstances? Seems like women having this organic support behind bars can be a literal lifeline.
The second was the guards not looking prisons in the eye, and dehumanizing effect on the incarcerated. Is this the guards actually protecting themselves? Hard job, perhaps emotionally draining if guards were to ‘care’ too much.
Zaid, thanks for your essay and reminding us to our shared humanity.
While in FCI Dublin, I talked with a kind prison employee about the dehumanization and how this was the hardest part for me. He explained that staff have access to inmate records and all of the charges they have been convicted of, many of which are truly heinous. He said that staff are often (understandably) repulsed by these acts and become hardened to all inmates, regardless their charges. He explained that it was a protective mechanism. That made sense to me, but didn't make the dehumanization behaviors by staff any less demoralizing.
If we want our system to focus on rehabilitation, as we purport, we need to see the inherent potential in inmates, acknowledge and build on their strengths and give them opportunities to shine. Locking them down, giving them no opportunities for growth or hope for the future, treating them as subhuman "others," then releasing them back into society is a multi-ingredient recipe for failure.
Oh god, I’ve been exposed! Exposed to extreme ideas!! Ahhhhg!!!! Too funny. As if an idea could ever be dangerous…
Good on you for making the attempt.
This is intended as helpful feedback: the piece could use some more editing. There are numerous grammatical issues and it sounds quite apologetic re: our subject’s motivations for joining the protests and finding herself inside the building. Stick to the facts, report on the stated motivation if offered, but your unnecessary appeal to innocent motivation here comes off as obvious spin and will tend to chase away potential subscribers before they get to your point.
Interesting piece. The subject sounds like a decent person capable of self -reflection and personal growth. I hope she lands in a better place. I am curious, however, if she now realizes that she was lied to and manipulated by the President she placed her trust in. Does she realize that the President she traveled to support used and victimized her and that he belongs anywhere BUT the White House?
It’s funny that you perceive her as victimized by Trump. She was arrested and sent to jail for walking into a building and taking video. That wasn’t Trump’s doing.
I perceive her and some of the others as having been duped by Trump and the right wing media sphere, which has essentially brainwashed weak-minded people. I don’t think it’s their fault that they lack critical-thinking skills. No one calling themselves a president or a news source should be spreading the kind of lies that have a decent likelihood of being perceived as a call to action by weak-minded people. It’s predatory. I do not consider the people who committed violence or engaged in vandalism to be victims, however. They knew they were committing crimes.
I agree that those who engaged in violence and vandalism should be jailed but I also think that those that did neither should not be jailed. There’s plenty of brainwashing on both sides of the so called “media sphere”, don’t you think?
I am curious about your perception that they were duped by Trump. In what way? Do you mean generally or more specifically?
Yes to prison reform. This story is representative of what happens when you lose your social and family anchors. The disintegration of people’s social networks demonstrate how fragile mental health is and anyone can be caught up in something when they are unmoored from community; but it’s hard to take at face value the idea that someone with a masters in neuroscience failed to grasp what was actually going on that day.
Thank you for this story, and I use the word "story" intentionally. I'm reminded of a comment about making films by documentarian Ken Burns. “When you make films advocating a particular point of view then you’ve got an agenda. You’ve already become an argument and all we do is argue. The only thing that changes people is storytelling."
A conservative not caring one bit about a systemic problem until it impacts them directly is not a feel good story. It simply highlights that this woman, like many conservatives, is a narcissist with no empathy whatsoever.
"For years, MacAndrews had adopted the attitude that people like those she was incarcerated with were deserving of little sympathy. She hand long believed that if you don’t want to do the time, just don’t do the crime. But that all changed once she was there herself"
Maybe what you think is lack of empathy or sympathy is actually her belief that the prisoners were actually guilty of prison worthy crimes and that they would learn from appropriate consequences of incarceration. What she learned from being sent to prison was that the criminal justice system is far from perfect and that it can be and is used for purposes other than justice.
