Dozens of Democratic women will wear black to President Trump’s State of the Union on Tuesday to show support for survivors of sexual harassment and assault. Rep. Pramila Jayapal won’t be one of them — because she’s not attending the speech at all. The freshman Democrat from Washington state announced in a Facebook video on Martin Luther King Jr. Day that she is joining a number of colleagues, includingRep. Maxine Waters,] in boycotting the event. Jayapal spoke to Glamour about her decision and how she’s fighting back against what she sees as a racist presidency.

What message are you trying to send by skipping the State of the Union?“For me it really is about refusing to normalize and dignify a president who is using the highest office of the land to really fan and fuel racism and sexism and hatred. [My decision] was brought about by his comments during the immigration meeting, where he called Haiti and other African nations ‘shitholes. I just think that is outrageous. This is just a speech and I don’t want to be in the chamber and have to listen to words from a president who uses the office really for political reasons to fuel hatred.”

You say he’s “fueling hatred” or using these terms for political reasons, but do you think President Trump is a racist? At his core, is he a racist person?“I think he is, because I don’t think that these comments would come out over and over again if he didn’t have those tendencies. The signs really are there, with multiple comments, with multiple sets of policies that are based on racist ideologies. His reluctance to condemn or his refusal to condemn white supremacists and to morally equate those white supremacists with protesters against white supremacy was probably one of the most stunning examples of that. Many people have, perhaps unintended, said things that come out as racist, but he has seemed to have a proclivity to having people around him who strengthen that part of him.”

“We have to keep remembering that the majority of the United States rejected him. And certainly if the election would be held today, that would be even more true. I’s a very difficult situation because he is occupying the oval office, but [the question is] how do we refuse to normalize behavior when every day feels like we’re sinking to a new low. To me, staying away from the State of the Union is a form of nonviolent resistance and part of the reason I announced it on MLK Day is because Dr. King and Gandhi have been inspirations for me and I do think that silence is complicity.”

Some colleagues are using the event to send a message instead, including women wearing black to stand with survivors of sexual harassment and assault. What do you think about that?“For the women of the caucus who are wearing black and going to the State of the Union, I’m very supportive of those efforts. I will just say for me, this is very personal. I am an immigrant to this country, and I spent years working in the immigration movement and the women’s movement. So when [Trump] says immigration has brought us the worst of the worst or when he realizes a report from the White House talking about immigrants as terrorists, I personally cannot sit in that chamber.”

You and other members who are not attending are planning a counter-event. What will you be doing?“We’ll have our own agenda for that evening because we really want to present a state of our union. Our vision is to present an alternative vision, for how we move forward, one based on unity and people in rural and urban areas and white brown and black and men and women coming together to really move the united states forward and not backward.”

The State of the Union is just one night, one news cycle…maybe even less than one news cycle the way things go these days. What happens next?‘We have seen across the country attitudes toward the president — disappointment, disgust, outrage over the president — being turned into action in districts that Democrats never thought they could win. They are winning, often with women candidates. The state Senate race in Wisconsin was a perfect example of that Even [Republican Gov.] Scott Walker said this is a wake-up call. We have to continue to move our organizing into power that demonstrates ourselves in resistance to bad policies. You saw it last year around healthcare, around the “Trumpcare bill”. And I think you’re going to see it this year not only around policy issues, but in special elections and primaries and, ultimately, in November.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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