Peaceful protests are planned this week outside the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices. A few have already happened.
A candle vigil was organized by one of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s neighbors, a 39-year-old mother of two named Laci Wooten-Holway. A little of The Washington Post the writing of his effort stuck in my throat:
“A passing couple stopped by reading their sign: ‘HONK 4 REPRO Rights and Body Autonomy’.
“Good!” said the woman.
“That I don’t agree with,” the man interjected. “I think you vote and enlarge the court. You don’t go to a guy.
Later, the same man reportedly said, “I fear the lines are being crossed… This constant escalation, I think, makes it dangerous.
Sir, with all due respect (very little, given how stupid his “you’re just widening the court!” remedy is of very immediate concern): the Supreme Court is inside our bodies, and, for millions of American women, things are already very fucking dangerous – far more dangerous than having the view from the dinner table soiled by Maryland mothers holding candles.
If the Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade and abortion is immediately illegal for half of all Americans who might need it, women will die. And the women who will suffer the most are those who are already on the brink: the poor, the blacks and browns, the young, the abused.
The sidewalks adjacent to the property of a powerful person are no more sacred than 73 million women’s bodies. And yet, from the way some voices responded to protests outside SCOTUS homes, you’d swear the real victim here was Brett Kavanaugh.
Fox News spent years bootlicking Donald Trump, who once told a mob of police they should be rougher with suspects during their arrest; who regularly called for violence against the press; and whose big lie about voter fraud led to ordinary election officials being harassed in their homes by MAGA mobs crying out for their blood. This is the same Fox News that has consistently downplayed the January 6, 2021 violence as “tourism.”
But now that peaceful protests are targeting public streets and sidewalks outside the homes of Supreme Court justices, Fox News is very worried about the safety implications!
But liberals! They are applause! Stop the press – today is a day Tories don’t get mad about Mr Potato Head’s gender identity, with green M&Ms making them less excited, Disney making kids gay and Harry Styles wearing a dress . No, today, when the Conservatives are angry with those enthusiastic liberals stand on residential sidewalks exercising a constitutionally guaranteed right at a defining moment.
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President Joe Biden, for his part, has tried to to walk a hair-thin line in the discussion of protests. A statement by White House press secretary Jen Psaki says in part that while the president “firmly believes in the constitutional right to protest,” such protests “should never include violence, threats, or vandalism.” Judges perform an extremely important function in our society, and they must be able to do their job without worrying about their personal safety.”
The BBC called that statement “critical” of the protests outside the judges’ homes, but I’ve read the White House statement several times and I don’t see any criticism of the protests outside the judges’ homes. judges in particular – unless I’ve missed something about them getting violent.
Also, if protesting in a way that makes anyone feel uncomfortable for whatever reason is unacceptable protest, then no protest is acceptable protest. I don’t believe the framers of the Constitution meant “everyone is free to whisper their concerns in a gentle southern breeze” when they enshrined the right to protest in the Constitution. The protest is meant to annoy or interrupt the protested person or people; That’s the point. It seems those who criticize pro-choice protests would rather people whose lives and bodies are at stake make their concerns known through something more like gathering in a big empty field and wishing for a star.
“Civility has always been a cudgel used by the powerful to remind those who suffer disproportionately from their hands that when they ask to have the boot removed from their necks, they should be kind about it.”
I am not saying that the home of every public or even elected figure should be the site of protests for lesser reasons. A celebrity who says something silly and dangerous about vaccines, for example, shouldn’t have their house picketed, even if they’re a dangerous idiot. A news personality saying something ignorant about something he knows nothing about probably shouldn’t have his house disturbed, if only because it would probably upset his neighbors who had nothing to do with it. with that.
The Supreme Court is about to make a decision that will have a direct and immediate impact on the lives of millions of people. These are extraordinary circumstances. As long as the protests outside people’s homes directly responsible because these circumstances are not illegal or dangerous, they are appropriate.
The powerful are always the furthest from the consequences of their actions. It shouldn’t be.
Moderate Democratic Senator. Joe Manchin isn’t cutting coupons to pay for formula – but maybe if he tried it he’d legislate like a lesser asshole. Former Sen. Joe Lieberman didn’t ruin his credit score on medical debt – but maybe if he had, he wouldn’t have screwed us out of a public option for health coverage. No matter what the Supreme Court does, the daughters of Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh will never have a problem accessing abortion care, if they need it (she has four daughters and he has two , so, statistically, at least one of them probably will.)
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And yet, debates over whether or not those enraged by oppression are quite polite to the oppressors dominate American political discourse in a way that seems cartoonish. Righteous rage will always be debated by mealy mouth centrists (or “institutionalists”) which completely miss the point, because it is more comfortable to have debates on politeness than to recognize the disease of the system. The biggest beneficiaries of the status quo are always the least comfortable talking about its dismantling.
Civility and politeness are how we got here, and history almost always vindicates the rabid righteous and ridicules the histrionics. Civility has always been a cudgel used by the powerful to remind those who suffer disproportionately from their hands that when they ask to have the boot removed from their necks, they should be kind about it.
This is how protest has been criticized in America for generations, but it has become particularly inept and whiny in recent years, and it is inept and whiny now.
That’s how we talked about Samantha Bee, who was absolutely right to call Ivanka Trump an “inept bitch” in response to the White House adviser’s inaction over her boss’ enforcement of the policy. separation of families at the US-Mexico border.
That’s how comedian Michelle Wolf’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner joke conversation about then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ eye makeup was hijacked by people who claimed that the joke itself was sexist and mean. (Wolf, by the way, was quite right to refer to Sarah Huckabee Sanders horrible eye makeup, although she said she speaks with admiration of makeup. Apparently, even mentioning a woman’s aesthetic choices will hit you with the civility police.)
This is how former President Trump claimed that the real crime in the Russia investigation was people leaking information about his crimes. This is how establishment media figures and conservatives have fixed on the escape of judge Samuel Alito deer-kill the draft notice, not the notice itself, like The Real Shocking News.
If Judge Alito’s draft opinion – or something close to it – is delivered by the court in June or July, it will subject half the bodies of the American population to the whims of state legislatures. This will lead millions of women to seek abortion care under unsafe conditions. This will force pregnant women who do not seek extralegal abortion care to undergo childbirth — a painful, potentially disabling and expensive medical event — against their will. This will lead to poorer outcomes for the women’s existing children, endanger the women’s lives (especially black women), cripple families economically and set back the social and economic progress of American women for generations.
Of course, it is appropriate for people to demonstrate peacefully on public property outside the homes of people who are about to imminently take away the rights of millions of their own citizens. Of course, the architects of policy should be reminded that their actions will harm and even kill people.
When it comes to deerwe are well over the event horizon for incivility.