A black Georgia state lawmaker said a white man cursed at her in front of her young daughter and told her to “go back” to where she came from because he thought she had too many items in the express checkout line at a grocery store.
Erica Thomas, 31, who said she is nine months pregnant, said in a tearful Facebook Live video on Friday that the man verbally assaulted her because he thought she had too many items in an express aisle for 10 items or less at a Publix supermarket.
Thomas, a state representative from Austell in the Atlanta area, said she had 15 items in her cart, but her daughter wanted to purchase five of the items herself. Thomas also said she explained to the man that she was pregnant and could not stand for too long.
“He said, ‘I don’t care. You’re a lazy son of a b—-. You need to get the f— out of here. Go back where you came from,'” Thomas told her Facebook followers.
“It hurt me so bad because everything in me just wanted to tell him who I am. But I couldn’t get anything out,” she said.
She said the man “kept going on and on” until a store employee intervened and asked him to leave.
Thomas said in a tweet that her husband was not there to defend her because he is active military “serving the country I came from USA!”
She said she decided to share her story “because people are getting really out of control.”
“I just had to tell people what’s going on in this world. And I know y’all see Ilhan Omar,” Thomas said, referring to a Minnesota congresswoman who is a Somali immigrant. “And y’all see all this stuff about ‘send her back,'” she said in her Facebook video, saying it’s “inciting so much hate.”
On Wednesday, at a rally President Donald Trump held in North Carolina, a crowd chanted “Send her back!” after he began talking about Omar.
Just days before, Trump in a series of tweets bashed Omar and three other female, progressive Democratic representatives — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.; and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. — telling them to “go back” and try to fix the “crime infested places” they “originally came from. “
All four of the congresswomen are American citizens and all except Omar were born in the U.S.
After Thomas shared her story on Facebook, the hashtag “IStandwithErica” began to trend on Twitter with lawmakers showing their support for her.
“Both @realDonaldTrump and @GOP have grossly underestimated the number of Americans who have experienced the racist ‘go back’ insult,” Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., tweeted. “We all know how it hurts. And we are going to vote. I predict a Dem wave in 2020, just like we had in 2018.”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio wrote: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It begins with a tweet. Then a chant. Now a racist attack on a 9-month pregnant lawmaker and military wife just trying to feed her family. #IStandWithErica.”
Thomas told NBC affiliate WXIA in Atlanta that she has filed a police report on the incident.
