New York’s Financial District is going to look a lot like Gilead, the dystopian regime from “The Handmaid’s Tale,” on Tuesday as dozens of women dressed as red-clad handmaids are set to meet Vice President Mike Pence in New York City.
Pence will be in town to attend the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity Summit at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House at 1 Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan. Among the other attendees will be DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.
While the cybersecurity summit aims to “lay out a vision for a collective defense model to protect our nation’s critical infrastructure,” the DHS website said, the handmaids in attendance outside it have a vision of their own: to keep the critical infrastructure of equality and basic human rights.
“Mike Pence is a Christian fascist theocrat for whom ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is a model,” said Sunsara Taylor of Refuse Fascism. “The Bible used to force women to bear children against their will, to persecute LGBTQ people, to tear immigrant children from parents.”
Handmaid-costume wearing protesters have turned out at multiple conservative events in recent years. Refuse Fascism mobilized a group of handmaids and other protesters to greet Pence last week in Philadelphia and is continuing the demonstration in New York Tuesday at noon in the plaza near the 4/5 Bowling Green subway station.
“One hundred of us will protest Pence and DHS Secretary Nielsen dressed in the blood-red cloaks of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ then tear them off, raise our fists and pledge together to continue to grow our protests until we have driven the Trump/Pence regime from power and ended this nightmare,” Taylor said. “In the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America.”
Visit refusefascism.org for more info.
