Women protesters lie in Portland streets spelling ‘STOP HIM’ as Kavanaugh vote looms | The News Tribune

Women in Portland, Oregon, lay in the street Thursday morning in front of the federal courthouse, blocking traffic and protesting Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.

Taken together, the women’s bodies spelled “STOP HIM” from above, photos and videos show. They had signs affixed to their clothes that read “silenced by the U.S. Senate” and had red hand prints painted over their mouths. About 20 protesters were on the ground as three women used megaphones to broadcast the testimony of women who have accused Supreme Court nominees of sexual misconduct, the Oregonian reported.

“Women are laying their bodies down to stop Kavanaugh,” protester Lisa Frack said in a video posted to Facebook. “Women are reading the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Anita Hill so people understand that they need to listen — and when they listen, they need to value women’s bodies.”

Frack, who helped conceive the protest, said in a phone interview that organizers had considered blocking a freeway before deciding on the street in front of the courthouse. She said she and other protesters were compelled to act because “we felt like Dr. Ford did something amazingly brave for the rest of us and, especially as middle-class white women, it was time for us to do something for ourselves and others.”

The protest is one of many across the country this week as the Senate prepares to vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination, which was thrown into uncertainty last month when Ford publicly accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her while the two were in high school.

Ford’s accusations led to a tense, all-day Senate hearing in which Kavanaugh vehemently denied the allegation, and Ford recalled details of the alleged assault. After the hearing, Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona called for a limited FBI investigation last week, the results of which senators reviewed Thursday morning.

“If he’s appointed, the message to women is that once again we don’t matter,” Frack said in the video she posted. “Our president is making fun of a sexual assault victim who came forward and shared her experience to save the rest of us — and what she gets is the same derision and disrespect we get every day in this country.”

Listening to Ford’s allegations before the committee left Frack “transfixed” and “frozen” in her kitchen last week, but Kavanaugh’s testimony later in the day galvanized Frack’s opposition to his nomination nearly as much, she said.

“This is not how we raise our kids to behave,” Frack said, describing Kavanaugh’s “insolent behavior” with senators on the committee. “That he could perform like that, and then our system would still approve him — that shocked me.”

Frack isn’t hopeful the final vote will go the protesters’ way.

“He will, I think, end up on the court,” she said.

KATU reports that the protesters in Portland had the following list of demands:

• “Stop appointing people who have committed sexual assault or harassment to the Supreme Court”

• “Stop using the U.S. Senate, the courts and our justice system to silence women or to allow violence against women to continue.”

• “Stop using the justice system to prop up rich, white men while criminalizing and victimizing the rest of us because of our race, our gender, our immigration status or because we are poor.”

The protest came as Republicans said Thursday that the FBI report did not corroborate Ford’s sexual assault allegations, and Democrats called the report incomplete and rushed. Women around the country boarded buses to travel to Washington and protest, HuffPost reports.

A procedural vote on the nomination is expected Friday in the Senate, the Washington Post reports.

Traffic in downtown Portland started moving after the roughly 30-minute protest ended, Patch reports, though further protests were possible later in the day.

Both of the state’s senators, who are Democrats, plan to vote against Kavanaugh’s nomination.