Markeshia Ricks Photo
Lena Olive Reese with Planned Parenthood’s Gretchen Raffa …
.. and the crowd on the Green Monday.
They’re angry. Some of them have been sexually abused. And they’re done being silent about it.
Close to 100 people brought that message to the lower Green Monday afternoon as part of a national day of action to protest the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the highest court in the land and to stand with the women accusing him of sexual assault. A separate sit-in took place at Yale Law School, where a U.S. senator (and alum) dropped by to offer support.
All over the nation, including at the New Haven Green and at Yale Law School, people dressed in black and participated in sit-ins and walkouts as part of the #BelieveSurvivors National Walkout and Moment of Solidarity. The protests follow the latest revelation that another woman, a fellow Yale graduate named Deborah Ramirez, has come forward to make a sexual assault allegation against him. His first accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, is set to testify before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday.
Lena Olive Reese was one of those protestors Monday who converged on the Green in her black for the protest, which began at 1 p.m. She said she was there in solidarity with her mother, for her best male friend who was sexually assaulted as a child, for black trans women who are being murdered at unprecedented rates, and for herself.
Nasty Women CT’s Luciana McClure helps rally the crowd.
Black Lives Matters New Haven co-founder Sun Queen recites poems about sexual assault.
“I’m angry because I have to walk from my car with keys in between my fingers to walk into my own home,” Reese told the crowd. “I’m angry because I don’t feel safe walking in the Green at night. I am angry because I had to quit something I love when I was in college because a man grabbed me by the hair to teach me a lesson. I’m angry that I stayed in a relationship with a man who forced me into situations that I was not ready for. But I thought that’s how men showed their love so I stayed.
“I’m angry that white, straight men have no idea how this feels,” Reese added. “And until the day that they have to walk with keys in between their fingers to walk into their own homes, I will not stop being angry.”
Black Lives Matter New Haven Co-Founder Sun Queen offered poems that illustrated the trauma of sexual assault and the self-loathing, fear, and powerlessness that it can create. She said the poems grew out of a conversation she had with a friend who had been sexually assaulted. The friend had been made to believe her mother had been assaulted. But she hadn’t.
Sun Queen said when the friend learned that her mother had lied about her sexual abuse the friend then couldn’t talk about her own actual abuse. Sun Queen said she felt the urge to be a voice for her and so she wrote the poem.
“Me too is more than a hashtag,” she intoned. “Stop the silence.”
Gretchen Raffa, director of public policy and advocacy of Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, said the walkout and moment of solidarity were about listening to people’s stories and listening to survivors.
“We’re saying we believe survivors,” she said. “We stand with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. We stand with Deborah Ramirez. We are still standing with Anita Hill.”
Catalina Brennan-Gatica came with her mom to show solidarity with survivors.
Raffa pointed out that 77 percent of sexual assaults in America go unreported. She said that’s often because the person “suffers further hurt and humiliation by having their stories dismissed, their integrity doubted, or their motives questioned.”
She said Kavanaugh’s nomination was a moment of reckoning for the U.S. Senate. “What senators do today will determine whether they stand with women and survivors or whether they stand against them. We urge Sen. Chuck Grassley and every senator to stop the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.”
One senator trying to put the breaks on Kavanaugh’s confirmation is Connecticut’s own U.S. Richard Blumenthal. He stopped by his alma mater Yale Law School Sunday to support students who had staged a sit-in at 9:30 a.m.
Yale Law students stage a silent protest and teach-in Monday.
“I’m really proud to be at my alma mater where students are taking a stand speaking out in favor of sexual assault survivors,” he said after addressing the students Monday. “One out of every three women in America is a survivor of sexual assault in her life. but this crime is underreported, perhaps the most underreported, precisely because of threatening humiliation and intimidation seen just this past week from the highest elected official.”
The allegations against Kavanaugh have hit close to home because of the Supreme Court nominee’s ties to Yale. Prior to Deborah Ramirez coming forward, Yale Law students accused a professor of allegedly providing questionable ethical advice to young women seeking coveted court clerkships with Kavanaugh. (The professor denies the allegation. Yale is investigating the allegations.)
Signs like these were posted inside and outside the law school.
Some individual Yale Law School professors canceled classes Monday and about 200 students dressed in black and staged a silent sit-in in the main thoroughfare of the school and then held a teach-in to learn about the last time a U.S. Supreme Court nomination roiled the country and Yale graduates were at the center of national attention because of sexual assault allegations. That time it was Yale Law alums Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill.
Blumenthal called the Thomas-Hill hearings “disastrously flawed,” pointing out that it was a short investigation and though there were corroborating witnesses, they were barred from appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said that an even lower standard is being applied in Kavanaugh’s confirmation process than what was applied to Thomas.
Blumenthal.
“We need to do better,” Blumenthal said. “What happened to Anita Hill should not happen here. We should accord the respect these survivors deserve. There should be a full, fair investigation. If there is not, there will be a cloud that will forever hang over this nominee and a stain on the Supreme Court itself.”
Blumenthal is one of the Democratic senators calling on the White House to release millions of pages of Kavanaugh’s documents and to order an FBI investigation into the allegations made by his former classmates.
“In good conscience, we cannot vote without a full and fair FBI investigation and we cannot vote without an opportunity for these survivors to be heard respectfully. We need hearings with the witnesses who have knowledge of these sexual assault allegations.”
“This Has Been Going On For Years”
Back on the Green, in the afternoon, activist Ann M. stepped up to say something simple but profound.
“My name is Ann and I didn’t tell the first time I was assaulted because I was five years old,” she said. “I didn’t have the courage to tell. I thought it was my fault.”
She said she can say that out loud now after more than two decades of therapy, and she said it’s important that survivors speak to allow for their own healing and for the healing of others.
“Survivors have to see other survivors make it through,” she said. “It’s never gone. It’s a hole in your soul. Somebody shot a hole in your soul. It’s never gone but it can be repaired. And it’s important for other women to model that.”
She said it also was important to acknowledge the role that race — or the absence of it — plays in the heightened national attention around the Kavanaugh allegations.
“When white women speak out about this, it gets national attention,” said Ann, who is white. “But this has been going on for years — young black girls and women subjected to sexual violence, many at the hands of white men. If we don’t understand that and understand it as a historical way of life in this country, things won’t change.”
Click videos below to see moments from Monday’s afternoon walkout and morning sit-in.
God bless these women. I was at both demonstrations.
I have 2 words for Big Blu---RE TIRE
Go see Fahrenheit 11/9 at the Criterion on Temple St.
Frankly I dont think most men can empathize with us until they grow breasts and vaginas. Not much has changed for women or people of color in my 70 years. I wish I had the freedom to walk in the dark outside...alone. It is too dangerous and if I had a daughter I'd offer shooting lessons along with kevlar, a pitbull, karate, etc. If I had black children, I'd teach them the Black Man's Code and offer the same. American women and blacks are in jeopardy, and yes, I know it's worse in other countries (many of them allies to the US unfortunately). Politicians and their minions, the cops (no offense) are useless mostly. Justice for rape victims is way too rare.
I also remember this country BEFORE abortion rights---it was expensive, painful, and humiliating to get one and you had to travel out of the country as many women I knew did or you could risk death or permanent injury going local. The freedom to avoid pregnancy was the most important turning point in my life, period (no pun intended).