Ana Maria Archila will be a presence at Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, February 5. Archila will be the guest of freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and for a very political reason.
Archila, who is co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy Action, gained notoriety last September during the Supreme Court hearing regarding Brett Kavanaugh.
Archila was one of the women who confronted Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, who is a Republican, in an elevator over his support of a nominee who had been accused of sexually assaulting a woman when he was a teenager.
“What you are doing is allowing someone who actually violated a woman to sit on the Supreme Court. This is not tolerable. You have children in your family. Think about them,” Archila said during the confrontation.
Flake announced in October 2017 that he would not seek re-election and is no longer a member of the Senate.
The activist says she is “moved” by the gesture from Ocasio-Cortez.
“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.
Archila is a resident of Queens, New York.
The State of the Union address will begin at 9:00 p.m. ET on Tuesday, February 5.