Last night, as the election results came in from several states holding off-year elections, one winner’s name from Virginia was familiar. Juli Briskman, 52, defeated Republican incumbent, Suzanne Volpe, and earned herself a seat on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors for the Algonkian district.
The reason that name may ring a bell is because NextTribe wrote about Briskman when she chased down the Presidential motorcade on her bike and gave the Commander in Chief the one-finger salute. Briskman says she was teed off over the state of the country and our President indulging in leisure time versus taking care of business.
A photo captured the moment and went viral. Although Juli couldn’t be identified in the shot, she fessed up at work, figuring the truth would come out sooner or later.
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The logo on Juli Briskman’s Facebook page.
Riding Her Bike Into Politics
Her employer, Akima (which contracts with the government), canned her, saying she violated their code of conduct policy. People took to social media to criticize and even threaten her. When we last wrote about her she was sorting through job offers from people who were impressed by her tenacity and her message.
Like many bold women, Briskman, a single mom and a veteran of overseas postings for the U.S. State Department, decided not to sit back and be quiet. She founded a Facebook page named Long May She Wave, with a logo that shows a woman on a bicycle raising her middle finger in defiance. She sued her former employer for wrongful termination; the company testified in court that they fired her because they were afraid of retaliation by the Trump Administration.
Briskman is well integrated into her community. She has volunteered at Horizon Elementary School and at Galilee United Methodist Church, where she has been a Sunday school teacher. She is a part-time fundraising manager for Bringing Resources to Aid Women’s Shelters in Loudoun County. Beyond her community ties, her Twitter following of more than 44,000 surely helped in her victory.
As it turns out, Briskman now represents the district where the Trump National Golf Course is located. “Isn’t that sweet justice?” she said with a smile.
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