Protester on confronting Flake: ‘I wanted him to feel my rage’

One of the women who confronted Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) after his announcement that he would vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh said in an interview Friday that she “wanted him to feel my rage.” 

WOW — CNN shows a sexual assault victim absolutely shredding @JeffFlake for announcing he’ll vote for Kavanaugh.

“You’re telling all women that they don’t matter, that they should just stay quiet because if they tell you what happened to them you are going to ignore them.” pic.twitter.com/lgLeECzpWC

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 28, 2018

Ana Maria Archila, a director with the Center for Popular Democracy, told The New York Times that she had spent the week in Washington protesting Kavanaugh’s confirmation and that her confrontation with Flake was a spur of the moment reaction to his defense of the judge.

{mosads}Archila said it was one of the first times she has ever publicly discussed her own experience with assault, citing Christine Blasey Ford’s Thursday testimony accusing Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a high school house party in the 1980s.

“When the ‘Me Too’ movement broke out, I thought about saying it — but I wrote things and deleted it and eventually decided I can’t say ‘me too,’” Archila said. “But when Dr. Blasey did it, I forced myself to think about it again.”

Flake refused to engage with Archila or another protester, simply looking down and saying “thank you.”

Archila said “he looked ashamed” and “he had a hard time looking us in the face.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination on Friday, but Flake joined Democrats in calling for a one-week delay on a full vote in the Senate to give the FBI the chance to investigate the claims against the nominee.