Just for the record, Our Congressman Jared Polis was at another event in Colorado. An activist Group I belong to, Hear us Now, covered that event in an excellent After Action report: http://hearus-now.org/?p=258
They also took some great pictures.
http://hearus-now.org/?page_id=254
I think our congressman is a good person, and he was willing to engage with the anti obamacare people. He never said he would be at his office at noon yesterday, so I don't want to give the impression that he was hiding out.
There is some evidence that he tried to make it seem like this was NOT a health care event so he wouldn't get slammed by protestors.
Keith Peterson of Colorado reports:
"I notified you earlier in the week that as a part of the Recess Rally we would be holding a rally outside of the Fair Housing event hosted by Perlmutter and Polis.
According to Barack Obama’s Organize for America this is in fact a Healthcare Town Hall and not a Fair Housing Event.
It seems Perlmutter and Polis were trying to sneak one past us.
Surprised?
Some attentive people noticed this and have passed the info on."
Here is a quick AAR from the Polis Boulder Event.
Please note, we showed up at his office simply because our national group wanted to have protestors at every congressmans office at noon yesterday. We were all thrilled to meet each other and it was really fun just talking outside of his building.
Here is a picture of our group (I took the picture and three people who attended were not in the group shot)
The group in front of Jared Polis Boulder Office (minus four people who also attended)
A few people in front of Jared Polis Office Door at Noon on August 22nd.
After the rally we went to the Boulder Whole Foods for Lunch
Eating Lunch in front of Whole Foods
When I arrived at the office I could not see anyone. Congressman Polis office is on the second floor of a bank in Boulder. But when I went up to it, ten people were standing outside of the door. All of them were there to protest Obamacare, and no one who is supportive of it showed up to demonstrate in favor of the presidents health care bill.
We stayed inside for about ten minutes talking and taking pictures and then decided to go outside, so if anyone else showed up they would know we were there.
As we all visited and talked, it was really fun to share stories, activism, and ideas for future events. I was able to interview five of the people on video and will share those interviews as time permits.
I told the group that I was planning to go shop at Whole Foods after the rally and they all agreed that it would be a significant thing to go support John Mackey. So a few of us left the rally and went out to lunch at Whole Foods.
It was really fun.
When I arrived at the store I asked the manager if I could interview him for my video. He said that if he talked to me he would be compelled to talk to those who had planned the boycott. So he would not be interviewed. I told him that a group of us had come intentionally to support John and his political courage. I could tell the manager was touched by our activism.
After our group dispersed, I bought my groceries, had a quick 20 minute chair massage and left the store. As I walked out to the parking lot I got talking to a man who had just arrived with a group. I told him about our lunch bunch who had showed up to support Whole Foods, and he said, "that is why we are here". We wanted to support Whole Foods during this boycott".
He had just arrived to shop with a large group of friends.
The store was about as busy as I have ever seen it on a saturday afternoon. I was thrilled that Boulderites were not even thinking about caving to the pressure.
We have alot of free thinkers in Boulder who get Free Speech. So I was not surprised to see the store busy despite all the media coverage of a so called boycott.
I will send along more pictures, video etc as I have time...
Jenny Hatch