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| Ryan's Mobile Constituent Office (the RV) in Lake Geneva |
The “Where is Paul Ryan?” movement continues to grow every single day. On Tuesday it expanded to Racine, but yesterday it expanded to Janesville and Lake Geneva as well. Now, literally every single Paul Ryan constituent office in Wisconsin is under protest or occupation, or both!Click here for pictures of the protests.
firedoglake gives props to what it calls the Jobs Movement:
Since Ryan’s constituents couldn’t directly question Ryan about his radical budget ideas or his plan to end Medicare without paying 15 dollars, they showed up at his offices.
This has not pleased Ryan or his staffers. They threatened to call the cops on protesters on two occasions, and had police remove protesters at least once. They restricted the use of cameras. They restricted parking. And now, as you can see above, they shut down the offices in Kenosha to foot traffic and forced the public out of the building. Police personnel are protecting the building.
This direct action is also spreading across the country. Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN) was hounded into holding a free town hall in the district’s biggest population center of Duluth, after being confronted by activists (he’s holding it at the Duluth Airport, where you still have to pay for parking, of course). An unemployed man has been picketing in front of Sen. Pat Toomey’s events and demanding an open meeting between Toomey and unemployed residents in Pennsylvania; he may soon get his wish.
The use of direct pressure for good jobs now is impressive, and offers at least a chance to change the conversation around the economyThere's a hilarious video of the bedlam at Cravaack's airport Town Hall meeting, but TeamsterNation has to catch a train so we'll post it later.
There was also a protest today of
