By Jo Freeman
Photograph: Planned Parenthood Action
The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court stretched out for the month of September as the Hart Senate Office Building was repeatedly occupied by protesters. Led by the Center for Popular Democracy but mobilized by several different groups, the protestors were overwhelmingly female, mostly middle-aged. Black women outnumbered white men. At times they seemed to be a wing to the #MeToo movement. WomensMarch was the co-sponsor that brought out most of the women, though Planned Parenthood and NOW also contributed a number, too.
The first protest took place on September 4, the first day of the confirmation hearings before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. The hearing was held in the largest available room, which connected Hart SOB with Dirksen. It was packed with press. Roughly a hundred seats were set aside for members of the public. These were not always occupied, even though hundreds of people waited outside for several hours of DC heat and humidity to get into the hearing room. Members of the public were brought in by Senate staff, a couple dozen at a time, and allowed to stay for 15-20 minutes. Several women in the initial groups stood up with cloth signs that they had hidden in their clothing and shouted their opposition to Kavanaugh. They were quickly removed by the U. S. Capitol Police. Seventy were arrested.
Later groups found themselves sitting in front of a line of uniformed officers, as well as watched closely by one facing them whose back was turned to the hearing itself. If any had stood up to protest, they would have been quickly grabbed and removed. Over four days of hearings, 227 were arrested. They posted and forfeited bail of $35 to $50 each and were released. A few were told to return the next day to pay. If they failed to do so – usually because their bus returned to their home city that evening – a warrant was issued for their arrest. This made it difficult to return later for another disruption and arrest.
Access to the 2nd-floor hallway with the hearing room door was regulated by the police. Only those with proper badges, or the groups led by Committee staffers, were let it. Many protesters wearing identifying t-shirts watched the entry door from neighboring balconies. Women dressed in red robes like those in The Handmaid’s Tale gathered in the atrium of the Hart Building.
Further protests were planned for September 20, the day the Committee was scheduled to vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation. However, the release of a letter that had been sent by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) alleging a sexual assault by Kavanaugh at a party in 1982, led to a postponement of the vote. The issue of sexual assault and what Kavanaugh had done to Ford when both were teenagers went viral. This was due in part to the #MeToo movement having raised the issue of sexual harassment and assault in the public consciousness during the previous year. 
CommonDreams.org; Photo: Yale Law Students Demanding Better
By then, buses were scheduled to go to DC on Sept. 19 and people were flying in from all over the country in order to be present for the vote that wasn’t going to happen. Cancellation compelled improvisation. Instead of going into an empty hearing room, about a hundred protesters occupied the offices of four Republicans on the Committee. Many wore t-shirts aimed at those Republicans. "BE A HERO," they said. Those inside the offices told personal stories to explain why they objected to Kavanagh’s going on the Court. Most of these had something to do with sex – assault and abortion – though some concerned disability and health care. They were afraid that a conservative Court will undermine the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, which many of them rely on, as well as decimate Roe v. Wade.
In the morning 23 were arrested outside the office of Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) when they blocked the doorway. Another group went to the office Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) where they spoke to her staff. A third group did the same at the office of Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ). Protest headquarters was the office of Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, (R-IA), conveniently located on the first floor near the back entrance to Hart. There, one female staffer listened patiently as woman after woman, plus a couple men, described their sexual assaults, abortions, and health care travesties. One man described his rape by a priest during confession. He said it was the first time he had talked about it. The women comforted him when he cried.
In the afternoon, everyone relocated to a balcony on the 7th floor for a press conference. Then they walked downstairs, holding up one fisted arm and chanting "We believe Anita Hill. We believe Christine Ford." The police told them that if they chanted, it would be deemed a protest and they would all be arrested. After a few objections, they walked without chanting, their fists held high.
On the first floor, they entered Grassley’s office again. Most didn’t stay. Instead, they went into the hallway and began chanting again, only louder. As they did so, a hundred Capital police appeared, blocked the hallway and the entrance to the building, and began arrests. Each officer handcuffed his or her prisoner and led her (or occasionally him) to the exit door. Personal possessions were put into a plastic bag. Cop/prisoner pairs exited the Hart building to line up outside and wait for transport. The 33 arrestees were loaded into a bus and one paddy wagon and taken to a police facility over two miles away. By 4:00 most had walked out of a back door into a police parking lot on K St. SW. They were greeted by a small welcoming committee of fellow protesters, given water, and taken to a nearby hotel where a room had been reserved for their use. From there they returned to their busses to go home, or someplace else.
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