Thursday, 4:30 PM
Moms: Delta messed with the wrong woman
By Raja Mishra, Globe Staff
After waiting five hours at the Burlington, Vt., airport, Emily Gillette boarded a Delta commuter flight and discreetly began breast-feeding her exhausted toddler. That’s when the trouble started.
"The flight attendant said, 'You are offending me,'" Gillette recalled Monday in a telephone interview from her home in New Mexico. "I’ve always breast-fed my daughter when she wants, where she wants."
After she, her husband, and 22-month-old daughter were kicked off the plane last month, Gillette, 27, filed a discrimination complaint with the Vermont Human Rights Commission. As word of the case spread on online mothering forums, outraged boiled.
Tuesday, with the frantic Thanksgiving travel week underway, dozens of self-proclaimed "lactivists" plan to suckle their infants in front of Delta ticketing counters around the nation, including at Logan International Airport.
The goals of the protest are to force airlines to review their breast-feeding policies and to pressure Congress to pass protections for breast-feeding women in the workplace, said Elizabeth A. Boepple of Manchester, Vt., Gillette’s lawyer and one of the protest organizers.
Raja Mishra can be reached at rmishra@globe.com.