From an outside observer (I.e. non US) who has consumed some content about criminal justice reform in the US, it seems to me that the best way of achieving reform is cross-party. Perhaps it’s cynical but, for the purposes of achieving reform, does it really matter why individuals or groups support it, provided it happens? There has clearly been a missed opportunity here by criminal justice reform advocates but, it may not have gone altogether. Eyes on the prize?
Context is always essential - and, for those criticizing the story on the assumption it is too soft on the protagonist, let’s consider what happened to the BLM/Floyd in 2020 - despite the violence and inflicting, literally billions of dollars worth of damage (much of it on small businesses owned by ethnic minorities), to my knowledge, virtually no one was arrested or sentenced to jail or prison. In my city (thankfully, in a red state where law and order is still valued), police stood by and watched while rioters took over an upscale mall and plundered the Apple store along with others - millions of dollars of theft and damage, for which no one was held accountable. When the left starts focusing on the injustice of those episodes, I will be a lot more amenable to hearing about the gravity of the nonviolent January 6 protesters’ offenses.
"virtually no one" Over 14,000 people across the U.S were arrested for the George Floyd riots, including hundreds who were sentenced to federal prisons for crimes like arson, looting, assault, inciting a riot, etc. Law enforcement took the Floyd rioters seriously, they were not treated differently from J6 rioters. Read this: https://apnews.com/article/records-rebut-claims-jan-6-rioters-55adf4d46aff57b91af2fdd3345dace8
I'm aware the focus of the story is on prison reform. But given it spends an inordinate amount of time on MacAndrews's story, it is strange to me that you give so much airtime to her claims about her actions on January 6 and don't spend any time discussing what the indictment and her conviction proved she actually did. For example, she claims she "truly believed that she was allowed to enter the Capitol that day because no one stopped her." But as the judge's opinion in her case laid out, she passed strewn fencing with "Area Closed" signs on the ground. She clambered over bike racks and fencing with the help of another person, with the same "Area Closed" signs on the bike racks she climbed over. Then she marched past police officers also standing next to those signs. She then entered through a broken door with emergency sirens blaring. As the judge laid out, "These signs, and others detailed below, undoubtedly endowed MacAndrew with the knowledge that her presence and protest in the Capitol was unlawful." She herself testified that she saw people climbing the walls, not being "let in", when at trial. She took photos of people being pepper sprayed, hardly a sign of being let in. She herself worried about being pepper sprayed, she testified. She saw rioters confronting police, and stayed in, going down a different hallway. She came across chemical spray and rioters yelling "they're gassing us", and turned back, and continued to film from inside the building anyways.
Her story doesn't add up in many other ways, either, as the judge pointed out. She "estimated she [sic] about eight minutes in the building, filming footage that she was eager to share online." I thought that was an oddly precise time; that's because she didn't "estimate" it, it's what her own video footage shows, since she filmed her entry into the sirens-blaring, off-hinges door and her time in the Capitol.
She then testified in ways that are laughable. She claimed in court that she "did not know" who was using the pepper spray, then wrote on Twitter that police were pepper spraying people.
This is not to speak to the rest of the piece, but to flag that perhaps there's more to the story than what other commenters are calling this "common" Jan 6 attendee. If this is a common attendee, i.e. a nonviolent one, fair enough. But to say this was an attendee who had no idea they were doing something wrong...well, the court rejected that, in a trial with all the evidence laid out, and mountains of evidence contradicting her claims.
It's nice to read an honest account of a J6'er. I think history will show there was a small minority of violent bad actors and a lot of people who got caught in the moment but were not trying to do anything other than show their support for Trump. I think the Biden administration has cynically and despicably exploited J6 for political purposes without any regard for the lives of the people present. A compassionate justice system would have let most of these people off with probation.
Large numbers of people who do much worse are let off without charges at all, provided their situations have different partisan ramifications.
This was fantastic, Zaid. I'm independent, but have been sympathetic to the "common" Jan 6 attendee. I'm curious how more left-leaning readers will process the piece. Compassion and empathy is severely lacking in today's political discourse. I hope this newsletter/site is successful and helps to ease the polarization.
