These demands follow the release of a report revealing how hate speech and harassment have escalated on Facebook and Instagram since Meta weakened protections.
Arisha Hatch, the interim executive director of the women’s advocacy group UltraViolet, condemned the verdict as “a stain on a criminal justice system that for decades has failed to hold accountable abusers” and called it “an indictment of a culture in which not believing women and victims of sexual assault remains endemic.”
UltraViolet Action, a national women’s advocacy organization, said the 2005 outtake of Trump talking about using his celebrity status to “grab them by the pussy” will air over and over for 12 hours to remind senators that the president is “a self-professed serial sexual abuser attempting to elevate another sexual abuser ― Brett Kavanaugh ― into high office.”
Meanwhile, outside the Capitol building Thursday, a different feminist group had set up a giant screen dedicated to showing, on a loop, the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which Donald Trump bragged that his fame allowed him to “grab them by the pussy.” According to Roll Call, the video will air for 12 hours.
When the doors to the Hart Senate Office Building opened at 7:30 a.m. last Friday, a few protesters making a final show of opposition to the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh were waiting to be let in. As they waited, a woman named Maria Gallagher, with dark hair and glasses, introduced herself to me. She told me she lived in the area and had taken the morning off from work in response to a call to action from the progressive organizations MoveOn and UltraViolet. I asked if she was planning to get arrested—many of those visiting the building that day were prepared for civil disobedience. She said “no.” She had told her employer that she would be in by noon.
The support for Kavanaugh though, seemed outnumbered by the people at the Senate who turned out for Ford. Organized by activist groups like the Women’s March, Planned Parenthood and Ultraviolet, they poured into the Senate buildings before heading to the Supreme Court, where they chanted, “You won’t silence us! No means no.” At one point, a subset of demonstrators sat in the middle of the street in front of the Supreme Court singing “we shall not be moved.”