Cleveland Tea Party : When is your Town Hall?

Dear Cleveland Patriots,

Here's this week's alert from national Tea Party Patriots on Town Halls. When we last checked, the only Ohio representative holding Town Halls was Steve Chabot from District 1. So if you live in northeast Ohio, please consider what you can do to put pressure on your Representative. - CTPP

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Getting your Congressman to hold a town hall this week – and showing up big – is the action item this week! Below are some tips to help make it happen and make it a success!

Find Your Representative's Town Hall This Week Here

Last Wednesday we held a tele-town hall with Representatives Louie Gohmert from Texas and Tim Huelskamp from Kansas. They reminded us about the importance of showing up to the in-person town halls, and calling your Congressman’s office. We need to be able to get our message across face-to-face whenever possible.

Here are some tips from local coordinators across the country.

Call. Call your Representative’s local district office
Say the following: “When will the Representative be holding a townhall this week?” Note: It’s important to say “when” instead of asking “will you.”
Answer is yes. If the Congressman is holding a town hall, get the information about where and when, and spread the word! Also let us know at Tea Party Patriots because we are compiling town hall information. And remember to take your camera and film it!
Answer is no. If the Congressman isn’t holding a townhall, here are some tips from other grassroots coordinators on how to handle this situation.
- Ask or demand. If your Rep. isn’t holding a town hall, at that point you can ask them to please hold one. You can try demanding that he/she hold one, but that doesn’t work with every Rep. You probably know the situation best, so if playing nice works best, do that. If playing tough works best, do that.
- Schedule an appointment. See if you can schedule a personal appointment with a small group of your friends and the Rep.
- Crowd the office. Have dozens of people calling the local office and a handful of people showing up at the office together, all in the same day. You can call first to see if the Rep. is in the office if you’d like, and feel free to show up without an appointment. Make sure to bring a letter or something written with you, with your message on it, and make sure to be reasonable and polite.
- Call them out publicly. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper or send a press release to local news organizations to put public pressure on them, and make it known to the entire district that your Rep. refuses to see his/her constituents. You can also post things on Facebook and Twitter.
- Prove a point. In the past, coordinators have held their own town halls, invited the Rep. (who refused to show), and signified the absent Rep. with a cardboard cutout, or empty chair, etc. Constituents show up to ask questions to the missing Congressman, while you film the entire thing. A couple of local coordinators also made large milk cartons and put the Rep.’s face on the side with a, “Missing: Have you seen this man?” sort of thing. Have fun with it!
FILM EVERYTHING!! Above all else, film everything! If you go to the office to try and see the Rep. and they refuse, you’ll want that on film! If you hold a people’s town hall where the Rep. rejected your invitation, you’ll want to film the voters in his/her district simply trying to get answers from their supposed Representative, but not succeeding because the Rep. couldn’t be bothered to show up. And finally, if your Rep. does hold a town hall, go there and film it all! Especially film the people that are demanding that Congress cut spending!! All of this footage can help you when the election comes, if you’d like to replace your Rep.
Keep making calls. We know it seems like the calls do not make a difference but they do. We hear it repeatedly when we are in DC from staffers that the calls and especially the local office visits make a difference.
GET YOUR PEOPLE THERE! The left is already making their own plans to attend these town halls, to get their message out. DO NOT LET THEM STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT. If there is a townhall, make it your priority to get as many patriots there as possible!!