Not a paid subscriber yet, but if this is indicative of the content you will be offering, I will soon be a subscriber. Excellent post and close to my heart: I work in criminal defense in Orange County and defended an Orange County J6er. I lean into the conservative side and will be voting for Trump this time around (for my 1st time), but I also have an inside view of the so-called justice system and it's not what most people think it is. Denean is correct: We desperately need criminal justice reform just not the way the left is doing it.
"MacAndrews said that during her short foray into the Capitol, she never saw any violence and was actually surprised to hear about it later."
&
"She truly believed that she was allowed to enter the Capitol that day because no one stopped her. And she was willing to go to trial for it."
Gonna have to stop you there Zaid. It's one thing to hear a person's side of the story but to fail to challenge irregularities between her view and that of the charges she was found **guilty of** is a disservice to all your readers.
Let me introduce the court records to this discussion, https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2021cr0730-59:
It says:
=========
"If she did not know at that time her presence on Capitol grounds was unlawful,
her awareness must have been stronger when she clambered over dismantled bike racks and
snow fencing even closer to the Capitol building with their own “Area Closed” signs."
"If, after seeing those signs, she did not know her presence was unlawful after those signs, then surely she knew she was unlawfully present when she encountered a line of armored Metropolitan Police
Department (“MPD”) officers marching past Capitol Police officers guarding the Capitol
building behind bike racks affixed, again, with “Area Closed” signs."
"Assuming, for sake of argument, that she still did not know she was not permitted on
Capitol grounds or in the Capitol building, she must have known when she arrived to the Upper
West Terrace and met four individuals she testified she knew to have been pepper sprayed. Or,
to enter the realm of the fabulist, perhaps it was only when she entered the Capitol through a
broken door, an emergency siren blaring. These signs, and others detailed below, undoubtedly
endowed MacAndrew with the knowledge that her presence and protest in the Capitol was
unlawful. Nevertheless, she remained."
=========
So she navigated bike racks and other obstacles and entered the Capitol through a broken door with a siren blaring, but believed she had the right to enter?
She never saw any violence, despite taking photos of people who were pepper sprayed and even "covered her face with her scarf because, she admitted in her testimony, she was worried about encountering pepper spray."
Zaid, I'm sure there is a case to be made about how being in prison was an eye-opening experience. But you completely blew it by failing to have a critical eye.
I think these are all fair points to draw in the story, and I did take a look at how she was actually charged and sentenced, and I agree with you there's no reason to think that her charge was unfair based on her conduct. However, the main reason I described her state of mind as she explained it was because I needed to explain why she didn't take a plea deal, as a very large number of similarly situated people did.
Zaid, in the interest of balance, you might consider a story on the law used to prosecute J6’ers? It stems from Enron collapse in late 2001. Was it judicial gymnastics to use this law aimed at white collar crime against those entering the Capital? Why was MacAndrews (and other non violent J6’s) not charged with just Trespassing?
Can’t tell from your piece if MacAndrews was jailed over obstruction or not. Can see the link to the judicial code however and I think she was? : 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(G)
At any rate, recent SCOTUS ruling seems to imply that if J6’s were not trying to impede the vote count, they can’t/shouldn’t be charged and jailed under obstruction charge.
Perhaps at this point, MacAndrews doesn’t care about this any longer. Because point of your story (and hers) is she would not be the changed individual she is, without being incarcerated (regardless of whether charge was just). She made lemonade out of lemons and that is the greater lesson for all of us to heed.
He was telling her story. This piece was from her perspective. Nowhere did he offer any opinion on her guilt or innocence. You missed the entire point of this article
A few items of MacAndrew’s story behind bars that stood out to me. First and perhaps most important was the emotional support the women prisoners offered each other. As a man, I can recall boot camp and later deployments where similar caring occurred because we were all ‘in this together’.
But does this occur among men prisons in similar circumstances? Seems like women having this organic support behind bars can be a literal lifeline.
The second was the guards not looking prisons in the eye, and dehumanizing effect on the incarcerated. Is this the guards actually protecting themselves? Hard job, perhaps emotionally draining if guards were to ‘care’ too much.
