Seventeen US lawmakers, including rising leftist star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were arrested in Washington on Tuesday following a rally to defend abortion rights, police said.
“We have arrested a total of 35 people,” including “17 members of Congress” because after three citations, “some of the protesters (refused) to leave the street” located between the Capitol and the Supreme Court, police tweeted. of the Capitol.
Democrat-elect Ilhan Omar wrote on the social network that she was arrested during a “civil disobedience action.” “I will do everything I can to sound the alarm about the assault on our reproductive rights,” added she, who is a member of the left wing of the Democratic Party, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
An “action of civil disobedience”
A video posted on the Twitter account of the elected official, nicknamed AOC, shows her being escorted by a police officer off the street in front of the Supreme Court building. At the end of June, the latter dynamited the constitutional right to abortion in the United States, returning to each State the right to prohibit it and causing a political tsunami.
Democrats and President Joe Biden are seeking to mobilize their electorate around this issue ahead of the midterm elections scheduled for November. According to the US media Axios, the 17 arrested parliamentarians, members of the House of Representatives, are all Democrats and mostly women.
It was on this same street, in the heart of the federal capital and located between the Capitol and the Supreme Court, that thousands of people had gathered in the hours and days after the historic decision of the High Court, on June 24, to protest. against a historical “return to the past”.
Source: BFM TV
