Texas state representative Nicole Collier drew sharp criticism this week after likening herself and her Democratic colleagues to runaway slaves and Jews fleeing Nazi persecution during a heated debate in the state capitol.

Collier, one of the Democrats who fled Texas to block Republicans from advancing redistricting legislation, made the comments while confronting a Republican lawmaker on the House floor.

“Chairman, are you aware that during slavery, Blacks fled? They ran away,” Collier said. After her colleague replied that he couldn’t hear her clearly, she pressed on: “During the Nazi times, Jewish people fled. They fled their oppressor.”

The remarks immediately sparked backlash from Republicans and Jewish leaders who called the comparisons historically inappropriate and offensive, and that equating the political maneuvering of Texas Democrats with the life-and-death struggles of slavery and the Holocaust trivialized two of history’s greatest atrocities.

This was not the first time Collier had made headlines in recent days. On Monday night, she staged an unusual protest by sleeping on the floor of the statehouse after House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R) ordered state troopers to accompany Democrats around the clock to prevent them from leaving and breaking quorum again.

“I will not agree to be in DPS custody. I am not a criminal,” Collier told Fox 4 News, insisting that she was “exercising my right to resist and oppose the decisions of our government.”

Collier, who leads the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, defended her comments as a way of framing Democrats’ actions as civil disobedience in the face of what they see as partisan overreach. But opponents called her rhetoric an insult to the memory of those who endured slavery and the Holocaust.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)