Congressmen host special town hall on democracy’s future

June 8, 2022 | Dylan Corey
dcorey@thereminder.com

Hundreds of residents pack First Churches of Northampton.
Photo credit: Jim McGovern/Facebook

NORTHAMPTON – Congressman Jim McGovern invited Congressman Jamie Raskin to First Churches of Northampton to host a special town hall and field questions from the hundreds of audience members focused on how to protect and maintain a democracy on May 31.

Also invited to make an opening statement was state Sen. Jo Comerford, who was swiftly interrupted by the first heckler of the night, an angry audience member claiming that the current state of American politics is not a democracy.

“What do we do when the very tools that we use to hold our government accountable are being subverted? Like you, I know that our democracy is under attack,” Comerford said. “It’s imperfect, but we are here to defend it. One need look no further than voter suppression, gerrymandering, than the attack on the capitol or the doubting of an election.”

Comerford introduced the two congressmen, calling Raskin one of the best constitutional scholars there is and saying she feels “such deep gratitude” that McGovern is her congressman. She highlighted McGovern’s position as chair of the House Rules Committee, his being the last person to see the House floor before the Jan. 6 insurrection and the upcoming White House conference on hunger and nutrition that McGovern made possible.

McGovern immediately mentioned the shooting in Uvalde, TX, and said that as a congressman, an American and a father he is outraged and disgusted by what happened. He turned to the Buffalo, NY, shooting the week before that, telling the audience that the shooter was influenced by “The Great Replacement Theory,” a conspiracy theory that he explained imagines the replacement of white Americans. The theory, he said, is being spread by far-right media pundits as well as some of his colleagues. He said even though bipartisan majorities of all parties of Americans in all states want some type of change, it still doesn’t come. He said 66 percent of voters support almost all gun safety laws and 80 percent support universal background checks.

“I am outraged but I’m also ashamed that time and time again, after each one of these awful shootings, nothing seems to happen,” McGovern said. “We live in a system right now where the overwhelming voice of the people is drowned out by special interest money, NRA lobbyists, gerrymandered congressional districts and social media misinformation. This is not how our democracy is supposed to work. Like Sen. Comerford said, our democracy is in danger and we’re in real trouble.”

Raskin said in his opening remarks, “If you read the social contract theorists like [Thomas] Hobbes and [John] Locke and [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau, all of them say that the social contract is formed by leaving the state of nature which Hobbes said famously was a state of war, solitary, poor, nasty, prudish and short. We give up the rights of violent self-help in order to enter society where we will be more secure. We give up some of our own rights to use violence against others, but we know that we will have the security of the group. But now, we’ve got politicians who happily go along with truancy laws, compelled school attendance laws that require kids to be in school but then refuse to pass the gun safety legislation we need to keep them safe.”

Raskin later cited Alexis de Tocqueville’s book, “Democracy in America,” in which Tocqueville said democracy and voting rights in our country are always either shrinking and shriveling away or growing and expanding. Raskin placed blame on the Republican Party for the country’s contractionary period, pointing to repealed weekend voting, early voting, mail-in ballots and Georgia legislators making it a crime to pass a bottle of water to people waiting in line to vote. “And you know which neighborhoods are most severely affected by their unexpected shortages in election officials. This is what we are up against,” Raskin said.

Raskin is leading the second Senate trial of former President Donald Trump and urged the audience to watch the hearings throughout June.

“Most of what you hear and see you will have never heard or seen before,” Raskin said. “I want America to pay attention to what’s going on. Our children, our grandchildren are going to ask us what we did during this time. Democracy is under siege all over the world and all of the autocrats, kleptocrats, theocrats, the bullies and the tyrants and the despots have found each other from Moscow to Mar-a-Lago, all of them. To [Rodrigo] Duterte in the Philippines, who takes out people who he thinks look like drug users and shoots them, to [Abdel] el-Sisi in Egypt, to [Narendra] Modi in India who’s now presiding over some brutal anti-Muslim campaigns, to the homicidal crown prince of Saudi Arabia who just helped Jared Kushner make off with $2 billion dollars in ill-gotten gains at the expense of the American people, to President Xi [Jinping], all of them are rooting for the downfall of American democracy and the restoration of the Trump dynasty. The question is are you going to lie down and let them roll all over us?”

Another heckler pressured Raskin to turn attention away from Ukraine, much to Raskin’s and the majority of the audience’s dismay.

