Over the weekend, a group of about 100 protesters rallied in front of the homes of some of the Supreme Court Justices who have voted to overturn legal access to abortion in the United States. The protesters gathered outside Brett Kavanaugh’s home and marched about a half-mile to the home of Chief Justice John Roberts, then back to Kavanaugh’s, where police forced them to disperse, according to Bloomberg.
There have also been rumors that Samuel Alito, who drafted the majority opinion overturning Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey, and his family have been moved out of their home to an undisclosed location for fear of violence. Those reports are unconfirmed but that hasn’t stopped right-wing pundits from decrying the entirely hypothetical acts of “militant leftists.”
In the face of that sort of manufactured outrage, many are drawing comparisons to Christine Blasey Ford, who received a flood of death threats and had to move multiple times after testifying before Congress, alleging Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted and attempted to rape her when the two were in high school.
Just thinking about the wave of death threats against Anita Hill after her 1991 testimony, and about how Christine Blasey Ford has had to move multiple times and how the safety of their families never seemed to be a top concern for civility enthusiasts.
— Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) May 9, 2022
Every single Republican condemning the peaceful protesting outside Justice Kavanaugh’s home today was absolutely silent when Christine Blasey Ford had to *actually move* because right-wing cranks were sending death threats right to her front door.
— Max Burns (@themaxburns) May 8, 2022
Is it near where they moved Christine Blasey Ford’s family? I can’t seem to find your prayers for her in your tweet history. https://t.co/biPqoPV8I1
— Lizz ” Feminist Buzzkill ” Winstead (@lizzwinstead) May 9, 2022
Like clockwork, these totally peaceful protests are being met with pearl-clutching insistence that we maintain “civility.” In one especially egregious tone-policing tweet, neoconservative writer Bill Kristol wrote, “Please don’t protest at people’s homes. Please don’t intrude on people attending their houses of worship. Organize politically, be civil civically.”
Please don’t protest at people’s homes.
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) May 8, 2022
Please don’t intrude on people attending their houses of worship.
Organize politically, be civil civically.
Gee Bill, it must be nice to be able to separate your political life from your civil life. For the rest of us, we would very much like for conservative politicians and Supreme Court justices to stay out of our homes, and not to foist their religious beliefs onto us. But they refuse to do so, so here we are.
Saying that we must “be civil civically” is insisting that we all play by a set of rules that we never had a say in creating, and which are designed to keep us from ever winning these fights.
remember: we must be very polite to the unelected, wholly unaccountable people who are committing violence against us
— laura olin (@lauraolin) May 9, 2022
Team protest these fascists EVERYWHERE so they never know a moments peace https://t.co/HX3fckYeuv
— Jessica Mason Pieklo (@Hegemommy) May 8, 2022
The only protest approved by the ruling class is one that doesn’t disrupt, challenge or change anything. And even that protest will be surveilled by the police state.
— We Can Build A Better World 🕊 (@BreeNewsome) May 9, 2022
sorry, but protesting outside of justices’ homes is not the right way to voice your disapproval of the court. the proper course is to pour billions of dollars of dark money into building institutions that steadily subsume the judiciary over the course of several decades
— Law Boy, Esq. (@The_Law_Boy) May 8, 2022
No one can be expected to adhere to made-up standards of respectability and act “civilly” in the face of an institution actively robbing us of our rights, especially when that civility only ever goes one direction.
The people upset about Kavanaugh’s protesters are going to lose their minds when they find out what’s been happening outside Planned Parenthoods for decades and why there’s such a thing as a “clinic escort” to get terrified 19-year-olds from the parking lot into the building.
— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) May 9, 2022
Not these people being mad at folks peacefully protesting Kavanaugh’s house when abortion providers have had to wear body armor to work, vary routes to their jobs, and hire private security b/c antis would publish their photos, home addresses and phone numbers. With crosshairs!
— A Shady Dame From Seville (@SorayaMcDonald) May 8, 2022
As fences go up around the Supreme Court, a reminder they overruled a law that created 35ft buffer zones for abortion clinics because it “infringed on free speech”
— Jack Miller (@politicalmiller) May 5, 2022
But when it’s their own building they dont seem too worried. Huh.
It’s not just Republicans and anti-abortion advocates condemning these protests. There is a maddening amount of handwringing coming from liberals worrying that protesting at people’s homes will alienate allies, or condemning violence that, again, did not happen.
People are like “What about Kanavaugh’s poor neighbours? Why should THEY be subjected to this?” And then I found out the protest was organized -by- one of Kavanaugh’s neighbours, damn this rocks https://t.co/0L9ySeFvYo
— Jesse Hawken (@jessehawken) May 8, 2022
Protesting outside of someone’s home is going to make them feel bad. That is not the same thing as making them feel threatened, which is also not the same as actual violence. But we’re supposed to believe that is the protester pipeline on the table. That is a false narrative that helps no one but those already in extreme positions of power and there’s absolutely no reason we have to buy into it.
We just saw the culmination of 50 years of unpopular and fringe organizing and protest. It is truly bizarre that the response from so many who say they’re on the side of abortion rights is to play hall monitor and blow the whistle on actions they think will ‘be unpopular’
— kang (@jaycaspiankang) May 8, 2022
People will tolerate 1-2 weeks of rowdy protests and then you’ll start to hear “this tactic is alienating people.” Power has never conceded anything by being asked nicely. 100% of narratives about times it has are sanitized and rewritten by Power to remove more radical elements.
— Childless Feminist Slut with Cats (@katewillett) May 8, 2022
If they’re so worried about the decorum, they should be be focused on the reasons WHY people have felt that protesting in front of the court is effectless. It’s like complaining that about the fire department using axes in your house when it’s burning to the ground. 24/n
— Brynn Tannehill (@BrynnTannehill) May 9, 2022
if you want people to not protest or demonstrate outside of your house have you considered not being ontologically evil
— transgender marx (@JUNlPER) May 8, 2022
(image: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