Zaid, thanks for your essay and reminding us to our shared humanity.
While in FCI Dublin, I talked with a kind prison employee about the dehumanization and how this was the hardest part for me. He explained that staff have access to inmate records and all of the charges they have been convicted of, many of which are truly heinous. He said that staff are often (understandably) repulsed by these acts and become hardened to all inmates, regardless their charges. He explained that it was a protective mechanism. That made sense to me, but didn't make the dehumanization behaviors by staff any less demoralizing.
If we want our system to focus on rehabilitation, as we purport, we need to see the inherent potential in inmates, acknowledge and build on their strengths and give them opportunities to shine. Locking them down, giving them no opportunities for growth or hope for the future, treating them as subhuman "others," then releasing them back into society is a multi-ingredient recipe for failure.
When one’s perspective verifiably breaks from the facts, it casts doubt on their credibility. I wasn’t willing to gloss over that.
Excellent read, Zaid. Thank you. Looking forward to what's to come.
Interesting story about a person written by a high functioning adult. I got what i paid for. Thank you
Oh god, I’ve been exposed! Exposed to extreme ideas!! Ahhhhg!!!! Too funny. As if an idea could ever be dangerous…
Good on you for making the attempt.
This is intended as helpful feedback: the piece could use some more editing. There are numerous grammatical issues and it sounds quite apologetic re: our subject’s motivations for joining the protests and finding herself inside the building. Stick to the facts, report on the stated motivation if offered, but your unnecessary appeal to innocent motivation here comes off as obvious spin and will tend to chase away potential subscribers before they get to your point.
Almost nobody would oppose “criminal justice reform” if the sole beneficiaries were female nonviolent offenders.
Interesting piece. The subject sounds like a decent person capable of self -reflection and personal growth. I hope she lands in a better place. I am curious, however, if she now realizes that she was lied to and manipulated by the President she placed her trust in. Does she realize that the President she traveled to support used and victimized her and that he belongs anywhere BUT the White House?
It’s funny that you perceive her as victimized by Trump. She was arrested and sent to jail for walking into a building and taking video. That wasn’t Trump’s doing.
I perceive her and some of the others as having been duped by Trump and the right wing media sphere, which has essentially brainwashed weak-minded people. I don’t think it’s their fault that they lack critical-thinking skills. No one calling themselves a president or a news source should be spreading the kind of lies that have a decent likelihood of being perceived as a call to action by weak-minded people. It’s predatory. I do not consider the people who committed violence or engaged in vandalism to be victims, however. They knew they were committing crimes.
I agree that those who engaged in violence and vandalism should be jailed but I also think that those that did neither should not be jailed. There’s plenty of brainwashing on both sides of the so called “media sphere”, don’t you think?
I am curious about your perception that they were duped by Trump. In what way? Do you mean generally or more specifically?
Of those prosecuted, 25% were armed and more than 20% already had criminal records. https://www.shu.edu/news/a-demographic-and-legal-profile-of-january-6-prosecutions.html
Yes to prison reform. This story is representative of what happens when you lose your social and family anchors. The disintegration of people’s social networks demonstrate how fragile mental health is and anyone can be caught up in something when they are unmoored from community; but it’s hard to take at face value the idea that someone with a masters in neuroscience failed to grasp what was actually going on that day.
Thank you for this story, and I use the word "story" intentionally. I'm reminded of a comment about making films by documentarian Ken Burns. “When you make films advocating a particular point of view then you’ve got an agenda. You’ve already become an argument and all we do is argue. The only thing that changes people is storytelling."
Shouldn't you be making idiotic arguments against Matt Taibbi with Brianna JG?
A conservative not caring one bit about a systemic problem until it impacts them directly is not a feel good story. It simply highlights that this woman, like many conservatives, is a narcissist with no empathy whatsoever.
You sound very empathetic.
Thank you! I am.
"For years, MacAndrews had adopted the attitude that people like those she was incarcerated with were deserving of little sympathy. She hand long believed that if you don’t want to do the time, just don’t do the crime. But that all changed once she was there herself"
Maybe you aren't familiar with what empathy is?
