Life of Wry

A bit of a surprise to me, I was invited to participate in a meet-up this morning with our Congressman, Mike Thompson. Mike asked Don S to gather a small group of local political activists to meet with him and share concerns from the frontlines. It was an impressive who’s who of representatives from a variety of activist groups and unions. I knew everyone and had worked with most.

I consider myself more of a line-level activist, someone who responds to calls and does a fair amount of work in teams, but I don’t lead those orgs. Most of the folks gathered this morning do.

Whatevs. I had some things to say and certainly understood the task at hand. It was a fairly productive 90 minutes.. some blah blah but also some urgent reality checks about the moment we’re in.

For my part, I wanted to hear more from Congressman Thompson about how, specifically, we go beyond politics-as-usual to fight what we all know is something new and far more dangerous than anything we’ve seen before. I want to know that we are supporting a congress member who’s going to work with us to push back aggressively on this administration NOW, not wait for the midterms to turn things around. Thompson is a solid Democrat… of the Blue Dog variety (“Democrats committed to bipartisan problem solving and fiscal responsibility”). He takes a more moderate position on most issues. Since trump’s come back into office, however, he’s gotten an earful from folks in his district (via townhalls and thousands of communications that constituents have had with him & his staff) and has upped his game. Thankfully.

Going forward, I hope he’ll use the resources and energy of the resistance, and I hope he’ll carry to Washington these messages and act on this energy.  The resistance movement is very sophisticated and has a lot to offer. I hope we have a partner in Mike.