Lang
12/10/23
Iowa City residents protested the arrest of demonstrators who disrupted traffic outside of an anti-trans event earlier this fall at the University of Iowa.
The student group Young Americans for Freedom brought in Chloe Cole, who transitioned to a male before de-transitioning back to being female, to speak at the Iowa Memorial Union on the night of October 16th. Nearly 150 UI students and others gathered around the IMU to protest Cole’s appearance. Six were arrested for allegedly refusing police demands to move out of the street at the intersection of West Jefferson and South Madison Streets.
About 100 people gathered on the Pentacrest Friday night to protest those arrests, as well as protest recently-passed anti-trans laws in the Iowa legislature. The demonstrators then marched to the Johnson County Courthouse and the South Clinton Street building that houses the county prosecutor’s office, spray painting the windows with phrases demanding the charges be dropped.
Some of the protestors reached out to KCJJ to note police had “deadnamed” the protestors by using their birth names instead of their post-transition names on arrest records.