The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fired up over health care, activists await lawmakers
Groups see recess as chance to focus political anger.
As Republican lawmakers prepare to leave Washington for a weeklong congressional recess, liberal groups and Democratic Party organizers are hoping to make their homecoming as noisy and uncomfortable as possible.
But national organizers concede they are playing catch-up to a “dam-bursting level” of grass-roots activism that has bubbled up from street protests and the small groups that have swelled into crowds outside local congressional offices.
Protests against the Republican agenda have become routine since President Donald Trump took office, with momentum building through widely shared videos of lawmakers being confronted by constituents angry over efforts to repeal the health care law. Now, national groups see the recess as the chance to capitalize on that local activism, with a show of might aimed at declaring the arrival of a new, and sustainable, political force — barely three months after their humiliating defeat in November.
In email alerts, MoveOn. org is mobilizing members to attend town-hall-style meetings across the country, and it has set up a website, ResistanceRecess.com, to help people find them. The site includes a guide to “health care recess messaging.” (“The best and most impactful questions are ones where someone shares their story about what the Affordable Care Act has meant to them or their family,” it instructs.)
Organizing for Action, the political nonprofit group that grew out of former President Barack Obama’s election campaign, has created a “Recess Toolkit” with suggestions on how to effectively ask questions at the events. Last week, the group held an online seminar with members of Indivisible, the most prominent activist organization to emerge in response to Trump’s election, to coach supporters on how to challenge lawmakers — in a “civil and respectful way” advised one strategist, according to a recording of the session.
Planned Parenthood is hoping to flood the sessions with members in pink T-shirts, urging Congress to keep in place the health care law and the organization’s funding.
“It’s going to be intense,” said Emily Tisch Sussman, who leads the political arm of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington. “All every group wants to know is how to find out where the town halls are going to be.”
Several Republicans, including Trump, have dismissed the pro-health care act crowds as “paid protesters,” not constituents. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, without offering evidence, called the protests a “very paid, AstroTurf-type movement,” unlike the tea party demonstrations against the drafting of the health care law in 2009, which he characterized as “very organic.”
In fact, some of the most formidable and well-established organizing groups on the left have found themselves scrambling to track all of the local groups sprouting up through social media channels like Facebook and Slack, or in local “huddles” that grew out of the women’s marches across the country the day after the inauguration.
“We’re just constantly being flooded with people asking us, ‘What can we do, where can we go?’ “said Ben Wikler, the Washington director of MoveOn.org, who coined the “dam-bursting level” description. “For politicians to imagine that it’s something that any group could turn on and off like a light switch is a critical miscalculation.”
Established groups in Washington are running more traditional campaigns.
The Alliance for Healthcare Security, a coalition of health care worker unions and other groups, is running television and online ads during the recess in five states where it believes Republican senators are either inclined to vote against a repeal of the health care law, or vulnerable to defeat in re-election bids if they vote for repeal. The ads — in Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Nevada and West Virginia — feature constituents with life-threatening diseases telling emotional stories about how the health care law saved their lives.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is keeping track of Republican lawmakers who do not hold town-hall-style meetings. Some events have been canceled, and Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., said he had done so because the meetings have been “hijacked” by groups hostile to Trump.
Some of the most creative activity is coming from people who are new to political activism. In Plymouth, Minnesota, Kelly Guncheon, a financial planner who described himself as an independent, has organized a “With Him or Without Him” meeting for Rep. Erik Paulsen, a Republican who has not scheduled any of his own. A volunteer offered to make 400 cupcakes decorated with a “Where’s Waldo?” picture of Paulsen’s face, and Guncheon said he planned to project onto screens legislation that Paulsen had supported. Participants will be asked to write down questions, which will be delivered, along with a recording of the event, to Paulsen’s congressional office after the recess.