Lots of pictures on our FB site. www.facebook.com/…
#FL12 on twitter.
Today Republican Representative Gus Bilirakis held a “Listening” Town hall on the ACA. Pasco Republicans have outdone us with voter registration in the last couple of years so where Dems were 10,000 down, we are now over 30,000 down. I fear the Hillary campaign effort to register voters may have added to our woes. Reports from local Dems say the Republican volunteers said, we’re here to register Republicans and refused others. But we registered everyone. Anyway our County went for Trump big time. Even our incumbent State Rep. lost to the 21 year old daughter of a Repub County Commissioner.
I imagine Bilirakis expected the events to be a bunch of Republicans giving him talking points until he held his first Listening Event last week in Palm Harbor where over 400 people showed up, with only 2 people speaking in favor of the repeal, one was his staff member. To his credit, he did not cut it short or cancel our event.
As part of the local DEC, we advertised the event on Meetup, Facebook, or website and our newsletter. In addition we were contacted by leaders of a new Indivisible group who were planning on attending and were interested in working with us. A couple of days before the event, the @Townhallproject contacted us to help organize, only to find we were already on it. They connected us with 2 other Indivisible groups on a conference call and contacted CNN to cover the Townhall.
We were recommending people arrive between 8:00 — 8:45 as the room was small (157 seats). The event started at 10 a.m. by 9 a.m. all the seats were taken and people started lining the walls. The vast majority of the attendees were in favor of the ACA. Spill over was in the hall and foyer outside where you could still hear speakers. Many groups had signs. One I particularly thought was effective listed 43,000, the number of people signed up under the ACA in his district.
Bilirakis started with his opening statement and was shouted down to let people speak. So they started with people who had signed up. A good number of them were well-spoken DEC members. Several others were people with personal stories about how the ACA saved the lives of them or someone in their family. One young man said he was a Millennial and unable to get insurance through any of his 3 part-time jobs. I think the third person to speak was the local GOP Secretary who thought he would list three problems with the ACA, starting with Death Panels. He was shouted down. Watch on CNN
Three doctors spoke about how the ACA changed their practices by allowing people to get coverage and catch problems before they caused a serious impact on their health. They also disputed the Death Panel myth. In addition several older people over the age of 74, said they never went before any Death Panels. The guy kept insisted and even jumped to his feet as if he was going to go after a 77 year old woman. Bilirakis’ aide stopped him.
There were some people who spoke in favor of the repeal. Very few. Maybe 5. The saddest thing was watching media people follow after them to get their names for that covering both sides crap. One deplorable cried out Boo Hoo while a woman was describing the medical horror that is her daughter’s life. He also threatened people sitting near him when shushed.
Our side did boo, jeer, and shout down people. But no violence. We had red cards and when Bilirakis jumped in, time to time to say GOP talking points, we held them up. The session ran over and Gus said his staff would make appointments for those who wanted to talk.
There is no way that we have convinced him as he is red through and through, but he knows we’re angry.
We took advantage of the meeting to get petitions signed for Robert Tager who plans to run against Bilirakis in 2018 and to get contact info for those we didn’t know.
Today we proved we are the Resistance.