I'm serious--as we've seen over the past week, right-wing crazies are interrupting Democratic townhall events, scaring people, and intimidating Members of Congress like Rep. John Dingell who's fought for health care reform his entire life. These people booed a disabled woman for talking about how her disability was a pre-existing condition that doesn't allow her to get insurance.
And they EVEN booed Rep. Dingell for saying that the legislation wouldn't allow your insurer to drop you if you had a pre-existing condition or to rescind your policy if you got too sick.
These people aren't there to listen, they're not there to talk--they're there to scream, harass, and create a public relations spectacle. It's what they're meant to do. As I've said before, if we don't show up, then these Members of Congress think our absence is "consent" to what these right-wingers are saying.
It's time to stop blogging, get the f**k away from the computer, and GET OUT into the streets to attend the nearest townhall event near you!
Want to know which Democratic events are on this week that you can attend if you're in their district or live close by the district? Then look at this table below for what's happening today. See the hashtags for each Member of Congress? That's you can tweet about it on Twitter along with the hashtag #hcr to let people know what's going on at the Democratic townhall event.
Friday, August 7 |
8am - 9:30am | Polis, Jared | Boulder | CO | 2680 Broadway Street, | Create Event | #PolisCO |
8:30am - 9:30am | Schrader, Kurt | Newport | OR | Red Door Cafe, Ste A, 34 S Coast Hwy | Create Event | #SchraderOR |
10:30am - 11:30am | Larsen, Rick | Everett | WA | Everett Comm. College Baker Hall, Rm. 120 | Create Event | #LarsenWA |
10:45am - 11:45am | Welch, Peter | Vergennes | VT | Dairy Show Barn Addison County Field Days | Create Event | #WelchVT |
4pm - 5pm | Murphy, Scott | Granville | NY | Slate Valley Museum 17 Water Street | Create Event | #MurphyNY |
4pm - 6pm | Watson, Diane | Los Angeles | CA | 4322 Wilshire Boulevard Los Angelos, CA, 90010 | Create Event | #WatsonCA |
6pm - 8pm | Perriello, Tom | Halifax County | VA | Halifax High School (Auditorium Balcony) 310 High School Circle | Create Event | #PerrielloVA |
When you go to the event, PLEASE wait until after the event to speak with the Democratic Member of Congress to impress strongly on him or her that you need for a strong, robust public option to be in the final bill package and NOT to give into the Blue Dog Democrats!
Getting progressive Democrats on record of their support of a strong, robust public option in the final bill package and their refusal to vote for any legislation that doesn't have it is going to be important. This is going to be your chance to tell your Democratic Member of Congress what you really care about when it comes to health care reform. Don't pass up on this chance.
Because here's what's going to happen when Members of Congress return back from their vacation according to Jane Hamsher:
The Senate will pass a bill with co-ops. The Blue Dogs will go for Round 2 of gutting the House bill when they return in September. Everybody will agree to accept co-ops in conference, and unless there are 40 progressive members of the House willing to hold the line more firmly when they let the Blue Dogs roll them last week, it's bye-bye public plan.
Jane Hamsher's right on this. The Senate "6" would rather have their bill pass out of the Finance Committee with member-owned cooperatives and weak regulations. They'll fight to have their bill as the main legislation out of the conference committee. It's why they delayed health care reform's passage to after August so that they'd give the murder-by-spreadsheet industry time to scare, harass, and intimidate our Democratic Members of Congress during recess. It's a big part of the reason why the Blue Dogs worked to delay the passage of health care reform.
It's why we need to get the f**k out and attend these townhall events to let them know these knuckle-dragging mouthbreathers aren't the only ones who worry about the passage of health care reform!
- Also, if you have a blog, you can embed the calendar onto your own blog so that others can see it and attend the Democratic townhall event on your behalf!
- You can search for a meet-up at the Democratic townhall event, and if there isn't a meet-up, you can create one to urge your friends and family to attend.
- When you go to the Democratic townhall event with your friends and family, you can follow this list of successful practices in how to counter-act these right-wing loons. What's that saying? Forewarned is forearmed. Or do I have that backwards?
- Anyways, don't forget to bring a copy of the FDL Public Option Pledge with you when you go, armed with a camera or a flip video phone, to the Democratic town hall event. Ask them to take the Pledge, and upload the video to Youtube or the pictures to Flickr. You can also report about the event here.
- If you know of an event that's not on the events calendar on the right side of the page, please TELL us about it by entering in the information here!
I also have some news to report. We at FireDogLake have had our funding cut in this fight for health care reform. Apparently we were doing so well in being the annoying gnat fly in actually daring to hold our Members of Congress accountable on health care reform. Members of Congress complained, called the organization that was giving us a bit of funding, and told the organization to cut the funding to us.
This cut in funding doesn't come at a good time for us because we've added on a few people to handle the programming, e-mail blasts, and action items. We have people working up to fourteen hours a day on the fight for real health care reform.
Here's more on what Jane said about the funding cut to us in her post at FDL:
It's crazy that we were the first organization to get an August events calendar up with a widget that anyone could embed on their site, and we did it in the midst of scant resources and tremendous pressure. It certainly says something about the way the health care battle is being fought -- or not, as the case may be. But we've been the ones collecting information day in and day out, having asked readers here and at Daily Kos to crowd source the information and enter it into our event reporting tool. We've had a small, underpaid staff working until the wee hours of the morning doing rapid response on things like the Pelosi/Polis/DeGette event last night.
As I said the other day, we've raised a little over $66,000, both from contributions made by individuals and the funds that came from the organization. We need to raise $150,000 total to keep everything going through the end of October. We've got an amazing team working on this, including organizers and bloggers and programmers who have been doing a fantastic job. Mike Stark's videos have been all over the cable news networks, and so far we've managed to get 15 members of Congress to publicly pledge to vote against any health care bill that has co-ops or triggers -- something that organizations with $40 million budgets have failed to so.
So, can you please HELP donate to keep us going in our fight for health care reform? Every dollar is greatly appreciated, and we're working hard to make sure that dollar goes a long way!