What else can I do ?
I have abunch of vacation time saved up and can take off about 2 days every week in the rest of August. I oive in N California. Is there anything else I can do ? Anyone need someone for 2 days a week,

The Thursday event with Rep. Gwen Moore is not a health care event. This event is a housing/mortgage related government programs services event. If people show up to “push” a health care agenda on a non-related event than be prepared to catch the backlash for instigating it. Rep. Moore recently attended a heath care rally in Milwaukee on July 26 sponsored by Obama for America. As far as I can see she has no plans to have any town meetings on health care. I urge Firedog Lake to remove this listing because it is definitely not a health care event.

James McGovern MA had a meeting yesterday at UMass Medical Center in Worcester, MA at 3:30. Did anybody attend?

Niki Tsongas has one Saturday at the Market Basket (supermarket) in Chelmsford MA. I may go.

I phoned Lynch, Frank, Olver, Capuano, and Delahunt to inquire about events. Not one had one scheduled. I’ll check back in a week.

Additionally, it is a non-political event sponsored by the City of Milwaukee. Please do not turn it into a Health Care town hall. The event is specifically to help people with housing debt crisis matters. It is being held so people who need assistance can speak to government services professionals and apply for Federal assistance.

Fight fire with fire…! Excellent idea, Jane!

Tea baggers still might show

Diary from Koz tea baggers disrupted non healthcare events so when the local Rep did have the town hall he had the police there.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…..rop,-Texas

We are not the people screaming carrying signs etc. I hope nothing happens still tell your Rep to have the police there.

Jane,

I call this excellent community organizing!

Can someone(s) send email or phone all the critters with a request for their public town hall meeting scheds and then add them to your list? and make it a sticky at the top of FDL?

Jane

Senator Sherrod Brown was on the Ed show last night addressing the public option

Lawrence O’donnel (sitting in for Ed) asked Brown
“do you need to see a public option come out of the senate finance committee”

Senator Brown “um I don’t know for sure”

Now Brown went on to explain that the “public option” is very important to him.
I am interested in what folks think about what Senator Brown had to say. Don’t get me wrong I put in hundreds of hours in for Brown, have had great conversations for him. But at what point when he was running I asked him about holding the Bush administration accountable for WMD’ lies, outing Plame, torture etc and he responded (at the Athens City building) that we should not be about “retribution and vengeance” That was the first time I asked since when did justice and accountability for serious crimes start being defined as “vengeance” Made me just a bit uneasy about Brown when I heard him being part of the “move forward, turn the page” chorus

Just can not imagine Senator Brown signing anything without a “public option” Can you?

click latest videos…go to “Democrats launch health care reform”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30031533/

My Blue Dog Dem, Heath Shuler will not be meeting constituents in person. He will be holding two tele-townhalls and you have to call his office and sign up in advance. I guess he’ll at least be able to hear what people have to say.

Scarecrow had a post about a White House deal with big Pharma maybe we should ask our Reps about that as well as the public option.

AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Hamsher and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

The call for people to show up at these stage managed street fights without an organized plan on the part of the organizers and the DNC-DCCC-White House is rediculous. Tellin’ folks to go out in the street and photograph themselves gettin’ beaten up is almost criminal. These astro-turf thugs only win if they can be videoed for national TV fighting “counter demonstrators” and ultimately shutting down the meeting. It intimidates the folks who didn’t go to the meeting and will be portrayed by the corporate media as an example of why common folks can’t make their own decisions about things as important as healthcare.

The Democratic leadership in the White House and Congress set this situation up so it’s up to those bastards to organize and coordinate a non-violent strategy of confrontation or let the folks like Maddow and Olbermann expose these fascist bullies while keepin’ the regular folks out of harm’s way. We are already seein’ signs that local media includin’ those in the South are reacting negatively to this bullshit, so if the few important voices like Maddow and Olbermann can be supported instead of pissed on, we may be able to leverage local revulsion to these tactics without gettin’ folks’ heads bashed in. In any case,those who go to these meetings must be prepared to encounter violence and must be supported by the organizers of the events and covered by local and national media. Let’s put the pressure on the right people for once, that’s the bastards in the White House and Democratic leadership who fucked this whole thing up so badly.

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THIS IS NOT A DRILL OR A POLITICAL COMEDY!!

