Is America’s “One Nation, Indivisible” Being Killed Off by the Coronavirus?
By Robin Wright
Shortly after noon on Thursday, Dayna Polehanki, a Michigan state senator, was confronted by armed protesters marauding through the capitol, in Lansing, and demanding an end to the coronavirus lockdown. “Directly above me, men with rifles yelling at us,” Polehanki tweeted frantically from the Senate floor. The accompanying picture, shot from her desk, showed men in fatigues, with assault rifles, in the gallery above. “I was a high-school teacher for almost twenty years and I was aware someone could come in and shoot things up. I consider myself a tough gal, but this seemed all too real,” she told me the following day. “When anger is stoked like that, and people have guns, things can go wrong.” She said her hands shook as she took the picture.
The protest erupted as the Michigan legislature debated whether to extend the state of emergency issued by Governor Gretchen Whitmer, which was about to expire. Under Michigan law, all political signs are banned from the capitol, so protesters at the “American Patriot Rally” had to leave their banners and placards at the door, but not their loaded weapons, which are legal to carry in public, even in the legislature. “I’m afraid that is the way it is in Michigan right now,” Polehanki said. Read on....
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