....be sure you do your homework!
I read in Slinkerwink's diary this morning that my new representative, Jim Himes, would be doing a town hall (about health care, I assumed, given the topic of the diary) in my new hometown of Stamford, CT. I spread the word as best I could, made sure my camera battery was charged, and brushed up on my talking points. The diary reported that the meeting would run from 5:30 to 6:30 pm, so I left at 4:30 for the 20 minute drive downtown to be assured of finding a parking spot and a seat up front. I did not want to arrive late!
The only thing I did not do by way of preparation was to call Himes' office to confirm that the meeting would indeed be actually taking place.
I arrived at the Stamford Government Center with plenty of time to spare, signed in, and proceeded to the second floor where the meeting was to be held. There were already approximately 40-50 of my fellow citizens waiting on the narrow mezzanine for the meeting room doors to be unlocked. Stamford is a fairly affluent city on Connecticut's "Gold Coast", and the crowd was mostly middle-aged, leaning to elderly, fairly well-dressed, and absolutely lily-white (including yours truly). I'm a bit of a wallflower in strange crowds, so I kept to myself as I tried to get a sense of who was on what side. My sense was that it was roughly 40% Progressive, 60% Wingnut, but as very few people were literally wearing their politics on their sleeves, I can't say that with 100% confidence. There was one elderly lady pretty close to me whom I noticed was carrying some printed-out talking points with the word "Boondoggle" in large print on top and who kept talking with quiet shrillness about "Nazis" and "Euthanasia", to the embarrassed eye-rolls of even her apparently conservative audience.
After about 15 minutes of this sort of people-watching, I saw a well dressed woman looking awkward and embarrassed as she spoke hurriedly to some seniors just slightly out of earshot. I sidled in just close enough to hear her explaining (it was now clear that she was a staffer) that the meeting scheduled to take place was not, in fact, about health care, but rather had been set up to be a liaison between constituents and some officials from the FAA regarding airport approaches and noise issues. This poor woman had the unenviable task of making her way through the confused and increasingly unhappy crowd to explain the mix up. Everyone there, right and left, was fired up about health care and could not have given two shits about the FAA! Also, everyone there, it seems, had gotten an email or seen something on the web (including yours truly) giving us the false impression that this was to be a meeting focusing on the topic of health care.
There was plenty of grumbling as the word spread, but I did not observe anyone getting loud or excessively agitated. The put-upon staffers explained that, as the meeting topic had been set months ago, and the FAA personnel had been flown in from various locales far away, they would not be able to shift gears and change the topic, but Himes would be willing to stay for some extra time after the scheduled hour devoted to aviation.
Most people left (including yours truly) but not before adding our names to a list in order to be directly informed about the next health care forum, and I also made sure to leave a comment briefly outlining my views on the subject (Medicare for all). I would have stuck around myself, or at least left and returned, but I have a life and a wife-to-be, so I left after leaving my comments with an intern.
The bottom line: Be sure to call and confirm before taking the time to venture out, and don't take everything you read on teh intertubes at face value--even here at D Kos