Too bad this was put up here today. I went to one last night for Rep. Kagen and put links to local news about the chaos at his first two meetings in the comments about Rachel’s show here.

I didn’t link to the YouTube videos shot outside the mayhem (starting about 5 minutes in) that was the Green Bay meeting. I really hope the MSM gets the video from Monday’s mess – the mob mentality that ruled there was rather shocking as they tried to shout him down from the minute he was introduced. Since I know his staffers & Kagen, I spent more time talking to the staffers than listening to Kagen talk. The ones in Green Bay said they feared physical harm until the police arrived. Thankfully, things seem to have cooled down. Maybe Glenn Beck’s fears of violence helping Obama did the trick?

Last night was more respectful, although the local media didn’t seem to want to paint it that way (as mentioned in the links in my earlier post). No shouting other than “How many czars are in the Constitution?” before I left. No protesters outside with signs. Just a lot of people that came there opposed to Obama’s plan – which could really describe me, but I would rather see a more expansive public option or single-payer instead.

If you look at Kagen’s House site, you can see that he really doesn’t have much in common with what Obama has proposed.

He’s had this ‘transparency in billing’ idea since before he won the primary back in ‘06. I’ve heard him talk so many times over the past few years I could do it for him, because his health care ideas haven’t changed one iota over time. He supports nuclear energy (with all it’s federal subsidies and protection), a floor for milk prices but time and again says he doesn’t want the government interfering in the free market, especially health care.

BTW, in talking to Kagen’s staffers last night, I asked why they didn’t have a videographer with them since it was going so well (the crowd liked his ideas on health care and listened respectfully). They said their guy was busy. My camera was on the fritz, and other local camera gurus were busy & didn’t attend. It’s too bad, because it went so well compared to what happened in the bigger towns.

Next Tuesday at the Alhambra Public Library, Adam Schiff, who’s a Blue Dog in favor of a public option, will be holding a Health Care Town Hall.

Moderator:
Dr. Bruce Hensel, Medical, Health, and Science Editor/Reporter for NBC4

Panelists:
Dr. Benjamin Chu, President, Southern California Region, Kaiser
Dr. Richard Brown, Director, UCLA Center for Health Policy Research
Jerry Flanagan, Health Care Advocate, Consumer Watchdog
Leeba Lessin, President, CareMore Health Plan

You missed one:
Kagen
Thursday, August 6

10:30 AM

Kewaunee Grade School Gymnasium
921 3rd Street
Kewaunee, WI

FYI – 44 years ago today President Lyndon Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

We’re headed to Joe Courtney’s event in Woodstock, CT, but I’m unsure what to do other than show up early, sit in front, be respectful etc. Does anyone have any other suggestions? I created a group leaving from Simsbury/Tariffville if anyone is interested in following/sharing ride/directions etc.

Thanks for all your work on this, Jane. Most excellent, the very stuff of democracy.

read Jane’s ‘Best Practices link here

good luck and thanks for organizing

this ol firedog gotta little misty when I opened the site and saw the chart this am – hearkening back to our communal ‘roots project’ aspirations from the haloscan days

Roots !

Christy has a new post up for our edification: “SCOTUS: Tipping The Scales Between Politics And The Rule Of Law”

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of tele-townhalls. I don’t know if Shuler is doing this because of the astroturf shenanigans or because another freshman NC rep. has received death threats, but it seems like responsible thing to do under the circumstances.

No one gets bashed, everyone gets heard, they can weed out non residents and they can simply hang up on anyone calling just to disrupt.

Oh and what citizen NorskeFlamethrower said…

Kagen has several telephone town halls over the course of the year. It’s more a geographic & logistics problem for him. I would imagine Shuler has the same problems in NC – travel a long distance for a handful of people, although I wouldn’t discount the impact a death threat against a fellow Rep would have for security.

Thank you – I’m reading the Best Practices now.

I do not like the tele-townhall. My Senator did that this week. It was a puppet show for 20 minutes. You cannot ask a question.

Jane, is there a list of the Republican townhalls? The senator that called was republican and had no ideas of how to fix/change anything. He just repeated over and over that Dems and Obama are bad.

Hey cbl2,

I saw that diary yesterday and starting linking it every chance I had. I esp. liked the opening remarks from the organizer about democracy and calling out anyone who disrupts the proceedings and walks and talks like a teabagger, well, we’ll draw our own conclusions about who you speak for (words to that effect).

