The many martyrs of January 6

Note: This column first appeared on Cashill’s substack.

“January 6 didn’t end when the sun went down,” wrote January 6 protestor Tommy Tatum in an X post last month. “For many of us, it never ended at all. It followed us home. It sat with us in courtrooms, hospitals, quiet rooms, and sleepless nights. And for some – like Rosanne Boyland – it ended everything.”

Boyland was one of four protestors who died on January 6. As Tatum notes, “Rosanne didn’t get a redemption arc. She didn’t get media sympathy. She didn’t get justice. What she got was erased.” As with the other protesters who died on January 6 or afterwards, Boyland’s family never even got an objective account of how she died.

The first of the protestors to die that day, and arguably the only one to die of natural causes, was a 50-year-old Trump supporter from Pennsylvania named Benjamin Phillips. The father of two teenagers, Phillips collapsed while standing amidst a rowdy but still peaceful crowd on the west side of the Capitol.

Seven minutes later, at 1:06 p.m, U.S. Capitol Police deputy chief Eric Waldow ordered the “less lethal” team to open fire on this crowd now numbering about a thousand. The undertrained USCP began shooting a barrage of grenades, gas and rubber bullets into the growing mass of protesters. “That was a shooting gallery out there,” said Stan Kephart, the use-of-force expert who reviewed the video footage for the Epoch Times. “There was no tactical reason for it at all.”

At 1:28 p.m. 56-year-old father of five Kevin Greeson collapsed after a Capitol Police flash bang exploded in his face. Retired Marine Sgt. Victor Mellor captured the moment on his cell phone. Greeson would soon die of cardiac arrest.

At 2:44 p.m., after yelling for a rogue protester to stop smashing a window in the door protecting the Speaker’s Lobby, Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt took matters into her own hands, literally. A southpaw, she slugged the window breaker square in the face with her left fist. His glasses flew off on impact. Fleeing the madness in this crowded corridor, Ashli hopped into the window frame now fully free of glass, and USCP Lieutenant Michael Byrd promptly shot and killed her without warning.

As to Rosanne Boyland, in a reasonably honest account from Jan. 15, 2021, the New York Times reported that after some give and take at the west tunnel entrance “the police pushed back, and the mob can be seen tumbling out of the door and down the steps.” This took place about 4:27 p.m., at least two hours after the National Guard had been summoned.

In an August 2024 account, the Times changed its story, reporting now that Boyland “suffered an amphetamine overdose … and then was trampled in the crush of her fellow rioters who were pressing at police lines.” Boyland wasn’t trampled. She was smothered when the police pushed other protesters down the stairs on top of her. There was no overdose. The only drug Boyland took that day was Adderall for her ADD.

In their various reports on Boyland’s death, the major media scrupulously avoided discussing what policewoman Lila Morris did to Rosanne’s body. Once the other protesters were pulled off, Rosanne lay momentarily lifeless and exposed at the tunnel entrance.

Keen on “equity,” the Metropolitan Police Department apparently thought it only fair to allow a small, slim female the opportunity to man the contested front of a police line. Morris, who had just reached the front, picked up what appears to be a tree branch, raised it up with both hands, and swung wildly. She struck Rosanne over the head at least three times before the branch snapped and flew out of her hands. This was all caught on video.

This was the second death that day involving a white victim and a black police officer, and it was the second death that day that went unpunished. For the six months prior, of course, every black death or even injury at the hand of a white police officer made national news. Many officers, Derek Chauvin, most notably, ended up in prison. Byrd and Morris were both rewarded – Morris with a trip to the Super Bowl, Byrd with a promotion to captain.

At least three more protesters died by their own hands in the months that followed. Christopher Georgia, 53, a regional portfolio manager at a North Carolina bank, was arrested a week after January 6 and apparently shot himself a week later. Mark R. Aungst, 47, a gas service technician from Pennsylvania, committed suicide in July 2022 while awaiting sentencing for “demonstrating or parading in a restricted building.”

What happened to 37-year-old Pennsylvanian Matthew Lawrence Perna happened to many of the 1,600 other protesters arrested that day. Perna’s lovingly crafted obituary spells it out:

“He attended the rally on January 6, 2021 to peacefully stand up for his beliefs. After learning that the FBI was looking for him, he immediately turned himself in. He entered the Capitol through a previously opened door (he did not break in as was reported) where he was ushered in by police. He didn’t break, touch, or steal anything. He did not harm anyone, as he stayed within the velvet ropes taking pictures. For this act he has been persecuted by many members of his community, friends, relatives, and people who had never met him. Many people were quietly supportive, and Matt was truly grateful for them. The constant delays in hearings, and postponements dragged out for over a year. Because of this, Matt’s heart broke and his spirit died, and many people are responsible for the pain he endured.”

These seven, and there may be more, are the real martyrs of January 6. They died for a cause they believed in, a cause that with each new revelation seems more and more self-evident. To offset the protesters’ valor and to deny the righteousness of their cause, leftists conspirators and their media allies created martyrs of their own.

The first was USCP officer Brian Sicknick whose death on Jan. 7 of a stroke, the Times reported on Jan. 8 as a murder by fire-extinguisher wielding pro-Trump mobs. Not content with lying about Sicknick’s death, Team Biden launched into a grotesque inflation of the day’s body count.

On the second anniversary, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries expanded the lie, saying, “As a result of the events on January 6, the lives of five heroic officers were lost.” In the trials of the J6ers, judges or prosecutors would routinely repeat the saga of the five martyrs to provoke the jurors. In reality, of the five, one died of a stroke, and four committed suicide within 200 days of January 6.

It was unfortunate that the officers died, but it was opportunistic in the extreme to exalt the men as martyrs. The ample video footage shows that, with only a few exceptions, most of the officers faced less peril that day than did the thousands of urban police officers injured in the George Floyd riots by Molotov cocktails, bricks, guns, and frozen water bottles.

The media made no effort to find a common thread in the officers’ suicides. For the protesters the thread was obvious. Matthew Perna’s obituary spells it out: “Matthew Lawrence Perna died on February 25, 2022 of a broken heart. His community (which he loved), his country, and the justice system killed his spirit and his zest for life.”

If we cannot restore the dead to life, we can at least revive their memories. In the years to come, God willing, theirs will be the face of the Great American Awakening, an awakening commemorated every year on the anniversary of the day the nation’s patriots risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to rouse their fellow citizens to action, the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 2021.

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Note: This column first appeared on Cashill’s substack. Please subscribe.