“I would love to answer why I am standing with all the Democrats in Congress, a majority of Congress with President [Volodymyr] Zelensky and the people of Ukraine against the fascist [inaudible] in Russia,” Raskin said. “You know, you think that phases me. I deal with [U.S. Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene every day. I’ve got [U.S. Reps.] Matt Gaetz [and] Lauren Boebert and they’re taking the exact same side that that distinguished gentlemen is. They yell at me about Russia hopes this and Russia hopes that. They say our money is going to support Nazis. You know one reason I know our money’s not going to support Nazis? Because if it were, Marjorie Taylor Greene would be supporting it.”

After around 45 minutes of unprompted statements, audience members lined up to ask questions to either or both congressmen. One listener asked about the White House conference on nutrition that McGovern mentioned earlier and wondered what exactly the conference would aim to accomplish.
McGovern said they will address a number of issues, starting with how we allow 40 million people to be hungry despite being the richest country in the history of the world. He will also seek to reconnect the people and schools to nutrition, calling for education on agriculture, nutrition and how to prepare meals. McGovern also sees focus on nutrition as one way to help reduce the cost of healthcare for Americans.

“Why is it that a doctor can write you a prescription for a high-price drug, but can’t write you a prescription for fresh produce? The point of the conference is that to solve these problems is not just one thing, it’s an intersectionality here that cuts across a whole bunch of issues,” McGovern said. “It’s not just about SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), it’s not just about school feeding although we should have universal free school feeding in this country for every child. [President Joe] Biden finally agreed to do this, it’s going to be in September this summer. The goal is to end hunger and nutrition insecurity in this country once and for all. It is achievable, it is solvable, and I hope we can do it.”

Many questions surrounded gun laws, the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade and how to better market a clear, strong message of the Democratic party to match the Republicans.

“My question is about the legal implications of the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade,” asked an audience member. “That has been the precedent for about 50 years now, and there are a multitude of Supreme Court cases based on that precedent, specifically Obergefell v. Hodges which guarantees marriage equality. What can congress do to protect those cases and those rights that now might be under fire when Roe v. Wade is overturned?”

Raskin responded, “That web of precedent all grew up together, starting with Griswald v. Connecticut where Connecticut tried to ban contraception even for married adults. That’s where the Supreme Court said there’s a constitutional right to privacy existing in the penumbra of all of the rights… my colleagues ridicule that right on the floor every day. They say the word abortion doesn’t appear in the constitution, but the word marriage doesn’t appear in the constitution. The word contraception doesn’t appear in the constitution. Is the right to privacy in danger? It is. What can Congress do? We can pass by federal law all of the exact same rights which grew up and now are about to be unraveled by the Supreme Court. That’s what we did with the Women’s Health Protection Act. The bottom line is we could codify it.”

After admitting to being a lifelong Democrat, an audience member told Raskin and McGovern that the Democrats need a narrative. She said she was ashamed of the Democrats for letting the Republican Party outwork them from a narrative standpoint and said that they should have never allowed something like Build Back Better to fall on the ground.

“The only thing I ask because I go all over the country, I’m willing to let people beat me up about what’s the message and who’s the messenger and all of that stuff because I hear it everywhere I go,” Raskin said. “But one thing: please don’t talk about the Democrats in the third person. The Democrats did this, and the Democrats did that, talk about it in the second person plural. We Democrats. We’re all together in this. I am not a PR consultant, so I don’t know, I’m out on what I consider the front lines of trying to defend our democracy against Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and neo-fascists and Donald Trump’s kleptocratic party that wants to get back in. My message is pretty simple which is whatever our faults, we are now the party of democracy.”

One of the final questions came from a young listener, who asked what they would say to a young person in America who is finding it hard to see a future of change because of the current climate around gun legislation and abortion rights. Looking for reassurance, Raskin told her that young people are the best hope for bettering their future.

“I want to tell you about Democracy Summer, maybe we can get you involved in it because it’s all about hope for young people,” Raskin said. “Not only hope for you, but we need you. We need you for future of our country. My father used to say, ‘When everything looks hopeless, you’re the hope.’ I want you to feel that we have made extraordinary progress in our country and young people have been at the forefront … This is not the first time that the American people have been looking at bleak prospects against authoritarian, racist, fascist movements in the country. I know it’s been a terribly demoralizing and dark time for young people, I feel very intensely the pain of your generation and I don’t think that politics is the panacea, but politics will be part of what can help to uplift you out of the sense of despondency.”

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