“Eric Cantor, you can’t hide, we the people are outside.”
Apparently Eric Cantor can hide, simply by cancelling his 4:30 p.m. appearance at the Wharton School of Business on the University of Pennsylvania campus Friday and not showing up.
The U of P was unable to ensure that all of the attendees at Cantor’s speech would be students rather than some motley rabble like Occupy Philly protesters or, say, the public or constituents, because the Wharton School is a public place.
Cantor, who can’t abide public places, said, “No thanks.” Rumor had it that he was in the building and/or he wasn’t there at all.
It didn’t matter; all of us protesters are used to screaming at empty buildings. Many of us have been doing that since 1967.
I was outside with about 300 (I mean 3,00O) Occupy Philly protesters who had marched up from City Hall – starting at 2:30, not 9 a.m., as the Daily Pennsylvanian reported – doing all that chanting.
It was a great victory for Occupy Philly. It appears that Cantor is so scared of his constituents or anybody without a big fat check in hand, that he doesn’t appear anywhere that isn’t totally controlled, vetted and screened for fear real people might show up. Honestly, Eric, none of us would have hurt you.
Last August he had an invitation-only town hall (an oxymoron) at a hotel in his district and when a protest group rented the room above his, he sent his goons to evict them, which the hotel did because, after all, you can count on a congressman’s steady patronage, but who knows when the rabble will rent a room again.
One woman drove up from his district to confront him. She said he has never had an open meeting and she went to his district office five times in one week only to find that not a single staff person was on hand.
I have to wonder if our congressman, Pat Meehan, who does man district offices and who does bravely show up at town halls, protesters and all, is proud of being in the same party with this repulsive elitist.
But the speech Cantor would have given at the Wharton School was released and it’s a humdinger.
“What does your party say to that 9-year-old, inner city kid scared to death, growing up in a life of poverty? What can you do for that little girl?” he asked.
The answer, he said, was “a hand up” and the advantages of a solid family around her and a community that encourages her to learn and work hard. Oh yeah, and a guarantee that the rules are the same for everybody. So, really not much. What hand up are we talking about, Eric?
“Although she may have to work harder than many of us, she needs to know that she has a fair shot at making it in this country,” he would have said if he hadn’t chickened out at the thought of facing the parents of that hypothetical 9 year old.
Come on, really? A 9 year old in North Philly with a violent, abusive family if any at all, a lousy school system and a community combatting chronic unemployment and crack cocaine, and she should take comfort from the fact that she and millionaires enjoy the same rules?
Even Politico, which is decidedly right-wing, observed that this was a pathetic message to be peddling on the elite U of P campus.
The name of Cantor’s speech was "A Fair Shot at the American Dream and Economic Growth."
“That's an odd subject to discuss exclusively in front of the University of Pennsylvania community, seeing as the fact that their status as students or alumni or professors at an elite Ivy League institution probably lends them the necessary insight to know they've all essentially received a ‘fair shot’ at the ‘American dream,’” Politico said.
I haven’t been at Penn in at least 40 years (I actually took two courses at the Wharton School myself in urban planning in 1967 courtesy of the Philadelphia School District where I worked at the time) and I have to say, the campus is breathtaking.
I walked by an outdoor café (or fraternity house, no idea which) and was blown away by the pulchritude of the gorgeous young men lounging at a table with a glass of wine. OMG, if I was only 40 years younger! And they all looked like they could or have modeled for Ralph Lauren!
It is not true that Occupy Wherever doesn’t have a coherent message. Clearly they do: economic injustice. They are as nonviolent as any group I have seen since the Civil Rights movement and they are a lot of fun. And in Philadelphia anyway, they have a great rapport with the police.
Yes, it’s true that Occupy Philly is costing the city a lot of overtime, but I think the police are very aware that they are the ones earning that overtime. We are all the 99 percent!
At the start of every speech someone shouts “mike check” and everyone else in the crowd shouts back, “mike check.” They are all the mike. Then every sentence shouted by a speaker is shouted back by everyone in the crowd.
This is a great innovation for a reporter. If you missed the whole sentence the first time, you get a second shot at it. I think every public meeting should be like this.