Representative Nancy Mace is proudly embracing her George Wallace moment. It’s time for dissent.

When Vivian Malone and James Hood enrolled at the University of Alabama in 1963, Governor Wallace traveled to Tuscaloosa to stand defiantly in the doorway of the Foster Auditorium. In tailored suit and tie, the white southern governor, whom Dr Martin Luther King once called “perhaps the most dangerous racist in America today”, prevented the two Black students from attending class.

Wallace’s Stand in the Schoolhouse Door upheld the impassioned promise he made while delivering his inaugural address: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”. Mace has clearly studied this history and chosen to side with its least savory character.

When Sarah McBride became the first out transgender woman elected to Congress this past November, Mace swiftly introduced a House resolution to ban McBride from using the bathroom. This legislation, which has far-reaching implications, might as well be known as Mace’s Stand in the Bathroom Door.

When cruel injustice becomes enshrined in law by politicians fueled by hate the only conscionable response is to dissent. Yet, in the face of escalating anti-trans rhetoric and legislation on the Hill, Democrats, so far with the lone exception of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have remained eerily silent.

That is why, in a commitment to affirm the basic human dignity and respect all people deserve, I helped lead a group of trans women, non-binary people, and cis allies in holding a sit-in in a women’s bathroom in Congress. Holding a banner that read “Flush Bathroom Bigotry”, we openly disobeyed House policy and defied Mace and House speaker Mike Johnson’s hate.

We are inspired by the long and proud tradition of everyday people coming together to confront injustice – people willing to take a risk to uphold a vision for the future we deserve, from the 1960 sit-in at a Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, that helped to catalyze the Black Freedom Movement, to the 1966 sip-in at Julius’ Bar in New York City that helped to ignite the movement for queer liberation.

We held these histories in our hearts as we raised our voices together: “Democrats grow a spine, trans lives are on the line.” Capitol police tightened handcuffs around our wrists and hauled 15 of us off to jail.

Mace followed along to the US Capitol police headquarters. With a megaphone magnifying her hate, she hurled anti-trans slurs at us while we sat locked in our cells. So far, only a single member of Congress, the representative Maxwell Frost, has condemned her abhorrent hate speech.

In Montgomery, Alabama, 100 miles south-east of where Wallace made his infamous Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Jars full of soil collected from the trees where white mobs lynched Black people commemorate one of the most gruesome chapters of this country’s history.

The white vigilantes, who took it upon themselves to terrorize and murder the Black people whom this memorial honors, commonly justified their heinous acts by claiming, like Mace, that they were “protecting” women, who invariably were cis and white. Racism’s pernicious construction – that is to say, false imagination – of Black people as inherently posing a threat to white women has excused egregious acts of racist violence.

Mace adopts a similar logic to the southern segregationists she cosplays as while advancing her own viciously anti-trans hate. By suggesting trans women inherently pose a threat to the safety of cis women, she justifies all acts of violence committed against us, both physical and political.

Mace seems proud of this brutality. To her, our bodies are to be dismembered and placed as a present under the Christmas tree of cis salvation. Mace’s infatuation with hawking grotesque anti-trans merchandise harkens back to the despicable racist tradition of selling souvenirs that celebrated lynchings.

Those who have intimate experience from their daily lives of surviving with resilience in the face of this country’s deeply racist roots, which also underpin the current blossoming of trans misogyny, can show us how to advocate for dignity for all that leaves nobody behind.

Members of Congress should listen to and follow the leadership of Black trans women like Raquel Willis, co-founder of the Gender Liberation Movement, with whom I organized the bathroom sit-in, and the legendary Miss Major, who supported our action. Lawmakers should raise their voices in dissent when their colleagues unabashedly attack us with slurs, misgender us, slander those we love and incite violence by dishonoring our dignity.

Mace urged Capitol police to charge Raquel, our dear friend Chelsea Manning, and me with sex crimes for simply exercising our basic right to use a bathroom. Nobody in power on Capitol Hill objected.

As trans women, we cannot afford to accept indifference in the face of such hostility to our community. We need you to join us in crying out. Without dissent, hate festers with impunity.

• Jay Saper is an organizer of the bathroom sit-in in Congress led by Gender Liberation Movement. Along with Morgan Bassichis and Rachel Valinsky, she is coeditor of Questions to Ask Before Your Bat Mitzvah

• This article was amended on 17 December 2024 to reflect that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has condemned the Capitol bathroom resolution