Malliotakis? Ciscomani? Calvert? Moore? Amodei? Where are you?
Wherever they are, Republican lawmakers like these are not out meeting with seniors, veterans, or anyone in their districts who needs health care. During last week’s Congressional Recess, GOP lawmakers laid low on their visits to their home districts, and refused to show up or talk with constituents at Town Halls.
“Our representatives are voted into office by us,” said Mindy Holcomb, an organizer for West Virginia Citizen Action Group, at a protest WVCAG helped organize at the Morgantown offices of U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito. “They owe us and they work for us, so they owe us some accountability for their votes.”
Capito, like most GOP lawmakers, followed Speaker Mike Johnnson’s advice not to attend Town Halls in their home districts, where they have faced stinging criticism from veterans, seniors and laid-off government workers as they attempt to justify their support for deep cuts to lifesaving services and government agencies to fund billionaire tax breaks.
Yet People’s Action and its member groups, from coast to coast, showed up to hold these lawmakers to account at dozens of events. From Bakersfield, California to Morgantown, West Virginia, Eau Claire, Wisconsin and Lewiston, Maine, our members organized empty-chair Town Halls and rallied outside their Representatives’ offices to make their voices heard.
New Jersey Citizen Action hosted a “Stop the Cuts” Town Hall in Wall Township (CD-4), which was attended by U.S. Senator Andy Kim and an overflow crowd. At the Town Hall NJCA organized in Bridgewater, in the district of Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Kean (CD-7), Kean did not show up – but Bonnie Watson Coleman, the Democrat who serves New Jersey’s neighboring 12th district, did!
“We need people to understand that what is happening in this country is as un-American as we’ve ever seen before. And it was what we have seen in the history books about what Germany did, what Russia does and other dictatorships do,” Watson Coleman told Politico. “I don’t want the people to feel that they have no power. They have more power than the people who are in power. They’ve just got to have their voices heard.”
West Virginia Citizen Action Group members organized rallies outside the Morgantown offices of U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito and Representative Riley Moore, both of whom refused to meet with constituents, while Michigan United Action helped organize an event in the district of U.S. Rep. John James, who also refused to hold a Town Hall. Citizen Action of Wisconsin organized “Hands Off Medicaid!” Town Halls in Eau Claire, La Crosse and Wausau.
At the Tucson empty-chair town hall organized in the district of Juan Cuscumana by Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA) with Honest Arizona and the Arizona Center for Empowerment (ACE), Fabiola Bedoya shared how cuts to Medicare would affect her.
“Having a parent possibly be cut off from those vital funds, someone who can no longer work, would affect my own family,” Bedoya told the local ABC affiliate KGUN. “I know thousands of families also rely on those services to get basic healthcare.”
On Staten Island, Citizen Action of New York hosted an empty-chair Town Hall in the district of Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, and turned out with other People’s Action member groups – VOCAL-NY and Community Voices Heard – for “Stop the Cuts” rallies in New York City. In Bangor, Maine, an overflow crowd showed up for an empty-chair town hall for U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, who voted against the cuts, but who was the sole Democrat in the House of Representatives to support Republicans’ interim spending bill.
Many of these events were organized hand in hand with national partners and on-the-ground allies, evidence the Organizing Revival’s spirit of collaboration across grassroots organizations is spreading so we can meet this moment of crisis as a united and effective movement for social justice.
In California, People’s Action helped U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna host “Benefits over Billionaires!” rallies in the districts of three GOP Representatives – David Valadao (CA-22),Young Kim (CA-40), and Ken Calvert (CA-41), who all refused to meet with constituents.
“Look at what Trump did!” Khanna said in Bakersfield. “He gave the whole government over to billionaire libertarians. As if that would improve your lives. Did it? Are there new factories? Did you get more money in your pocket? Did you get health care? Did you get childcare? Let’s offer a vision that’s actually a plan to improve people’s lives and is not rooted in all of the mistakes of the last fifty years.”