Two years ago, as the first day of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination began, several women protesters in the Senate Judiciary hearing room stood up and raised their voices, one after the other. “Please vote no!” several chanted, before they were quickly dragged away by Capitol Police.
The plan at the time, weeks before credible sexual assault accusations emerged against the nominee, was to interrupt and delay hearings as long as possible with the slight hope that Kavanaugh’s nomination could be delayed until after the 2018 midterm elections.
The emotional energy of protesters hit a nadir weeks later, after Christine Blasey Ford stepped forward and bravely testified about her memory of being sexually assaulted by Kavanuagh in high school. Hundreds of people chanted and dropped banners from the upper-floor railings of the atrium in the Hart Senate office building in Washington, DC, on the day the Judiciary Committee voted to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination to a vote before the full Senate.
Former Maine Senate candidate Bre Kidman recounted for Teen Vogue their frustrating experience in 2018 trying to get a meeting with their senator, Susan Collins, which ultimately motivated Kidman’s own run for Senate. A face-to-face with Collins never materialized, but Kidman did meet with a member of her staff.
“We met with her policy advisor on aging and she had clearly been having those meetings all day, and was exhausted,” said Kidman. “[We] told her our stories, our experiences, and why it was important for us to have an investigation or to not have this confirmation be rushed through. What happened next [— Collins’s vote to confirm Kavanaugh —] was the reason I decided to run for senator.”
Kidman said the experience left them disillusioned with the Senate confirmation process, but they understand why people feel motivated to protest, given what’s often at stake at the high court.
“People will come to these protests from far and wide,” they said. “The sense of futility with protesting like that has not reached everyone yet. People still feel like they can get out in the streets and make a difference by having that kind of protest. And there's not a lot of discourse around the way that our senators are not swayed by those actions. Our senators are swayed by the way that corporate interests tell them they will finance their campaigns.”
Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court carries a similar weight as Kavanaugh’s, with an even tighter electoral deadline. But as Monday’s hearings began, the proceedings saw no interruptions indoors; the action has been relegated outdoors, with many women in Handmaid’s Tale costumes protesting outside the Supreme Court, as The Hill, and WJLA reported that 22 people were arrested outside of the U.S. Capitol building.
The reason, simply, is COVID-19. Only Barrett, senators, staff, and a select pool of congressional reporters are allowed inside the hearing room, and the U.S. Capitol and Senate office buildings have been closed to visitors since mid-March, according to a spokesperson for the Capitol Police.
“There are real impediments to having a full hearing because the people are not able to participate,” said Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of Women’s March, referring to the the election that is just weeks away. “The people are being excluded from this in some of the most undemocratic ways possible.”
The rules against public access to the hearings are based on common sense, especially as several Republican lawmakers have repeatedly ignored basic public health precautions to prevent the spread of the virus. A recent White House reception to celebrate Barrett’s nomination, where attendees hugged, shook hands, and declined to wear masks, is now believed to have been a super-spreading event. The end result was a significant COVID-19 outbreak within the West Wing and Republican Senate delegations, with President Trump spending several days in the hospital
Republicans on the Senate Judiciary committee, Utah’s Mike Lee and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, also tested positive for the virus after the event, while committee chair senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) declined to be tested in the first place.
So it would probably be a bad idea to allow the public into the tightly confined hearing room, especially with recently infected senators like Lee appearing in person and declining to keep a mask on while speaking. But that doesn’t mean progressive activists and protesters are staying on the sidelines this year.
With so many key issues at stake for progressives, including abortion access, LGBTQ rights, and health care — and with a presidential election just weeks away — activists still feel an urgent need to protest and oppose Barrett’s nomination.
“We are also working with partner organizations to invite members — who are comfortable doing so — to engage in in-person events with everyone wearing masks and adhering to public health guidelines,” Amanda Thayer, spokesperson for NARAL Pro-Choice America, told Teen Vogue in a statement. “Our members are engaging in these actions to share the message that no nomination should advance or be voted on until after Inauguration Day. With voting already underway in most states, there should be no question that it should be left up to the American people to decide who gets to nominate the next Supreme Court justice.”
Protesters have already found creative ways to get their voices heard. On Monday, small groups of protesters from the Center for Popular Democracy Action (CPD) and Housing Works blocked entrances around Hart, chanting, “Let the people decide!” They were arrested by Capitol Police.
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It was a flashback to two years ago, when many people from CPD and other groups executed daily actions around Capitol Hill before getting arrested.
Organizers who spoke with Teen Vogue ahead of this week’s hearings were understandably tight-lipped about their protest plans, but said they were planning in-person demonstrations wherever safely possible.
Women’s March, an organization that figured so prominently in the large crowds seen at the Kavanaugh protests, is planning a socially distanced, DC-based march for this Saturday, with several hundred affiliate marches planned throughout the country.
The aim of the march, according to Carmona, is to protest Barrett’s nomination and provide a show of electoral power as Election Day looms large. “No matter if we're talking about the Supreme Court nomination, or we're talking about the election that Donald Trump is trying to steal brazenly, or if we think about the voter suppression, the through line is that the people should and have the right to pick the next president," she said. "So the protest will look different [from two years ago].”
“The protests are for the people by the people," she added, "in order to fortify the movements that are going to have to face down these continued assaults on our democracy.”
Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee May Be a Woman, But She Won’t Help Women
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