In what I’m going to call the most poetic event the universe has given us for some time, a woman who was fired for flipping off Trump has just won a local election in Virginia.
Juli Briskman was riding her bike back alongside the Trump National Golf Course (yep, that’s a thing) in 2017 when Trump’s motorcade left after a hard day of golfing. She was photographed giving the bird to the cars as they drove past, and the photo went all over the internet almost overnight.
After losing her marketing analyst job once she’d been recognised in the photo, she took the company to court for unfair dismissal, saying that by kicking her out of her job they were violating her freedom of speech.
And she won.
So, now cashed up with a severance payment, Juli did what I would absolutely not have had the guts to do and decided to run for supervisor in her county of Loudoun.
“It’s not like I can run against him,” she said earlier this year, talking about Trump. “But I can run.”
And run she did. She’s just won a seat on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors with 52.4% of the vote. She’s also replacing a Trump supporter, Suzanne Volpe, who has been on the board for eight years.
See? The universe aligns perfectly sometimes.
Her campaign website talks about what she’s been working towards, and what she’s going to support now that she’s there.
“We live in a great community and we deserve a Board of Supervisors that does more to support our schools, first responders, working women, and families. That’s why I’m running.”
Look, it’s a small victory and it’s not like this is the event that’s going to swing the whole 2020 election by any stretch of the imagination. Of course it isn’t. But if we don’t celebrate the small victories, we’re all going to go nuts, and this is certainly the most fun small victory I’ve seen in quite a while.