STATE OF UNION | Color of clothes send messages

WASHINGTON (AP)

Democrats crowding the House chamber are letting buttons — and the color of their clothes — send messages.

Many are wearing rectangular lapel buttons that say “TIME’S UP,” a statement against workplace sexual harassment. Several members of Congress have ended their careers lately over harassment allegations, and the buttons were distributed at a morning meeting of Democratic lawmakers.

Some are wearing red buttons that say “RECY.” That is a tribute to Recy Taylor, a black woman from a rural Alabama sharecropping family who was gang-raped by six white men in 1944. No charges were brought despite confessions, but her case became a galvanizing force for the civil rights movement.

Virtually all Democratic women are dressed in black, a show of support for the #MeToo movement.