By Lauren Jackson and Desiree Ibekwe |
Hi everyone, we would say “Happy New Year” but that feels tonally off at this point, so instead we’ll say: We made it through the first full week of 2021! |
If the last year has taught us anything, it’s how to adapt to the unexpected. So while we started the week covering Georgia’s Senate runoff elections, we soon pivoted to covering the buildup to, and fallout from, a violent mob ransacking the Capitol. Here’s a recap of this week on The Daily. |
The sounds before they stormed |
Our producer on the ground recounts the mood at a rally near the White House before a mob of pro-Trump loyalists, urged on by the president, stormed and occupied the Capitol, disrupting the final electoral count in a shocking display of violence that tested the American democracy. |
President-elect Joe Biden called the attack “one of the darkest days in the history of our nation” and forcefully laid blame at the president’s feet after years of stoking divisions. “I wish we could say we couldn’t see it coming,” he said. “But that isn’t true. We could see it coming.” |
 | | Pro-Trump rioters clashed with the police outside the Capitol on Wednesday.Shannon Stapleton/Reuters |
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Before Wednesday, The Daily team knew challenges were anticipated to the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory. So as one of the team members living in D.C., I volunteered to go to a pro-Trump rally near the White House and speak to attendees who erroneously believed Mr. Biden’s win was illegitimate. I wanted to talk to them about their reasons for protesting — and why they thought the day was meaningful. We believed hearing from Republican rallygoers outside of the Capitol would help shed light on the motivations of the Republican lawmakers inside. |
I got downtown around 7:30 a.m. and checked in with the security team that The Times set up to keep an eye on journalists’ whereabouts and safety during the day. Then I walked around and spoke to people ahead of the president’s planned speech. At first the feeling was almost like being at a street fair — there were people dressed up in costume posing for photos, merchandise sellers and families in the crowd. Even though attendees were coming from different places all around the country, their messages were similar: They were mad, they believed the election was stolen from the president and they were there to pressure Republican lawmakers to overturn the results. There also were Confederate flags, and insignia for far-right groups like the Proud Boys displayed prominently on clothing and signs, a signal of who was there and what they stood for. |
Another feeling in the general atmosphere was anger, palpable in the air. I met up with a colleague, Washington correspondent Matt Rosenberg, and we talked to rallygoers together at the base of the Washington Monument before Congress convened for the certification vote. Those around us in the crowd were furious and fired up. Numerous times we were met with expletives when we told people who we work for — and shouts of “fake news” and vulgar gestures as the president derided the press in his speech. |
At one end of the Washington Mall, looking up through the cold, gray morning at the Capitol Building, one group of young men in paramilitary gear warned us it was the last time we would see the group “peaceful.” |
The Black women telling the story of Georgia |
 | | Democrats believe that the voting rights and political network Stacey Abrams has constructed should get a good deal of the credit for propelling the Democratic voter turnout in Georgia.Johnathon Kelso for The New York Times |
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On Monday, we told the story of Democratic organizers — Black women in particular — who have spent months on the ground in Georgia getting the vote out for Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, candidates in the state’s Senate runoff elections. |
This story was important to me and Audra Burch, a national enterprise correspondent for The Times. We both grew up in Georgia. I attended high school in Macon and went to college in Atlanta; Audra is from Decatur. While we each cover stories around the country, there is a different appreciation and deep understanding we can bring when covering a place so familiar. And it was the relationships we’ve built here that helped us secure interviews with key organizers — booked with a trust that can’t be forged in a few weeks. |
We knew we wanted to talk to Stacey Abrams, the former state House minority leader and candidate for governor turned Democratic organizer, about her widely publicized mobilization strategy. That conversation became the first part of Monday’s episode. But we also wanted to see this strategy in action. So we called LaTosha Brown and Cliff Albright, co-founders of Black Voters Matter. Together their organization had been touring the South, and the country more broadly, in a charter bus, registering voters and encouraging turnout in Black communities. |
Soon after seeing LaTosha at an event in Houston County, Georgia, it was clear it takes a special calling to do this work. From the moment we met until late at night when we left, she was registering voters and talking to families, all while singing and dancing — a dream for an audio journalist. Every interaction she had with a voter felt like a conversation with a relative she hadn’t seen in a while. Socially distant yet still warm and familiar. Later, we sat down for an interview with LaTosha; we expected it to take about 45 minutes, but we ended up talking for close to two hours. This was the first time during an interview where a question I asked was answered in song. |
 | | Robert and LaTosha speaking with a voter in Georgia.Audra Burch |
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Late Tuesday night and into Wednesday, the country watched as Black voters once again turned out in record numbers for Georgia’s Senate runoff elections. This was a victory for Stacey and LaTosha that was years in the making — the culmination of their work getting small wins, bouncing back from big losses, regrouping and reorganizing to strengthen their efforts. It wasn’t about winning back the voters they had lost, but finding the ones who had never participated. |
LaTosha and Stacey’s work is a reminder that the story of Georgia in 2021 couldn’t be told through glamorous high-dollar fund-raisers or mixers at social clubs. The story of Georgia’s remarkable flip was heard at a cookout in a parking lot, in the basement of a church building and at phone banks in rented strip mall offices. This is where we found the bulk of the work being done to engage and inspire voters. You hear the sounds of that work in our Monday episode: our conversations, but also sounds of mobilization, and of history. |
 | | Simon Gronowski at his home in Belgium.Ksenia Kuleshova for The New York Times |
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Produced by Sydney Harper |
For the past few years on The Daily, we have created a “Year in Sound,” an annual sonic recap. In 2020, we decided to do something slightly different: commemorate the year not in global news events, but with your good news. So we asked you, both in this newsletter and on the show, to send in voice memos of good things that happened to you. Hundreds poured in. |
We were so grateful to you for all of your contributions, and we were sad there were many we couldn’t fit into the show. So we wanted to share one more bit of good news from our Brussels correspondent Matina Stevis-Gridneff. This is the story of her neighbor, Simon Gronowski — a story of dramatic escape, crisis and loss, but also of generosity, music and beauty. It’s a story with much resonance still as we enter 2021. |
You can listen to Simon’s story — and his piano playing — at the top of this article. |
This newsletter was edited by Lauren Jackson and Desiree Ibekwe. Special thanks to Laura Kim, Wendy Dorr, Dave Shaw and Chris Wood. |
That’s it for The Daily newsletter. See you next week. |
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