TOWN HALL SHOWDOWNS

[Mandy Esser]

TOWN HALL SHOWDOWNS
Unions Vow To Engage Protesters
Head On Over Health Care


Sam Stein
stein@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting


Unions To Take On Conservative Groups Health Care Town Halls


First Posted: 08- 6-09 09:53 AM | Updated: 08- 6-09 11:24 AM

 The nation's largest federation of labor organizations has promised to directly engage with boisterous conservative protesters at Democratic town halls during the August recess.
In a memo sent out on Thursday, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney outlined the blueprint for how the union conglomerate would step up recess activities on health care reform and other topics pertinent to the labor community. The document makes clear that Obama allies view the town hall forums as ground zero of the health care debate. It also uses the specter of the infamous 2000 recount "Brooks Brothers" protest to rally its members to the administration's side.
"The principal battleground in the campaign will be town hall meetings and other gatherings with members of Congress in their home districts," reads the memo. "We want your help to organize major union participation to counter the right-wing "Tea-Party Patriots" who will try to disrupt those meetings, as they've been trying to do to meetings for the last month. ...

(Remember the hooligans - many of them Republican Congressional staff - who harassed Florida vote counters in 2000? We can't let that happen again!)."

A showdown between unions and grassroots conservative organizations could make for an August full of fireworks, with even more dysfunctional town hall meetings. The AFL-CIO is planning to target 50 "high priority districts," in addition to organizing telephone town hall gatherings.
But while the union conglomerate seems poised to flex its political muscle on Obama's behalf, it may find some friction on the policy front. Detailed in Sweeney's memo are certain legislative priorities that are clearly at odds with what seems likely to be produced in the Senate Finance Committee's compromise bill.
Sweeney describes it as a "requirement that ALL employers 'pay or play,'" that the final bill have "a robust public health insurance plan to compete with private insurers and drive down health costs," and that the legislation contain "relief for company/union funds providing pre-Medicare retiree coverage, and no taxation of health benefits!"

The AFL-CIO also promises to "Redouble our efforts on Capitol Hill against taxation of benefits OF ANY KIND, for including ALL businesses in the requirement to provide coverage, and for a robust public health insurance plan option."
According to reports on Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee is considering compromise legislation that will contain no public option for insurance and would tax health-care benefits of the most generous plans.
UPDATE: AFL-CIO Secretary TreasurCRETARY TREASURER RICHARD TRUMKA ON CORPORATE
FUNDED 'MOB RULE' AT TOWN HALLS
August 6th, 2009
Every American has the inalienable right to participate in our
democratic process. Our politics is passionate, heartfelt and often
loud -- as was the founding of our nation. But that is not what the
corporate-funded mobs are engaging in when they show up to disrupt town
halls held by members of Congress.
Major health care reform is closer than ever to passage and it is no
secret that special interests want to weaken or block it. These mobs
are not there to participate. As their own strategy memo states, they
have been sent by their corporate and lobbyist bankrollers to disrupt,
heckle and block meaningful debate. This is a desperation move, meant
to slow the momentum for change.
Mob rule is not democracy. People have a democratic right to express
themselves and our elected leaders have a right to hear from their
constituents -- not organized thugs whose sole purpose is to shut down
the conversation and attempt to scare our leaders into inaction
We call on the insurance companies, the lobbyists and the Republican
leaders who are cheering them on to halt these 'Brooks Brothers
Riot' tactics. Health care is a crucial issue and everyone - on
all sides of the issue - deserves to be heard.

[Krista Davenport]

July 28, 2009
Categories: Bad Behavior
Rep. Kratovil hung in effigy by health care protester UPDATE



If this is the face of anti-health care reform protest, the GOP has a serious problem.

This unidentified man decided he was doing the Tea Party-anti-reform effort a real solid by hanging freshman Maryland Democratic Rep. Frank Kratovil in effigy [note the creepily expert knotted noose] with a placard "Congress Traitors The American [and a word that looks like "idol"].

The event -- a rally in Salisbury, Md. on the Eastern Shore -- was attended by members of the business-funded Americans for Prosperity, a group that includes James Miller, a Federal Trade Commission chairman and budget director during the Reagan administration.

UPDATE: The rally wasn't officially sanctioned by AFP -- but the group's members attended the protest, which coincided with an AFP health care meeting, says a spokeswoman for the group.

"We held an event the previous night, where this man passed out flyers asking people to join him the next day at the office for a protest. That is how some AFP members ended up coming, but they were disgusted by his behavior. I repeat, this gathering WAS NOT an AFP event or sponsored by us in any way," writes AFP's Amy Menefee.

"Frank has no problem with people letting him know how they feel about legislation or him in general, but of course he feels that this one guy was way out of line and most reasonable people would agree that an effigy doesn’t add anything productive to what is a very important debate," said a Kratovil spokesman.

"He has had a lot of constructive conversations with constituents where he has expressed his concerns with the bill and they have done the same, he prefers to focus on those."

Last month, some anti-energy bill protesters tarred and feathered an effigy of Rep. Alan Boyd (D-Fla.) in Panama City. And some genius hung an effigy of Sarah Palin in L.A. last Halloween.

The pic was snapped by the conservative Salisbury News, which supported the rally but was repulsed by the noose guy.

SBYNews blogger Joe Albero, who apparently took the photo, writes:

    My hat is tipped to ALL of the AFP individuals who chose to walk away as they refused to partake in such ignorance and abuse. You know me Folks, I call it like I see it.

    I firmly believe in any one's first amendment rights. However, there comes a time when that right is abused and IMHO this is one of them.

    To The Kratovil Family, my apologies for posting this image but it had to be done and these people had to be called out for their actions.

h/t Washington Independent

UPDATE: As it turns out, the dangling of a noose has distant but painful historical resonance on the Eastern Shore.

The Salisbury area was the site of the last two racial lynchings that took place in the state of Maryland -- both in the 1930s, according to Polly Stewart. a former Salisbury University professor interviewed by NPR earlier this year.

Stewart, a folklorist who researched the crimes, detailed the reaction of predominantly-white local historical society when she confronted them with evidence of the lynchings in the mid-1980s:

"I thought that because I was in a position of prestige at the university, or the college then, and because I was socially friendly with a lot of this people, I would be able to present to them some theory which would explain why the lynchings had happened... [W]hat did happen was that I was attacked. They were furious with me. They were in flames. They were just shaking with rage, some of them.

She added, "[T]he result of it was really that I was iced out of the upper crust for the next 20 years. I was there for 30 years and 20 of those years I was - my name was mud."

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0709/Rep_Kratovil_hung_in_effigy_by_health_care_protester_.html