Watch “The Sixth” on this Insurrection Day

Watch This Powerful Documentary About What Really Went Down on January 6, 2021 -- Told by Six People Who Were There.

“Democracy needs a ground to stand on, and that ground is the truth. So, we gotta tell the truth. If we can handle it.” Rep. Jamie Raskin

I’ve never made two posts in the same day, but it felt imperative to share about The Sixth, a documentary I just got done watching, and that I’d never heard of until today, on what I call, Insurrection Day. As you can perhaps tell from the title, it’s about January 6, 2021, the day 10,000 people stormed the capitol, injured 150 officers, flew the Confederate flag, and roamed through offices collecting trophies, all while searching for members of Congress in order to kill them.

The film is, in my opinion, a “must watch”, and is something I’d highly suggest you watch today. Its backbone is on-the-ground video footage and incredible photography captured by documentary photographer Mel D Cole, an African American who, in 2020, started documenting Black Lives Matter protests and covering Trump rallies. The effect of his footage is equal parts overwhelming and jarring, infuriating and heartbreaking. There are no reenactments. Everything you’ll see really happened.

There’s one point where Mel’s footage captures a woman who’s checking in on him, saying, “You okay, sweetie?” exactly like an aunt would, and nothing like you’d expect from a person wearing a MAGA cap and speaking to someone who looks like Mel. That’s part of what’s so crazy about what happened that day. Because I know people like that woman. They’re my friends, people who love me. I know, without a doubt that their care and regard for me is genuine. Still, somehow, they can’t make the connection between the ideology they’ve ingested and the things that subsequently, inevitably happen. Like an insurrection.

These same people who’d normally be shouting, “Blue Lives Matter” were now threatening to kill police officers and calling them “traitors”. Then, there’s the extraordinary restraint these police officers showed in the face of such hostility. On the one hand, that was both amazing to witness and probably the wisest thing they could have done.

But on the other, I simply can’t imagine that same kind of restraint if most of that crowd identified as black. Then, there was the mob’s co-opting of phrases used during the 2020 protests for their purposes (“Whose streets? Our streets”), and their claims that this country belongs only to them. There was a reason Trump sent federal troops to aim loaded assault rifles at citizens in Portland.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll also be immensely frustrated by the goings on, just as Chief Robert Contee, only four days into his role as head of the Metropolitan Police, was. Chief Contee pleaded for help from the National Guard, which had troops stationed only a few blocks away. Yet, it took nearly four hours before the command was given for them to lend a hand. By that time, offices from as far as New Jersey were on the scene, and without them, the Capitol would have fallen.

“The greatest strength of democracy is that it comes from the people. The weakness of democracy is that it has so many enemies, other pretenders to the throne.” — Rep. Jamie Raskin

But, there’s also something that’s kind of sense-making about seeing the actual footage and hearing about it from people who experienced it, rather than someone’s narrative of what happened. Because for all the mob psychology at play – the same frenzied state of mind that led to everything from the destruction of Negro Wall Street to the Rock Springs Massacre – most of the participants were ordinary Americans who’d been subjected to decades of factionist indoctrination.

That’s why there weren’t more deaths than there were, and why an ample show of force, once that force finally arrived, was enough to dispel them. And where’d that factionist rhetoric come from? Certainly from Donald Trump. But, he was just the guy on stage. It was militant Christianity that delivered the crowd. On January 5, 2021, Christianity Today magazine published an article titled, “Jericho March Returns to DC to Pray for a Trump Miracle”.

The next day, we had American citizens smashing through windows, hunting for members of Congress and calling for the lynching of Vice President Pence. How’d that happen? Organizers of the march had implored self-described “patriots, people of faith and all those who want to take back America” to travel to Washington with the goal of overturning the election. Afterward, many of the March’s advocates would admit that things had gone “too far”. But what they miss is that this was a road we should never have started down in the first place.

Likewise, I found myself wondering why this film didn’t get wider distribution, how this vital information wasn’t available until after the election, despite the film being released in May, and how I didn’t even hear of it until today. The subjects were all told that the movie would be available on Amazon Prime immediately upon release so that people would be able to see it for free, and that there’d be a massive push behind it.

Both were reasons the participants, and especially Rep. Raskin and Mel Cole, even agreed to work with this particular company in the first place. But none of that happened. Mel mentioned that he turned down other offers to work with people based on what he’d been told about getting the word out, and Rep. Raskin described how putting the film behind a paywall and putting no promotion behind it effectively removed the film from the national discourse – the opposite of what he’d been hoping for.

This is important because it will leave you thinking, “What a difference this film could have made.” It will also leave you with a sense of foreboding about the person who will be once again inhabiting the White House and who helped instigate this tragic situation.

The Sixth is finally available on Amazon Prime. If you’re looking for something worthwhile to watch in commemoration of Insurrection Day (or, of the certification of votes, presided over with incredible grace by Vice President Kamala Harris, no less, a certification that makes a Trump presidency official), this is it.

“Sometimes, the truth is like a second chance. I believe that,” said Rep. Raskin at one point. I believe that, too.