A silent protest was staged during Jeff Flake’s appearance in Boston
"We stood up to represent the people that he’s supposed to be representing."
Jeff Flake’s visit to Boston was greeted by protests both inside and outside the confines of the Forbes Under 30 Summit.
And while the people who demonstrated during Flake’s interview Monday did so without being disruptive, their message was hard to miss.
“This was just our opportunity to use our privilege and our position to be in front of the senator, and stand up for women who can’t be here to stand up for themselves,” Kristin Van Busum, a speaker at the summit who was among the 10 or so demonstrators, told Boston.com.
Flake, an Arizona Republican, helped negotiate for a weeklong FBI investigation into the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh last week after voting to advance the federal judge’s nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee (and getting confronted by activists in the Capitol about the decision).
The retiring senator has said he found Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, to be “credible” and asserted that his final vote in support of Kavanaugh’s nomination is conditional upon the re-opened investigation and its outcome. His scheduled appearance at the Under 30 summit on Monday had to be relocated to City Hall Plaza due to a planned protest urging him to reject the nominee.
Hours before the 55-year-old senator appeared Monday, hundreds rallied outside City Hall — adjacent to the summit grounds — to protest Kavanaugh’s nomination and speak out in support of sexual assault survivors. The impassioned, hourlong demonstration featured a number of prominent Democratic politicians, including Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, Sen. Ed Markey, City Councilor Ayanna Pressley, and New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“As a woman of color who has a platform, I have been asked to not come off as outraged or angry for fear of being labeled as an angry black woman,” Pressley told protesters. “Well I am angry, and I am outraged — because this is outrageous!”
Walsh said he felt like he should thank Flake for pushing for the reopened investigation into Kavanaugh, but at the same time said the act shouldn’t be too much to ask.
“I guess I want to say thank you for asking the question, but that’s your job,” the mayor said. “That’s your job! That’s your job to vet the nominee.”
With at least two Republican senators needed to join the 49 Democrats in the Senate to vote against Kavanaugh to block the nomination, Flake has found himself at the center of the political universe. Van Busum said Monday that “all eyes in our nation are on him.”
When he did finally take the outdoor stage on City Hall Plaza around 2 p.m., Flake’s first question was about how to encourage more women to run for office. Just as the senator began to answer, protesters holding signs began standing up in a coordinated, silent demonstration.
Demonstrators stand in protest as Jeff Flake is interviewed on stage pic.twitter.com/PAxaYxm1DM
— Nik DeCosta-Klipa (@NikDeCostaKlipa) October 1, 2018
The signs displayed the names of women from Flake’s home state of Arizona who are survivors of sexual assault, along with the hashtag #BelieveSurvivors. Van Busum explained that a group of participants in the Under 30 summit decided to organize the demonstration after learning of Flake’s planned attendance.
“We stood up to represent the people that he’s supposed to be representing,” she said after the event.
They stayed standing throughout the entire 20-minute interview.
Demonstrators hold up signs while Sen. Jeff Flake speaks at the Under 30 summit on Boston City Hall Plaza.
During the interview Flake explained that he found he had leverage, as the de facto tie-breaking vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee, to call for the limited FBI investigation and said he thought there was “no reason” why Kavanaugh’s nomination couldn’t be delayed for another week for that “due diligence” to be done.
“That’s a good thing. We ought to have more information, not less,” he said to scattered applause.
Louder cheers came from the crowd when Flake was showed a photo of himself as he was being confronted by the two women in the elevator Friday morning. The senator said that experience, as well as the unexpected calls and texts he received from other women who described past experiences of sexual misconduct, played a part in his decision to call for the investigation. He suggested he wasn’t the only one getting such calls.
“What Dr. Ford said really emboldened a lot of women to come forward,” Flake said. “That experience [in the elevator] — I’m not sure any of my colleagues had any quite like that, but all of us have had experiences like this in the past week.”
As much as he found Ford’s testimony convincing, Flake said he also empathized with Kavanaugh after hearing the federal judge’s own emotional testimony before the committee, denying that he ever committed such an offense.
“Some people were turned off by the rawness of it, but I said at the time, had I been what I felt was unjustly accused, that’s probably how I would have responded as well,” he said.
Jeff Flake explains how he could still vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh after saying he found Dr. Ford credible — and receives a few boos. pic.twitter.com/gPYHQvSM0T
— Nik DeCosta-Klipa (@NikDeCostaKlipa) October 1, 2018
Amid reports that the White House had limited the scope of the FBI’s probe into the allegations against Kavanaugh, Flake said it was important for there to be a “fulsome investigation,” even if it doesn’t uncover any significant new evidence.
“It does no good to do an investigation that just gives us more cover,” he said. “We actually need to find out what we can find out, and we have to realize that we may not be able to find out everything that happened. This is something that was awhile ago. Some witnesses or potential witnesses may not want to cooperate.”
CNN reported Monday that Flake and two other key Republican votes in the Senate — Sen. Susan Collins, of Maine, and Sen. Liza Murkowski, of Alaska — have privately informed the White House they want the FBI to interview three possible witnesses to the alleged assault on Ford, as well as a second woman who has accused Kavanaugh of inappropriate sexual behavior. According to CNN and The New York Times, the White House also told the FBI on Monday to interview anyone it deems necessary for a thorough review.
Aside from a sparse number of boos and “Vote no” chants (including some from protesters who could be overheard from outside the summit fences), Flake’s event went along largely uninterrupted, despite the increased anticipation for his appearance beforehand. Still, Van Busum said afterwards that she knows the senator saw their message.
“We do not want a sexual predator sitting on our Supreme Court, and he has the power right now to change that,” she said.