I would suggest that anyone assertive enough who has been in communication with their representative take a moment to call and advise the rep’s staff on how to prepare, or at least asking them what steps they are taking to prepare. It’s in their interest and their constituents’ interest to keep the proceedings safe and allow all voices to be heard.

I guess the quality of the tele-townhalls is par with the quality of the elected official and staff.

Jackie Speier does these and they are pretty good. You do have to sign up early and indicate you have a question early.

I like the fact that all of the bullshit can be bypassed with a tele-townhall but if you can’t actually ask questions than what would the point be? I have never taken part in one so I’d like to know if Jackie Speier answered a wide range of questions?

The problem is, when you see these efforts to hijack town hall meeting on TV, it makes it appear as if the only ones willing to buy a stake in health care reform with their physical presence are those hell bent on overturning efforts to pass a real bill with their willingness to disrupt the entire meeting. Granted these disruptions are likely done by groups paid for by lobbyists and that they are essentially scripted, but they need to be confronted by people with the opposite view. Where are the people with the pitchforks and lantern on our side?

Emptywheel has a new post up awaiting our attention: “On PDB Day, a New Direction against Terrorism? John Brennan’s Coming Out Party?”

Yes, actually she did. One was extremely specific to one neighborhood area about flooding and levees (yes, right here in San Mateo County!)

There were more but that is one that caught my attention because it was new news to me, not living in that neighborhood. The questions do pile up quickly, though. By the time I was dialed in, it was too late to get in line.

Oh, I didn’t mean to discourage people on our side from showing up. But like all good scouts, be prepared.

I would like to repeat again, in Norske’s words, to contact the rep’s office and insist they take steps to deal with hooligans.

Anyone who goes out to one of these rallies needs to get ahold of the organizers of the event and find out what the strategy and tactics are for protection of the ######## and how they are to deal with physical confrontation and intimidation.

…which has already been widely broadcast. If staffers don’t know what we are talking about, inform them, fgs.

I offer this in the spirit of being a team player with the rep’s office and in helpfulness.

Thank you that is very good to know. I’ll try to get on the line early.

Don’t suppose you’d like to trade Jackie for Heath ;)

Bob Inglis is a Republican but it would still be a good idea for Democrats in the upstate region of South Carolina to attend. Ingils is the Congressman who had a person at a town hall tell him to keep the government’s hands off of Medicare

Drat.. I can’t get out of work to get to Courtney’s event!

What’s up with President Nelson in Anchorage, AK for 2 days? He’s a senator for Nebraska for Petes sake.

3 day fundraising event for “Great Land PAC” along with freshman AK senator Begich at Alyeska Resort in Girdwood. It looks like Great Land PAC is primarily a Mark Begich campaign PAC.

Ted Steven’s contractor issues are associated with his house in Girdwood.

Alyeska resort is mostly for snow related activities, although there is some decent fly fishing in nearby creeks and rivers (Bird Creek often has shoulder to shoulder fly fisherman in the summer).

In Washington State, Rep Norm Dicks and Senator Cantwell-No public meetings. Anyone in Washington-please call and complain. Apparently, neither of these members care about the wants and needs of their constituents. I saw where Dirks was on the calendar for a forum. Apparently, according to his office, this is not true. I am so disgusted with these two, I could spit.

Hi Jane.
I’d like to thank you for all the work you do. You are contributing to a better America.
The reason I’m writing this is , if you could, could you tell me where the townhall meeting is in Monterey Ca on the 10th.
I’m not very savy with the internets and I’m very busy as well.
But I Really want to make it to that Townhall meeting.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank You.
ger.

It’s Ok folks.
Eureka!
Central Calif..
Monterey Town Hall
Aug. 10, 6 p.m.
Monterey Institute of International Studies, Irvine Auditorium
499 Pierce St., Monterey

Santa Cruz Town Hall
Aug. 11, 6 p.m.
First Congregational Church
900 High Street, Santa Cruz

Hollister Town Hall
Aug. 12, 6 p.m.
San Benito County Board of Supervisors Chambers
481 Fourth St., Hollister

Salinas Town Hall
Aug. 31, 6 p.m.
Salinas City Hall Rotunda
200 Lincoln Ave., Salinas

King City Town Hall
Sept. 2, 6 p.m.
King City Council Chambers
212 S. Vanderhurst Ave. King City