Intro: January 6, 2021. Protestors storm the Capitol. cue to news footage. We asked Oak Park High School students questions about how they felt about the state of the nation and about their thoughts on the Capitol … 

Question #1: Where were you when you first found out about the storming of the Capitol and what was your first reaction or feeling?

Hunter Glass: I came out of Spanish and my dad was like “they’re storming the Capitol” and I was like “woah…what?!” And I go and look at the TV and see all the flags and the people and everyone.

Ethan Grinberg: I thought it was a meme and I was shocked when I found out it was an actual event.

Aviva Medved: Um my mom was like “did you hear what’s happening?” and I … I was … I had no idea, I was really confused. 

Sara Caranza: It felt almost like it wasn’t real, but um a lot of my co-workers were shocked as well.

Amber Gilman: I was in … I think just at home. And I immediately went to go look it up and see what happened. And I was just really shocked that anyone would even do that.

Beshane Bans: Honestly the first thing was just disgust ‘cause … you know. I-I’m not for any sort of violence or anything like that. Just in my personal belief, you know? Violence of any kind, any political violence that’s just … that’s just out of bounds. 

Dominic Land: To me it’s like just insane how that could have even happened in the first place. 

Question #2: What effects do you think the storming of the Capitol will have on the nation moving forward?

Zoey Mortazavi: Going forward as a nation is going to be a defining moment for sure. It’s going to determine whether or not we can bounce back from this  and you know unite as a country and kinda try to move forward and progress or if we’re just going to let the um the schism between those two groups define what our country stands for and just see if this affects the way we function in the nation.

David Shiang: Clearly that’s something that really goes against the core of us as Americans.

Grinberg: I believe that now people will be much more politically involved because after solong of just talking about things or posting about things all of a sudden this came to a very dramatic, climatic event.

Bans: At least in my personal experience I’ve seen a lot of people just throwing out labels and targeting individuals that had nothing to do with it um but just saying that if you believed a certain way you therefore supported and condone that violence and I think that’s wrong. We- we really could unite. I mean, unity is entirely possible but as long as that rhetoric is kidna being spewed out, I don’t see that sort of unity coming around.

Question #3: Would you consider anyone or anything in particular responsible for these events and if so who and why? 

Sanjana Sharma: I don’t think we can just make a direct statement and say “ok, it’s this one person’s fault,” but definitely indirectly, there were a lot of contributing factors.

Shiang: The fact that there’s just so much different information going around and media divisions between people it’s kinda making … making citizens kinda go against each other.

Grinberg: Trump, you can blame Biden, you can Pelosi, you can blame basically everyone at that level of government because both sides were kinda instigating the other. Both of them were trying to start a fight.

Land: The people that “worship” Trump, you know what I mean? Like that the only… they see all of that and what else would they do? You know, see the man that they respect, the man that they follow, talking about how democracy is now broken. W-What else would they have done? You know? They took action and in their minds that’s the right thing to do . So I feel like Trump’s reaction to the election led to that.

Sharma: So indirectly I think we could… place blame on a lot of people including like… American, the system of American government itself.

Stephanie Calderon: Uh Trump. Because most of- well all, if not most, of the people that stormed the Capitol were wearing his merch and waving around his flag.

Gilman: It was the Trump supporters so I’m going to blame them, but I don;t know if a person in particular told them to go do that.

Glass: I personally would have to say that um individually it would be the individual’s decision to go there, decision to do that. 

Question #4: What hope, if any, do you have for either the remainder of the year or the state of the nation ?

Mortazavi: if we are able to learn from these events that we’ve experienced and instead try to move forward from them as opposed to focusing on only them and realizing you know, as long as we realize the damage they have caused and how much we really need to change that behavior that we’ve been partaking in for so long then I think that there is hope for this country.

Land: I hope that um everyone can come together and realize that at the end of the day we’re all just Americans then we can be happy pretty much laughs

Sharma: I’m really hoping that we’ll see more unity and um… a lesser degree of polarization somehow.

Medved: I hope that we can all just be in peace and unified and that everyone will get better soon.

Gilman: That we can all just like agree on… that Joe Biden is president and that we can all just like… hopefully be together again in terms of like politics-wise and not be at each other’s throats a lot.

Bans: When we see true injustices in our-in our society that we can all agree on  are bad then we all get behind it and fight against it. And that when we see something that promotes uh… justice and-and  equality and equal opportunity then we can all get behind that and support that. And I think that every American can agree with that sentiment.

Outro: The State of the Nation. An Oak Park Talon Production

Land: I hope it’s over soon. I think we all do. I think that’s the one thing we can all agree on is that we hope this is over soon so

The State of the Nation:

Edited by Hayden Brown

Written and Interviews by Hayden Brown, Daisy Calderon Arredondo, Emily Francis and Sophia Lippel

Interviews with Beshane Bans, Stephanie Calderon, Sara Carannza, Amber Gilman, Hunter Glass, Ethan Grinberg, Dominic Land, Aviva Medved, David Shiang and Sanjana Sharma

Featured Song – ‘Tears and Rain’ by Neutrin05

News Footage Featured from BBC, CBSN New York, ABC News, and Fox News