Confrontational Activism—Is it Here to Stay?

Shaunna Thomas, the cofounder of UltraViolet, a women’s advocacy organization, vehemently disagrees [with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell]. “Until we came along,” she says, “the confirmation was a done deal.” Her six-year-old group has embraced bird-dogging as well as media-friendly gestures like flying a thank you christine banner over Christine Blasey Ford’s house in Palo Alto. UltraViolet’s activity surged during the Kavanaugh hearings, Thomas says. At Senator Susan Collins’s office in Portland, Maine, “hundreds of people started showing up. First weekly, then daily.”