investigativevoice.com

By Alan Z. Forman

Washington/Nov. 5 — Chanting “Kill the bill! Kill the bill!” and booing loudly at every mention of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s name, a throng of mostly middle-aged predominantly white opponents of the proposed health care reform scheduled to be voted on Saturday by the U.S. House of Representatives converged on the nation's capital Thursday afternoon to protest the legislation and to urge members of Congress to vote it down.

The crowd of protesters, which included men and women of all ages, as well as several infants and a smattering of teenagers and elderly people, cheered Republican members of Congress, a radio talk show host, and two well-known actors who praised conservative lawmakers for opposing what they variously termed “Obamacare” and “Pelosicare,” and chastised Speaker Pelosi for promoting a so-called “health care takeover bill.”

Arranged less than a week ago following a conversation between Rep. Michele Bachmann (D-MN) and Sean Hannity on the latter’s syndicated talk show, the event drew an estimated 20,000 demonstrators to the Capitol’s West Lawn according to Hannity, despite the last-minute notice, some people traveling from as far away as Hawaii to attend. Hannity did not make an appearance at the event.

Others put the attendance at approximately 5,000 participants.

Bachmann called the event a “Super Bowl of Freedom,” technically billed by congressional organizers as a “press conference” because the sponsoring GOP Congress members did not have a permit for a “demonstration.”

Letitia Turner, of Honolulu, who declined to reveal her age but identified herself as “a senior citizen,” said she came “to tell [her] senators and representatives to vote No,” adding that “other changes could be made [to the health care legislation] that are not so costly,” such as tort reform.

NEVER BEEN TO WASHINGTON

Lorene Wysong, a 35-year-old Indiana mother of two teenagers aged 13 and 15, who came with three other members of the “As a Mom” organization and had never been to Washington before, said she hopes the members of Congress will listen and that “this works, and they throw out the bill.”

Wysong was wearing a homemade T-shirt with a picture of the Capitol on the back and the inscription, “Don’t you make me come up there — [signed] Mom.”

Holding up hand-lettered signs with such messages as “Obamacare makes me sick!”; “Pull the Plug on Pelosi”; and “Government health care is like a hospital gown — You think you’re covered but you’re not,” the protesters were addressed by a cadre of Republican lawmakers who paraded down the steps of the West Front of the Capitol to the cheers of the calm yet vocal crowd.

One demonstrator carried a hand-made mockup of the Capitol building with three large rats on the roof emblazoned with headshots of Nancy Pelosi, President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Monica Bozman, 55, of Catonsville MD, stood next to the mockup, saluting as onlookers snapped photographs of the garish display.

“America’s citizens will not be scared by Obama’s ’Chicago tactics,’” asserted actor Jon Voight, an outspoken Hollywood conservative and Academy Award winner who once appeared with actress Jane Fonda to protest the Vietnam War, before making an about-face in his political views.

Another actor, John Ratzenberger, best-known for his role as mailman Cliff Clavin on the long-running television sitcom “Cheers,” told the cheering throng: “These people [Speaker Pelosi et al.] who are trying to force this bill on us are not the philosophical descendants of John Kennedy and Tip O’Neill” — a former Democratic House Speaker who supported health care reform in the late 1970s and ‘80s — as they would have people believe; “they’re the philosophic descendants of Abbie Hoffman,” the 1960s social and political activist often considered radical, who co-founded the Youth International Party (“Yippies”) to protest the Vietnam War.

EPONYMOUS RADIO SHOW

Additional speakers included the event’s organizer, Congresswoman Bachmann, and political and social commentator Mark Levin, host of the eponymous radio show that some consider reactionary, who told the gathering: “One day we will tell our children and our children’s children what it was like to be free in the United States.”

Those sentiments were echoed by Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), the House minority leader, who characterized the Obama/Pelosi version of health care as “the greatest threat to freedom I’ve seen in my 19 years in Washington.”

Asserting that the legislation amounts to a “government takeover” of the nation’s health care system, speaker after speaker attacked Obama, Pelosi and the Democratic Party establishment in general. And one congressional candidate — Robert Broadus, 37, a computer programmer who is running as a Republican in Maryland’s 4th Congressional District in an uphill battle to unseat first-term Rep. Donna Edwards — called the Pelosi bill “a power-grab which forces us into actions against our will and takes us into slavery.

“This bill violates every principle of freedom in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution,” Broadus said. “People in our government don’t reflect what we the citizens believe.”

Both Edwards — a Prince Georges County Democrat who defeated 15-year incumbent Rep. Al Wynn in the Democratic primary in 2008 and was reelected in November of that year with 85 percent of the vote — and Broadus are African-American.

RAPPER SNOOP DOGG

(Asked if he was related to the actor, rapper Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Cordazar Calvin Broadus, Congressional Candidate Broadus ignored the question.)

At the end of the session, Bachmann and others handed out pages ripped from the proposed legislation and encouraged participants to go to the offices of Democratic members of Congress and ask them to explain what it means — a reference to the voluminous bill that few of the lawmakers have actually read.

Thousands of the protesters then lined up outside the three House office buildings, as requested.

A few participants were creatively dressed: There was a Minuteman, a hippie in green, and several CodePink members wearing pink pants, pink shirt, pink jacket and pink hat.

The members of CodePink, an antiwar group founded in 2002 and composed mostly of women, were jeered by some of the other demonstrators, despite the fact that they too are against the proposed health care legislation in its current form.

Earlier in the day, according to Medea Benjamin, 57, a co-founder of CodePink, who traveled from Los Angeles to attend the event, nine of the group’s members were arrested outside the Senate office of Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut Independent who caucuses with the Democrats but has been feuding with Majority Leader Reid over the proposed health care legislation in the upper chamber.

Benjamin characterized the legislation as “not a bill I feel great about, but the best bill we’re gonna get.”

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