Maybe what you think is lack of empathy or sympathy is actually her belief that the prisoners were actually guilty of prison worthy crimes and that they would learn from appropriate consequences of incarceration. What she learned from being sent to prison was that the criminal justice system is far from perfect and that it can be and is used for purposes other than justice.
From an outside observer (I.e. non US) who has consumed some content about criminal justice reform in the US, it seems to me that the best way of achieving reform is cross-party. Perhaps it’s cynical but, for the purposes of achieving reform, does it really matter why individuals or groups support it, provided it happens? There has clearly been a missed opportunity here by criminal justice reform advocates but, it may not have gone altogether. Eyes on the prize?
Context is always essential - and, for those criticizing the story on the assumption it is too soft on the protagonist, let’s consider what happened to the BLM/Floyd in 2020 - despite the violence and inflicting, literally billions of dollars worth of damage (much of it on small businesses owned by ethnic minorities), to my knowledge, virtually no one was arrested or sentenced to jail or prison. In my city (thankfully, in a red state where law and order is still valued), police stood by and watched while rioters took over an upscale mall and plundered the Apple store along with others - millions of dollars of theft and damage, for which no one was held accountable. When the left starts focusing on the injustice of those episodes, I will be a lot more amenable to hearing about the gravity of the nonviolent January 6 protesters’ offenses.
"virtually no one" Over 14,000 people across the U.S were arrested for the George Floyd riots, including hundreds who were sentenced to federal prisons for crimes like arson, looting, assault, inciting a riot, etc. Law enforcement took the Floyd rioters seriously, they were not treated differently from J6 rioters. Read this: https://apnews.com/article/records-rebut-claims-jan-6-rioters-55adf4d46aff57b91af2fdd3345dace8
I'm aware the focus of the story is on prison reform. But given it spends an inordinate amount of time on MacAndrews's story, it is strange to me that you give so much airtime to her claims about her actions on January 6 and don't spend any time discussing what the indictment and her conviction proved she actually did. For example, she claims she "truly believed that she was allowed to enter the Capitol that day because no one stopped her." But as the judge's opinion in her case laid out, she passed strewn fencing with "Area Closed" signs on the ground. She clambered over bike racks and fencing with the help of another person, with the same "Area Closed" signs on the bike racks she climbed over. Then she marched past police officers also standing next to those signs. She then entered through a broken door with emergency sirens blaring. As the judge laid out, "These signs, and others detailed below, undoubtedly endowed MacAndrew with the knowledge that her presence and protest in the Capitol was unlawful." She herself testified that she saw people climbing the walls, not being "let in", when at trial. She took photos of people being pepper sprayed, hardly a sign of being let in. She herself worried about being pepper sprayed, she testified. She saw rioters confronting police, and stayed in, going down a different hallway. She came across chemical spray and rioters yelling "they're gassing us", and turned back, and continued to film from inside the building anyways.
Her story doesn't add up in many other ways, either, as the judge pointed out. She "estimated she [sic] about eight minutes in the building, filming footage that she was eager to share online." I thought that was an oddly precise time; that's because she didn't "estimate" it, it's what her own video footage shows, since she filmed her entry into the sirens-blaring, off-hinges door and her time in the Capitol.
She then testified in ways that are laughable. She claimed in court that she "did not know" who was using the pepper spray, then wrote on Twitter that police were pepper spraying people.
This is not to speak to the rest of the piece, but to flag that perhaps there's more to the story than what other commenters are calling this "common" Jan 6 attendee. If this is a common attendee, i.e. a nonviolent one, fair enough. But to say this was an attendee who had no idea they were doing something wrong...well, the court rejected that, in a trial with all the evidence laid out, and mountains of evidence contradicting her claims.
You should contact Coleman on " A Convict's Perspective" ( raw, but good reading) on substack and get his thoughts on criminal reform.
Old joke: "What do you call a liberal who's been mugged? A conservative. What do you call a conservative who's been arrested? A liberal."