http://www.youtube.com/crazycatherder
http://www.youtube.com/BuckMcKeon#play/uploads/1/PAg_Gx_0VZs
Well Saturday's September 26th event turned out to the largest LA COUNTY Townhall meeting to date since the Congressman Adam Schiff’s event in San Gabriel Valley. McKeon and his staff were busy pleasing themselves over the 800 RSVP’s. I watched them giving one another high fives.
Someone had left a visible unlabeled box under the stairwell and the sheriff department responded cautiously to its contents. After one bold sheriff realized that it wasn't ticking, he opened it. And all disgustingly shook their heads to find La Rouche magazines with Obama w/a Hitler mustache on the cover . . . They reclosed the box and shoved it back but out of view, I agreed with their disgust, but this is a country of Free Speech, exhibit #1. There were close to 1,500 people there. Of course, the repubs say that it was 2,000. The initial anxious and alert crowd snaked around the building well before 8:15AM. One event planner was giving the others high fives in relaying “we have up to 2,000 RSVP's”. They had done their job. NOT. For it to be a healthcare meeting, the elevator didn't work for the physically impaired. Although, later in the morning, I heard the janitor exclaim to the sheriffs “it was working on Tuesday, I checked it myself”. Funny, there was little signage to let the public know that the elevator was even there.
I heard the janitor explain to the sheriff officers that the spring wasn't leveling as it should, hence it wasn’t usable. One officer offered that it was a safety violation and should be fixed quickly. I watched the janitor huffing up the stairs. I thought to myself, he’s in relatively good shape, not lean, but if he is huffing up the stairs and stopping at the first landing, what did he expect from moms with a child in a stroller? Some wheelchair bound and motor cart attendees looked dejected when they saw the final set of stairs. There was no signage telling them to keep going up the 20 degree hill to the side entrance of the gym. Some turned around expressing angry others called up asking for assistance.
I saw one young woman run down the stairs and offer to walk the man around the building. The person concerned, but not sure responded, “if you will take me all the way”. The guest obliged him.
She asked me if I knew where the side door would be, I told her it was my first time there also, “I don’t know”. I thought if democrats were in charge, we would have known to facilitate the handicapped and physically challenged. It is a requirement to holding a democratic event.
Eventually a guy in a white Boys and Girl’s Club polo called on a phone and a man came up with a golf cart. The cart man wheeled around to help the gentleman on the canes. I watched Good Samaritans grabbed the front of baby strollers to assist several mothers and a father. I saw audience members descend the stairs to aid physically exhausted elderly men and women, who were measuring their steps to ascend the stairs. One lady I ran down to help pulled her arm away. “I can help myself thank you, ” she was feisty but physically unstable. I retreated. Another man who had seen her too, came down behind me and she allowed him to help her up the last landing. “Thank you sweetie”, I heard her smile and say to him, as she turned around and sneared at me. He and I bodily shrugged at the same time and simultaneously shook our heads . Another form of Free Speech, I thought.
If the planners were concerned about healthcare wouldn’t they have had a plan for this situation I thought. But maybe that was the ultimate message “everybody for themselves”, because they have pulled themselves up by their boot straps why worry about anyone else? No one ever considers that someone made those boots. We can’t get there by ourselves, it takes all of us to make a village and I was taught this years before Hillary Clinton ever wrote the book! (to be continued)
