dragonlady7

wondering, look i put in sources and everything

via https://ift.tt/2LScw6w

so, my older sister is in the Maryland National Guard. During the BLM protests, she was involved in deploying troops to DC for security stuff, and there was a great deal of internal angst about it– some of her soldiers were very conflicted, supporting the demonstrations, and she had to counsel them and such. On 1/6 we’d all been texting her: are you there? what’s going on? and she’d finally written back no!!! we’re not there!!! we don’t know why!!! we’ve been ready to go!!!! (Indeed, her governor says they were “given a run-around https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/01/10/larry-hogan-pentagon-took-hours-ok-national-guard-capitol-riot/6618084002/”.) And then, that evening, she was like, Finally, we’re sending people.

Anyway, now (1/13) the news has been covering that the National Guard is at the Capitol. And today there has been this huge… genre… I guess… of photos like this:

[image desc: a group of National Guard soldiers in camoflage uniforms lie on a marble floor with their gear piled beside them, sleeping packed-together and without any padding, and the caption explains that they are inside the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC. Source: the Gannet newswire, via Google Image search 6pm 1/13 EST.]

So Farmsister texted the family groupchat and was like “what the hap is fuckening”, and Army Sister explained, so I figured I’d post that here, since people might want to know.

“Our folks are in hotels,” she explained, meaning Maryland’s troops, “but some are pulling 36-hour shifts, which means they guard for a while, then have a bit to rest, then are back on etc until they finally get to go to the hotel. I guess COVID is secondary, to the Army right now.”

She went on and explained, “Also, such a fast influx overwhelmed the DC Guard logistics folks for a bit– our guys had to drive back and forth for a while, but we’re one of the few states that can do that!”

Other states are sending troops as well– I saw a news article about Illinois, among others. [If you didn’t know, each of the 50 US states has its own National Guard.] Maryland borders DC, and is a small enough state that it’s not unreasonable for a Guardsman to drive home after work.

And the NYT on their Instagram had captioned a similar photo https://www.instagram.com/p/CJ_aY69nFIp/ explaining that the Guardsmen were dozing during a “break in shifts”.

So anyway– I just thought I’d post an answer, there, since I’d been wondering and had a primary source. (Your picture was not posted)