I attended a town hall meeting in Cottage Grove, Oregon held by Rep. Peter DeFazio. I went down to see if I could prevent anyone from being shouted down, and because I think an awful lot of Rep. DeFazio.
The meeting took place at 9:30 AM. It was originally scheduled to held inside of the Community Center, but wound up in the parking lot because of the size of the crowd, which I estimate at 300-400 people, and which seemed to be about evenly split between pro-reform and anti-reform people.
Cottage Grove is an old mill and mining town, about 25 miles south of Eugene, OR. It's got a redneck logger element to it's culture, but it's grown a lot over the last twenty years, and become somewhat of a bedroom community to Eugene/Springfield.
There were a handful of unruly people in the crowd--mostly white men from 55 to 60 years of age. A lot of them maintained extreme looks of anger on their faces for the whole meeting--something I personally would find exhausting. Early in the meeting there were some fairly loud outbursts from a very few hotheads in the crowd--"No socialism!!"--that kind of thing. A lot of people, myself included, interceded with statements like "Let the man speak!". Rep. DeFazio took care of most of the disruption by saying something to the effect of, "Look, we're all Oregonians. We can disagree with each other without screaming each other down, like we've been seeing in other parts of the country". Resounding applause!
There were a lot of folks there that had specific questions about the different healthcare bills. A lot of them shared stories of personal health problems, disputes with insurance companies, problems with medicare, and things of that nature. Interestingly, every single time that the word "medicare" was uttered four or five people would yell,"Medicare's broke!" or, "It's broke!!". There's a talking point for ya! Every time Rep. DeFazio answered a question about euthanasia or healthcare rationing, some wit would yell "Not yet!" or some such bullcrap. For the most part, myself and the others let that slide unless it got to the point where we couldn't hear the adults.
Rep. DeFazio's composure was impressive. He's shown time after time that he's unafraid to buck his party, the House, or whoever happens to be President, so I knew he could handle this crowd. He spent a good deal of his time dispelling myths and rumors about the various bills, and explaining the difference between single-payer and a public option. The anti-reform folks standing near me kept muttering and occasionally busting out epithets like, "Yeah, right!" or crap of that nature. The general feeling that I got from these people is as follows:
- Deep distrust of the government.
- These people HATE paying their taxes.
- Medicare is broke!
- Their are freeloaders everywhere that don't work as hard as they do, or at all, and would rather be on relief than have a job.
- Medicare is broke!
I'm going to town hall meeting here in Eugene, and hopefully will get there early enough this time for some useable photos, something I couldn't accomplish this time. Cheers!