Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Invites Protester Who Confronted Jeff Flake to State of the Union

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) invited Ana Maria Archila—who famously confronted Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing—to President Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday. “She’s living proof that the courage within all of us can change the [world],” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a Monday tweet. Archila confronted Flake in an elevator, urging him not to support Kavanaugh after he was accused of sexual assault. “I was sexually assaulted and nobody believed me,” she told Flake in a video that went viral. “I didn’t tell anyone, and you’re telling all women that they don’t matter.” Hours later, Flake asked that the hearing be delayed, but ultimately voted for Kavanaugh’s confirmation. “I just feel particularly moved that in her first participation in the State of the Union, she is inviting me to join and inviting that moment of the elevator, my confrontation with the men who do not understand the life of women and the lives of people who are not in power, that she’s inviting that into the imagination of people again,” Archila told The Intercept.