Town Halls Gone Wild
July 31st, 2009Via: Politico:
Screaming constituents, protesters dragged out by the cops, congressmen fearful for their safety — welcome to the new town-hall-style meeting, the once-staid forum that is rapidly turning into a house of horrors for members of Congress.
On the eve of the August recess, members are reporting meetings that have gone terribly awry, marked by angry, sign-carrying mobs and disruptive behavior. In at least one case, a congressman has stopped holding town hall events because the situation has spiraled so far out of control.
“I had felt they would be pointless,” Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) told POLITICO, referring to his recent decision to suspend the events in his Long Island district. “There is no point in meeting with my constituents and [to] listen to them and have them listen to you if what is basically an unruly mob prevents you from having an intelligent conversation.”
In Bishop’s case, his decision came on the heels of a June 22 event he held in Setauket, N.Y., in which protesters dominated the meeting by shouting criticisms at the congressman for his positions on energy policy, health care and the bailout of the auto industry.
Within an hour of the disruption, police were called in to escort the 59-year-old Democrat — who has held more than 100 town hall meetings since he was elected in 2002 — to his car safely.
Research Credit: BC
ThinkProgress has a lot of primary source documents detailing how Republican-friendly groups are disrupting town hall meetings – see http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/31/recess-harassment-memo/ and in particular this PDF http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/townhallactionmemo.pdf for the mechanics of it – it matches the conditions described by Politico pretty well. (of course ThinkProgress is astroturf itself, but useful in this case)