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We're in it Now
My Congressional district is the Illinois 10th. We seem to identify as Moderates, which has us sending the following people to Congress:
2010: Robert Dold – R
2012: Brad Schneider – D
2014: Robert Dold – R
2016: Brad Schneider – D
There was redistricting in the middle of that, too.
Since the election, I have been rather more engaged with my elected officials, and I have listened in on recent town hall conference calls with both Brad Schneider and my state Senator. In both cases, a short introduction was made with a summary of some current events and then there was Q&A. I remember hanging up with two feelings:
Huh.
Well. Today, I decided to show up to one in person. I arrived..perhaps 20 minutes early, and was the fourth person to sit. The staff was friendly, thanking us for coming and asking us to sign in. Rep. Schneider arrived, with apologies for being late (I hadn’t noticed. He said that his staff made him get a haircut.) and then dove right in to his talking points about the congressional committees on which he serves. This included a side note that the Judiciary Committee is where Articles of Impeachment happen. Smooth.
Then to the Q&A. A guy from Arlington Heights went first, with one of those multiple-part questions about health care. I stopped listening about halfway through when he said, “And how do you expect to do that without the doctors in the room?!” I might have tweeted something snarky at that point. Several questions were like that.
Nothing was particularly contentious or confrontational. Wait, there was one guy that tried to challenge Schneider’s “flip-flop” on the Iran agreement. I think I heard him ask if the congressman had even read it. I almost snorted.
I was keeping mental notes on how many men as opposed to women were given the opportunity to speak – and where in the district each speaker lived. Eight men and three women was my count. None of the women were asking five part questions, either.
The first woman exclaimed, “We are losing our rights! What are the Democrats doing about it?!” I have a Republican friend that would have dismissed her as an hysterical liberal, but the question, “What are Democrats doing?” is perfectly valid and, in my opinion, led to the only small bit of tap-dancing that Schneider did.
The second woman was rather long-winded, but asked what was being done about the hyper-partisanship in Congress right now. Schneider answered that negotiations are happening, but always behind closed doors. Apparently, some Republicans need the cover of darkness to reach across the aisle. (OK, maybe some Democrats, too.)
The third woman asked about the erosion of Voting Rights, which I thought was a great question because that is something we take for granted in our part of Illinois. Schneider noted that in some rural areas, the offices to obtain the official state identification needed to vote are prohibitively far away. He noted the rural poor in Alabama, in particular, just have no way to get to those offices in person.
Overall, I appreciated the meeting. I wish that more women were given the microphone, and that’s on the staff, not on Rep. Schneider. I will stipulate that women were somewhat more tentative in raising their hands, but there was absolutely no shortage of women looking for a chance to speak. I wrote up a comment card on the way out.
The Next Dark Age 