Kim Erickson Yaman (aka MsSpentyouth) was among those arrested Friday, December 16, for knocking on the gallery door to gain access to the Republican-supermajority-controlled NC House of Representatives for a "public" vote stripping the newly elected Democratic governor's powers.
It sounds like the start of a bad joke, right? “So a breastfeeding mother, Santa Claus, and a grandmother walk into the N.C General Assembly … “
It’s bad, alright: an odious and audacious power grab by the NC GOP that casts North Carolina as the canary in the coal mine as resistance to Donald Trump’s politics of exclusion shape up. But it’s no joke.
I’m the now-trending “crying grandmother” arrested for protesting a closed-door vote on Friday at the North Carolina General Assembly in Raleigh. I was arrested while FacebookLive’ing the protest (caution, this is a very long video and quite boring, as most of it is filmed from my pocket) for knocking on the door of the NC House of Representatives’ public gallery. The police didn’t give me the chance to turn off my video, so my entire arrest and initial booking process were captured live and things went viral. I’d have posted this diary sooner and it would be a lot more coherent, but I’ve been fielding more than 3,000 emails, hundreds and hundreds of texts, a freaking crazy Twitterstorm, and phone calls from press all over the world who are covering the crazy at the NC General Assembly.
Of course, how could things NOT go viral when legislators order law enforcement to arrest Santa, a woman actively nursing her infant, and grandmother who breaks into sobs?
Both the NC Senate and NC House of Representatives chamber galleries were closed to the public so that representatives could vote without any public input or observation. I wanted to be in the gallery seats to witness our Republican legislative supermajority ram a bill through the House over the vocal protests of Democrats and the tens of thousands of emails and phone calls that rolled in to each and every member of the legislature between Wednesday and Friday. But as things panned out, I got arrested and went to jail. That’s how we roll now here in the Old North State.
I’m a member of the Forward Together/Moral Monday movement headed up by the North Carolina chapter of NAACP. This incredible movement has provided support and encouragement for nearly 2,000 North Carolinians who’ve chosen carefully and consciously chosen civil disobedience over silence as the Republic supermajority shreds North Carolina’s constitution one bill at a time. About 1,400 of us were arrested in 2013, another few hundred in 2014, and more in 2015. Others were arrested in 2016 after passage of the odious HB2, a new law that requires people to show ID before using a public restroom so that the NC General Assembly is assured that discrimination, harassment and assault against LGBTQ community members is able to continue as God intended, and also that people pee and poop in a restroom identified as matching the gender marked on their original birth certificates.
Don’t ask me how that’s working out or what the compliance process is. Apparently it’s not easy for the NCGA to make sure that everyone using the women’s room has a vagina or whether you can get dispensation if you still have your vagina but not your uterus and/or ovaries. Penii might be easier to legislate, but that would mean the our predominantly male legislature would find its members being groped and frisked and grabbed inside the NCGA buildings, and we can’t have that now, can we? And it’s tough to assess the obviously manifold successes of HB2, as pretty much everyone who would ordinarily come from out of state to perform or work or play sports or build stuff or hire hundreds of people are boycotting us. We’ve lost untold hundreds of millions of dollars because of this boycott and will likely lose hundreds of millions more. But what’s money compared to the comfort of knowing that your mom is being frisked by an experienced legislator who most sincerely cares about her va-jay-jay?
So, yeah, I got arrested and the whole thing was on Facebook Live and people were flooding the NCGA, the Wake County Detention Center, and the NAACP asking for an update on the health and safety of Santa Claus and the nursing mother and that bawling cat lady with all the shiny buttons.
There were many others arrested Friday. We’re not quite sure what Friday’s arrest count was, as there were several waves of arrests and not all arrestees were able to connect with the NAACP-NC team before the Republican legislators went batshit crazy and ordered officers from the NCGA Police, Raleigh Capital Area Police, Raleigh Police Department, State Bureau of Investigation, and the Wake County Sheriff’s Department to arrest all the dangerous terrorist criminals invading what’s known — or used to be known — as The People’s House.
Estimates for Friday’s arrests range from 39 to 50, based on the number of Wake County Sheriff’s Office vans that were used in the five waves of arrests. Charges range from second-degree trespassing to disorderly conduct to some vague criminal act called “breaking rules” to first-degree trespassing to resisting arrest.
I’m not sure what they charged Santa with, but in processing he told us which legislators can expect bags of coal ash under their trees next weekend.
The rather perplexed bevy of law-enforcement officers did their work with remarkable dignity, honor, and kindness. Santa was allowed to keep his stocking cap for his mug shot, for instance, and a couple detainees were actually allowed to us jailhouse bathrooms without having their gender identify confirmed by birth certificate, though all of us did have to submit to a … um … well … let’s just say “thorough searches” before being escorted to the restroom one at a time.
We were thanked many times by the various department personnel who arrested and booked us. We, in turn, thanked them. And we gave a lot of appreciation to NAACP of North Carolina, whose Forward Together/Moral Monday staff and volunteers and legal defense team have stood behind us through more than 2,000 arrests without a single injury.
For those who choose to support arrestees and the NAACP’s Forward Together movement, the link is here. If you’d like to donate specifically to the NAACP-NC Legal Defense Fund, zap an email (info@naacpnc.org) or give a call (919‑682‑4700) to learn how to designate your donation. The organization also welcomes attorneys in North Carolina who wish to offer pro bono legal services for Santa, the nursing mother, the bawling grandmother, and the more than 100 other people arrested at the NCGA this week; contact NAACP-NC for more information.
I apologize for a relatively brief and extensively scattered diary about a complex and serious-but-ridiculous coup and crackdown on a resistance to that coup. It has been a rough week in North Carolina and I still have another 342 emails to get through and my cats are worried they aren’t going to get a steady supply of “the good food” if I end up in the slammer again.
Before I go, though, know that we in North Carolina are not taking this power grab lightly. We realize that we’re the canaries in the coal mine as our nation moves toward inauguration of … I can’t, I just can’t type it … We’re getting our practice in, we’re learning from our efforts, we are fully behind an organization that has more than 70 years of experience with oppression in its myriad forms, and we are damned serious about not letting our government get between the people of the U.S. and our freedoms.
Once again, though, please please please donate your time, money, skills, and homemade cookies and fresh fruit to the NAACP-NC’s Forward Together movement. Your contributions will ensure legal defense for those arrested as well as court challenges to the illegal shenanigans being perpetrated upon the people of North Carolina.
Once again, that website is NAACP-NC. Become a member, or sponsor someone to become a member. This matters.
![Kim Erickson Yaman among those arrested for knocking on the gallery door to gain access to the NC House of Representatives for a "public" vote](http://images.dailykos.com/images/340553/story_image/Kim_arrested.jpg?1482095561 "Kim Erickson Yaman among those arrested for knocking on the gallery door to gain access to the NC House of Representatives for a "public" vote")
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