Don’t Dance at Ivanka’s House

Just two months into the era of Trump, there is not a lot for progressives to be excited about. ICE is gathering undocumented immigrants for deportation — including DREAMers who had been granted immunity under Democratic President Barack Obama. Vice President Mike Pence only yesterday cast a vote to break a Senate tie, allowing states to ban funding to Planned Parenthood, a move that will dramatically limit access to contraception and other health services. Protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender have been rescinded, once more allowing school districts to force transgender students to use bathrooms based on the gender on their birth certificates. And a new proposed budget from President Donald Trump will gut social services and pour money instead into military and national security spending.

If there is one silver lining, it’s that the protests on the left have not slowed down at all, and in fact are growing in creativity and number as each new crisis hits. The hundreds of thousands of pink-hatted marchers that gathered across the country on the day after Trump’s inauguration continue to find new ways to oppose the administration’s changing policies — sitting in at airports that detained foreign travelers, overwhelming GOP town halls to demand the Affordable Care Act not be destroyed, and even bringing the “handmaids” of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to anti-abortion legislative sessions in Texas.

Then there is the LGBTQ dance party being planned by WERK for Peace, Queer Resistance, the Trans Women of Color Collective, and other allies. The organizers hope the protest will draw attention to Ivanka Trump, presidential daughter, influential administration adviser, and now an official White House employee, who they accuse of publicly framing herself as a friend to the LGBTQ community but who is supporting an administration that most decidedly is not. They also want to highlight the fact that Ivanka — “supposed climate czar,” as they call her — has been silent in the face of her father’s executive orders that will seriously hurt the environment. (A similar dance party took place outside Mike Pence’s home in January the week before the inauguration.)

So far, there are nearly 200 people indicating they will attend the dance party protest, and almost 2,000 saying they may be interested in showing up. Massive protest activity is one of the most important parts of our democracy, and frankly, I love a good dance. I just wish it wasn’t supposed to end at Ivanka’s house.

As a reporter who covers abortion rights and especially anti-abortion protesters and protests, there are few activities I despise more than protests that target a person’s home. In the ‘80s and early ‘90s, bringing large groups of protesters to the homes of those who worked at or owned abortion clinics was one of the favored tactics of the anti-abortion movement, and that has not completely died off to this day.

In the years prior to the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act of 1994, gathering at an abortion provider’s home was at best an act of intimidation and at its worst an actual physical impediment to providing care. Extremist activists would gather outside a doctor's or clinic owner’s home, serving as a visual notice to neighbors, hoping to garner local support to oppose the resident and influence him or her into leaving the profession. In some cases, protesters would even block doctors from leaving in order to stop abortions at the clinic.

While physically barricading people in their homes is a thing of the past, the harassment and intimidation of a home picket continues through today. “A lot of people deal with home picketing. It’s a particularly invasive form of harassment because the home is where we go to escape the world and the public life that we live,” author David Cohen explained in an interview about his 2015 book on abortion provider harassment, Living in the Crosshairs. “Extremists will come to someone’s home on a weekend and protest with signs that say ‘A Murderer Lives Here’ and pass around pictures of the provider, and yell to the neighbors that they need to do something about this terrible person in their midst. It sends a not-so-subtle message: We know where you live, we know where to find your family, and maybe we’ll do something more.”

Of course, there is a major difference between anti-abortion protesters — some of whom have a history of violence against providers and abortion rights supporters — being an intimidating presence on your sidewalk and a few hundred dancing, sign-carrying LGBTQ protesters marching to your home to bust a few moves and ask you to please use your considerable White House influence on behalf of those communities that you publicly suggest that you support. Unlike anti-abortion protesters, no one is intending to leaflet her neighbors with gory signs or call her a “killer among us,” and it’s doubtful these protesters are going to follow her to work as well, or send her letters to her home address begging her to find new employment, or call out to her every time she goes to the White House, imploring her to repent.

But for me, especially as a parent of young children, there is a line I am constantly leery of seeing crossed when it comes to protest. My home is a place that should be free from controversy. My children should not be drawn into your battles, whether it’s them being faced with signs about “murderers,” or sparkle paint and Lady Gaga. If my sons and daughter have to hide inside their bedrooms to avoid a crowd of opponents, does it matter if they are chanting Hail Marys on my driveway or twerking on my lawn?

This administration is just a few months old, and there is a long, long road of resistance ahead of us. I want to protest loudly and often. But I want to see protests at businesses, in parks, at city halls and capitols. And when the protest is done, I want to come home to my children, alone, and know that in my home, we are all safe and secure and that some boundaries are still in place no matter how much the country is crumbling around us.

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