The Fairness Campaign has protested at the Kentucky Farm Bureau's annual ham breakfast before, and Thursday wasn't even the first time it's ended with arrests.

Still, Chris Hartman, the organization's director and one of three protesters taken into custody, said this year's demonstration was "absolutely different."

"The state troopers wanted to arrest us, and me specifically, so bad that even I could taste it," Hartman said Friday.

Hartman was arrested Thursday morning along with Carla Wallace and Sonja De Vries at the fairgrounds as they protested just outside the Kentucky Farm Bureau Country Ham Breakfast, an annual event at the Kentucky State Fair where politicians speak to a crowd over a meal.

Hartman spent the day in jail, where he says he was tackled by corrections officers at one point as he tried to pull a ring off his finger. He was released just before 5 p.m., he said, while Wallace and De Vries were let go around an hour earlier. All three are facing menacing and second-degree disorderly conduct charges, with Hartman facing an additional charge of resisting arrest.

Background:Fairness Campaign leader arrested in protest of Kentucky Farm Bureau

Hartman said he will fight the charges in court if they are not dismissed. The protesters were never violent, he said, despite the menacing allegations, and when he was informed he was under arrest he laid down and "did nothing until they handcuffed me."

"If that is resisting arrest these days, I worry both about the policing of thoughts and the policing of our bodies in overly aggressive, inappropriate and unjust ways," Hartman said.

Kentucky State Police Sgt. Joshua Lawson said in a statement that the protesters had been provided a designated area to protest in order to provide for safety and security of everyone involved.

"However, three individuals attempted to force their way into the private event while carrying a puppet approximately 9-10 feet tall and causing a disturbance," Lawson's statement said. "Troopers with KSP charged the three individuals with menacing, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest. They were arrested and escorted from the grounds."

Fairness Campaign organizers attend the breakfast every year, with a massive puppet they call "Freda Fairness," to raise awareness about policies the Kentucky Farm Bureau supports that the Fairness Campaign claims are anti-LGBTQ and anti-teacher – and, Hartman said, are not revealed to the bureau's more than 400,000 customers, though they are listed in the Farm Bureau's policy book posted on the Fairness Campaign's website.

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De Vries, Hartman and Wallace were arrested just before 8 a.m. Thursday. They had entered the building where the breakfast was taking place with Freda when the group, Hartman said, was "aggressively confronted" by state troopers who refused to tell him why he would not be allowed to enter the hall, even though he had purchased a ticket.

After some arguing, he said, "it was clear that the Kentucky state troopers were not going to be pleased until they pleased the Kentucky Farm Bureau by arresting me."

Hartman laid down on the ground, at which point he was handcuffed and dragged by state troopers out of the hall and into a police car. De Vries and Wallace laid down with him – "an emotional moment for me to watch," he said – and were escorted from the fairgrounds as well.

The protesters were previously arrested while protesting at the ham breakfast in 2015. All charges were later dropped, but earlier this summer the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Kentucky State Police had probable cause to arrest them for protesting at the private event and the protesters had not been denied their First Amendment rights.

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Hartman said the troopers who arrested him this week were aware of that ruling and the headache it had caused organizers for years.

"If we wanted to get arrested – look, we are good enough at our jobs, we would be arrested every single year that we protested," he added. "Our goal is to never be arrested, but the state troopers infringe upon our rights in such an aggressive manner that ultimately, we don’t have a choice."

Correction: This story was updated to reflect Hartman is the Fairness Campaign's director.

Lucas Aulbach can be reached at laulbach@courier-journal.com, 502-582-4649 or on Twitter @LucasAulbach. Support strong local journalism and subscribe: www.courier-journal.com/lucasa.