Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) joined hundreds of left-wing activists on Sunday to protest the one year anniversary of Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the United States Supreme Court.
“Last year you came to Washington, many of you quite literally putting your bodies on the line,” Pressley told a crowd in front of the Supreme Court building. “Many of you disclosed for the first time to yourselves, and then to your family, and then to complete strangers, that you were a victim of this crime. And it is a crime.”
“Many of you did that for the very first time,” she continued. “You chronicled the abuse and assaults that you have endured because you know that those stories, as painful as they are to share, that they change the conversation.”
Kavanaugh faced multiple allegations of sexual misconduct during his confirmation hearings to the Supreme Court in 2018. He has consistently denied all of the allegations and neither the Senate Judiciary Committee nor the FBI were able to find corroborating evidence or witnesses to any of the accusations leveled against him. Regardless, many Democratic lawmakers have been calling for his impeachment.
“Kavanaugh may have that seat for now, but what you, what we are fighting for is so much bigger than one insecure man blinded by his privilege,” Pressley said. “You are fighting for the liberation and injustice for all of us because you know that our destinies are tied. For generations, we have softened our language and moderated our tone. No more.”
“My liberty, my humanity, my bodily autonomy is not yours to shackle. No man, no institution — no matter how revered — will come between us and our inalienable rights,” she continued. “Now, the man’s name on the posters we hold is a cog in a wheel of a broken system, and I’m not going to name him too often because I’m done gathering to give more credence and power to those who try to dehumanize and devalue our lives and our lived experiences.”
Pressley has been one of the leading voices in Congress urging that Kavanaugh be removed from the bench. The Freshman congresswoman introduced a resolution into the House of Representatives in September calling for Congress to proceed with his impeachment.
However, the resolution has gained little traction — it currently only has 13 co-sponsors, including her three far-left Squad members, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
“We gather here today to liberate survivors, to organize, to mobilize,” Pressley said. “As a survivor of childhood rape, and later campus sexual assault, I spent years cloaked in a quiet shame that was not mine to bear … I continue to share my story even when my voice shakes because I know the power and the liberation of a story, and I feel the fierce urgency of upending a system that for generations has disproportionately subjected girls and women to not only these abuses, but the shame and stigma that comes with processing these violations.”