By Annie Grayer, CNN
(CNN) — Chelsea Manning, the previous Military intelligence analyst behind one of many largest leaks of categorized data in historical past, was amongst a bunch of activists arrested Thursday outdoors of Home Speaker Mike Johnson’s workplace after collaborating in a protest advocating for transgender rights.
The protest occurred outdoors of Johnson’s workplace within the Cannon Home Workplace Constructing. It comes after Johnson supported a GOP-led effort to ban transgender ladies from utilizing ladies’s restrooms on the US Capitol, and someday after transgender rights took heart stage in a high-profile case on the Supreme Courtroom.
“I’m here today because every person deserves dignity and respect, both in daily life and in more symbolic places like the U.S. Capitol,” Manning, who’s a transgender woman, mentioned in a press release to CNN.
“As someone who has fought against similar rules, I know what it’s like to feel pushed aside and erased,” Manning mentioned. “But I also know the incredible power and resilience our community has. I’m not here as a leader or a spokesperson but simply as another member of my community who shows up unconditionally to support my siblings in this fight. I will stand beside them no matter what. We didn’t start this fight, but we are together now.”
A contentious debate got here to a head on Capitol Hill final month after GOP Rep. Nancy Mace filed a decision to stop transgender ladies from utilizing ladies’s bogs within the US Capitol. The transfer by Mace got here after Democratic Rep.-elect Sarah McBride grew to become the primary out transgender woman elected to Congress.
The US Capitol Police advised CNN that round 15 individuals have been arrested on account of the protest on Thursday. It’s in opposition to the regulation to protest inside congressional workplace buildings or contained in the US Capitol.
Different protestors may very well be heard on Thursday shouting quite a few issues, together with “Democrats, grow a spine, trans lives are on the line.”
Johnson’s workplace in Cannon is instantly throughout from the ladies’s toilet.
Manning was convicted in 2013 of stealing 750,000 pages of categorized paperwork and movies and disseminating them to WikiLeaks, the net anti-secrecy group. In 2017, then-President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence.
The-CNN-Wire
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