‘Not Legitimate Protest’: Sinema Responds To Left-Wing Bathroom Harassers

Democratic Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema blasted members of a left-wing organization who followed her into an Arizona State University (ASU) restroom as “unfairly and unlawfully victimiz[ing]” students at the school.

Sinema has been an adjunct professor at ASU, where she teaches classes on public policy and social work, since 2003. LUCHA Arizona, a left-wing group, disrupted one of her classes on Sunday, following her and a student into a bathroom. The group then posted multiple videos of members cajoling her for her opposition to provisions of the Build Back Better social spending package. (RELATED: Internal Defections Over Democrats’ Plan To Lower Drug Prices Puts Long-Sought Goal In Major Peril)

Sinema on activists filming her in bathroom. “Yesterday’s behavior was not legitimate protest. It is unacceptable for activist organizations to instruct their members to jeopardize themselves by engaging in unlawful activities..My students were unfairly and unlawfully victimized” pic.twitter.com/8qn6Gvpy7K

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) October 4, 2021

“In Arizona, we love the First Amendment. We know it is vital to our democracy that constituents can freely petition, protest, or criticize my policy positions and decisions,” Sinema said, adding that she and her staff had met with LUCHA “several times” since her 2018 election to the Senate. LUCHA Arizona’s Twitter account claimed that Sinema was “completely inaccessible” to “the communities that elected her.”

“Yesterday’s behavior was not legitimate protest,” Arizona’s senior senator continued. “It is unacceptable for activist organizations to instruct their members to jeopardize themselves by engaging in unlawful activities such as gaining entry to closed university buildings, disrupting learning environments, and filming students in a restroom.”

Arizona state law prohibits “any person to knowingly photograph, videotape, film, digitally record or by any other means secretly view, with or without a device, another person without that person’s consent… In a restroom, bathroom, locker room, bedroom or other location where the person has a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

LUCHA Arizona called on Sinema to support the Build Back Better package, as well as immigration reform. Sinema introduced legislation with Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn in April that would have expanded capacity in migrant detention centers, although the bill did not make it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sinema opposes multiple provisions of the Build Back Better package. She has repeatedly said that she is unwilling to support spending $3.5 trillion, regardless of the provisions that the money would fund, although she is also critical of proposed increases to the individual and corporate income tax rates.

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