Protesters hold a sign reading “We can’t sleep so neither should Lindsey” outside Senator Graham’s DC home on the morning of September 21, 2020. (Ford Fischer / News2Share)

Activists with “Shut Down DC” and the Sunrise Movement used strobe lights, instruments and chants to “wake up Lindsey Graham” outside the senator’s house in Washington D.C. to demand he not confirm a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court until after the 2021 Inauguration.

Some of the activists tried to enter Senator Graham’s front yard and knock on the door. Police formed a line preventing most from doing so, and forced one protester who got through off the yard. They did not make arrests.

“He said, ‘Use my words against me!'” chanted the activists, referencing Graham’s allusion to a situation like this when he was defending not confirming Merrick Garland in 2016.

“I want you to use my words against me,” Graham said during a senate hearing in 2016. “If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.”

Activists held a banner reading “We Can’t Sleep So Neither Should Lindsey” while loudly playing back a recording of his own words from 2016.

“In the spirit of RBG, we will not allow a double standard in how our Congress deals with late-term Supreme Court appointments,” said Aura Angelica, an organizer with Sunrise DC. “Senator Graham told us he wouldn’t allow a Supreme Court nominee during an election year– he told us to use his words against him if a seat opened up this late in the game– we’re here today, doing just that.”

“We’re using your words against you,” wrote an activist in sidewalk chalk in front of the senator’s home.

Inspector Robert Glover of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Special Operation Division told an organizer that the protest outside Senator Graham’s house was in violation of DC’s “Residential Tranquility Act” and that they’d begin arresting if they didn’t leave.

He specifically added he’d arrest media at the event as well.

DC Police Lieutenant Jason Bagshaw threatens protesters outside Senator Lindsey Graham’s house with arrest. (Ford Fischer / News2Share)

MPD Lieutenant Jason Bagshaw used an amplifier in Inspector Glover’s call to issue a first warning to the protesters threatening arrest.

“We will not compromise with a simple-minded racist” an activist replied.

After Lieutenant Bagshaw issued a second arrest warning and ordered protesters to leave southbound, they briefly marched north toward the police, but then turned around leaving the way police told them to.

“You can’t stop the revolution!” they chanted. “No justice, no peace!”

“We need a new court,” an organizer said as the group marched to the Supreme Court. “We need a court that actually has term limits.”

“Expand the court! Expand the court!” the group chanted.

Before wrapping, organizers read out the home address of Kansas Senator Pat Roberts in Alexandria, Virginia, and suggested that he or Colorado Senator Cory Gardner should be the next target of a wakeup event.

Protesters march to the Supreme Court following an early-morning protest in front of Senator Graham’s home in Washington DC on September 21, 2020. (Ford Fischer / News2Share)

They added that this could be done in their home states as well.

Sunrise described themselves as “a youth movement to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process.”

Shut Down DC describes themselves as “an alliance of people and organizations committed to an array of social justice issues, coming together to highlight the overlapping causes of the climate crisis in the United States.”