Mass Srike Process Expands With Town Meetings

August 20, 2009 (LPAC)—The uproar that has been manifested at Congressional town hall meetings against President Obama's health care reform plans, reflecting the mass strike underway in the country, has yet to let up. Even at meetings which are reported to be "civil," attendance has been reported as from 200 to nearly 3,000 in one case. There are now a handful of instances where a member of Congress who had not scheduled any town hall meetings has decided to venture out into public, while many others, including a few Republicans, are still hiding from their constituents, either by holding telephone conference calls, or not holding any meeting at all.

An estimated 2,800 people showed up for a meeting with Rep. Brian Baird (D) in Vancouver, Washington. Other meetings, from Oregon to Oklahoma, saw crowds in the hundreds overflowing meeting rooms too small to accommodate them. Rep. Betsy Markey (D. Colo.) planned to speak to small groups today, but so many people turned out that she ended up holding her meeting in a college auditorium. LPAC organizers report 150-200 people lining up in 90+ degree heat and sun in Queens, New York, to pound their Congressman, who thought holding "one-on-one" chats with constituents outside would protect him.

At least 300 people, pro and con, protested outside a (contrived) debate on health care between Rep. Edde Bernice Johnson and Jeff Sessions in Dallas on Monday, and LaRouche organizers were there with their mustache posters, generating a lot of local coverage. The lead interview in the video clip the Dallas Morning News posted yesterday with its story on the debate, was LaRouchePAC organizer Paul Mourino, wearing a poster of Obama with the Hitler mustache, and telling the reporter: "There's a split in the Democratic Party. You have an element in the party, which I represent, which is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and then you've got people who are hooked on drug money from Wall Street. They don't give a flying hoot about the American population. And our hope is, to get rid of some of these people, and orient a coalition of patriots in the Congress who would like to return to the FDR standard." The Dallas Observer website's slide show on the demo included a picture of three singing LaRouchePAC organizers, with the 'stache poster clearly visible, along with a bold sign, reading "LaRouche's Health Care Solution: 1) Ban HMOs; 2) Reinstate Hill-Burton and 3) Go with Single-payer; www.larouchepac.com/health, and another stand-alone picture of the "I've changed" poster.

In McAlester, Oklahoma, Democratic Rep. Dan Boren promised several hundred people, Tuesday night, that he would not be voting for H.R. 3200, and that he did not support the end-of-life provision in the bill. Other conservative Democrats are also reported to be speaking out against the bill, including Rep. Gene Taylor (Miss.) and Rep. Charlie Melancon (La.), both of whom are Blue Dogs.

Republicans are also being hit by huge, rambunctious crowds, such as Rep. Spencer Bachus, who had over 2,000 people in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Rep. Tom Rooney, who faced over 400 people in Stuart, Florida.