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August 11, 2009

PK observes Congressman Wu's Town Hall - Pics!!

Congressman Wu held a Town Hall in NW Portland today and as we've come to expect it was a battleline of the health care reform debate (sponsored by a corporation near you). It was scheduled to begin at 12:00 and run for one hour. So I figured I'd show up early. I got there at 10:45 and the line was all the way up one side of the block and half way down the next side. I heard later that the line began at 8:00 and that nobody who showed up after 9:30 got in. So I just shot pics and chatted up folks and basically observed the circus.

My observation was that the crowd was about 9 to 1 in FAVOR of Health Care Reform. Later it seemed like more conservatives showed up but they were still handily outnumbered. Dems definitely showed up in force! Which I suppose was to be expected.

Here are the two extremes:

A Socialist trying to sell Socialist newspapers. He seemed to sell a handful but basically seemed to be ignored by the crowd. And yes, that is blogger Bill Nothstine's smiling mug on the far left, facing the camera.







The guy with the megaphone is a conservative who attempted to drown out the pro-reform chants of "Health Care Now!" with little luck. To his right is a skin head who appeared to be associated with the megaphone guy. His T-Shirt reads, "Agnostic Front - Skinhead".

(Update: The guy in the t-shirt says he's pro-reform and is not associated with Megaphone Guy in any way)

You can view the ton of other pics I took at my Flickr page

Lastly here... At about 11:00 a woman wearing the black campus security uniform made her way along the line letting folks know that we likely wouldn't be getting inside. She was challenged on why by several women immediately in front of me. She said that it was her first day on the job but patiently explained that the room has a max capacity rating which would not support letting everyone inside. She said it was rated for 67 people or something like that. But what I found curious was, when pressed about who was getting the seats, she said that Congressman Wu's staff were alloted 27 or 29 (I forget which) seats... which seems excessive. I doubt he has that many staff at all let alone in Portland on this particular day. So I don't know what to say about that other than to report what the security woman said.

Posted by Kevin at August 11, 2009 01:46 PM