Protesters raged against ‘white, cis, het men’ outside his home.
Protesters raged against ‘white, cis, het men’ outside his home.
Chevy Chase, Md. — Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s residence is surprisingly modest, given his neighborhood’s tony reputation. The house where he, his wife, and their two daughters live is a well-kept Cape Cod dressed head to toe in white wood siding. There’s a small porch off to the side which is surrounded by manicured hedges. Brick stairs trimmed with ivy lead down to the street.
It’s Monday night. All of the lights are on, but none of the Kavanaughs are home. I can’t blame them. Just outside their house, about 150 protesters, summoned by a group called ShutDownDC, are chanting, waving obscene signs, and demanding that the justice resign immediately from the Supreme Court. And all up and down the street, many of the Kavanaughs’ neighbors are gawking or taking pictures of the spectacle. Some wave and join the crowd.
There are three reasons for this demonstration. The first is a Texas case decided earlier this month, in which the justices rejected a challenge to a law essentially outlawing abortion in the state. The second is an upcoming Mississippi case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, concerning a state law challenging the landmark abortion decision Roe v. Wade. In the first case, Kavanaugh voted in favor of allowing the state law to stand. Many pro-choice activists fear that he will do it again with Dobbs and upend decades of federal abortion protections.
The third reason relies on the popular perception that Kavanaugh is a vain and weak man. Ever since his contentious confirmation battle, this theory goes, he’s been craving a triumphant return to the Washington cocktail circuit. And what better way to make that comeback than by singlehandedly saving Roe? All it would take to convince him are some well-chosen words . . . and a little pressure, perhaps.
That’s why ShutDownDC came up to Kavanaugh’s house rather than his office. It’s one thing to yell out on the steps of the Supreme Court like a bunch of bums. It’s quite another to march down his street and mock him while his well-heeled neighbors applaud. There are few things more powerful than shame. Or so the theory goes.
I ask the mother of one of ShutDownDC’s organizers if she thinks maybe her daughter’s group is a bit uncouth in its methods. She replies that she has her reservations about home protesting, but she’s following the Zoomers’ lead anyway. Besides, she adds, Kavanaugh deserves it.
“People don’t see the Court as unbiased anymore, so why should we treat it that way?” she asks.
Nearly everyone present shares that sentiment. Kelly, a woman giving a speech in front of the house, says that the Court favors “a bunch of old wrinkly, mostly white, cis, het men” who are “making tons of money off of inconveniencing and taking rights away from people.”
In a fit of passion, Kelly shouts at the empty house: “You are a coward! You are a sick coward!”
Shortly after Kelly finishes speaking, Kristin Mink, a woman running for Montgomery County Council, shouts, “Kavanaugh, you should resign right now!”
The crowd repeats in a chorus, “Resign! Resign! Resign!”
The rest of the speeches are a grab bag of ShutDownDC’s pet issues: unlimited abortion access, Court-packing, the filibuster, Medicare for All, and some vague gestures at civil rights. At one point, a speaker informs us that “there are no bad abortions except for the ones that people can’t get,” a statement whose exact meaning still eludes me. But so it goes with these activist groups. No protest can ever be about just one issue.
The incoherence of the whole affair probably lessens its effectiveness. And at the end of it all, a few street residents privately pipe up for their neighbor. One notes that never, at least since she has lived in Chevy Chase, has anyone ever picketed the Kavanaughs before. Another one sighs and says that this must be a tough day for his family.
“I feel sorry for his little girls and his wife,” she says. “It’s so sad.”
Only one man openly confronts the protesters. He’s walking his dog through the neighborhood when he accosts several people standing in the back of the crowd. They argue for a few minutes. His voice rises, and he tells them that they are so “full of s***.”
“There are probably other people here who don’t agree with what you’re doing,” he says, pointing beyond the crowd to his neighbors clustered on their porches.
If there are, they are too embarrassed to show it. No one says a word, and no one steps forward.