Saturday, November 21, 2009

Shreveport Protests Landrieu's Sellout to Obamacare

Update: Thanks to The Dead Pelican for the link and to @MichelleMalkin for the Twitter shout!

Yesterday afternoon I went to one of the statewide protests outside Mary Landrieu's offices. In Shreveport, under drizzling skies, about sixty people showed up in front of the Federal building where Landrieu's office is. Additionally, there were counter protesters, in support of Obamacare, also there; I'd say there were at most about 15 of them.

There were not tense moments, no drama, that I ever saw. Two or three policemen kept watch from the periphery and the occasional passing car would honk and wave at one side or the other. A couple of times a friendly shouting match broke out: "Kill the Bill" vs. "Health Care Now!" But no drama. Everyone was respectful and did their part.

A couple of folks from our side, the Kill the Bill side, went up to Landrieu's office to register an opinion. One lady, Janet, was told, "Well, you know Senator Landrieu is a huge supporter of small business!" and Janet replied, "Then I KNOW she's going to vote against this bill because this bill is going to just KILL small business." Again, everything respectful and polite.

The Red River Tea Party had collected letters and faxes from people who were unable to attend the short-notice protest yesterday and delivered them to Senator Landrieu's office.

I had heard reports through the day from email and blog comments that the Senate phone lines had crashed, that the lines in Landrieu's offices were continuously busy, and even one story of a constituent, frustrated at not being able to call in, went to Landrieu's office and was ushered out by security and told that "Senator Landrieu is not in the office." The one person working in that office had gone to lunch and would not be back for an hour and a half.

The big vote is tonight; I'll live-blog most of the events today as I did with the House debate. Check back in and don't stop trying to call. The Capitol switchboard is (202) 224-3121 and here is the complete list of email and fax numbers.

Here is the local media story of the protest yesterday:

2 comments:

OldSouth said...

1. Dont'cha just love this 'make decisions on late Saturday night' stuff? Certainly builds my sense of confidence in our leadership. They assume we are stupid, and care more about the outcome of the LSU game than our grandchildren's welfare. And, to be honest, many people are that stupid.

2. It never surprises me when an elected official decides to be bribed. I am always stunned by how little they can be bought for. It's like they can't do math: If my vote makes Entity X 50 million dollars, my cut should be at least 5%! Sin boldly, for crying out loud!

But, if they could do math, or had consciences, we wouldn't be seeing them meet on Saturday night, now would we?

4 Q 2 said...

Great!...Shows out of 200k people in Shreveport, about 30 people protesting progression Nice!