Packed Rooms and Empty Chairs
Several hundred people attended a townhall in east Charlotte Thursday night, directed toward Senator Thom Tillis.
Constituents voiced their concerns over the Trump administration’s federal budget cuts– money stripped from veterans’ services, public health programs, medical research, environmental safety initiatives, and public education among other essential programs.
They called on Tillis to do something, to stand up to a president who is at war with working class families, a man determined to slash lifelines like Social Security and Medicaid while raising prices through absurdly high, recklessly enforced tariffs.
But Tillis was absent. Instead, an empty chair and a cardboard cutout took his place.
Where was Tillis?
To be frank, no one knows. One of Tillis’ colleagues, North Carolina Congressman Richard Hudson, recently instructed Republican lawmakers to avoid constituent town halls and other public facing events. Tillis took heed, continuing to show up to private fundraisers at country clubs, but refusing to attend public events with constituents.
The east Charlotte town hall organized by Indivisible, Common Cause, Red Wine & Blue, Democracy North Carolina and New Rural Project is just one of many constituent-centered events that have been directed toward Tillis over the past couple months.
The AFL-CIO held a town hall in west Charlotte last night to protest Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce. Democratic representatives held a town hall in Richard Hudson’s district since the Congressman refuses to meet with constituents himself. CARE, the Coalition Against Right-Wing Extremism, organized health providers and public health advocates outside Tillis’ office to urge him to stop Medicaid cuts. An empty chair town hall in Raleigh, a thousand-person town hall in Greensboro, another in Wilmington– North Carolinians are energized and holding Tillis accountable, even if he won’t show up to meet with them.
We can’t expect to agree with our leaders 100% of the time, but we must demand that they show up for work. North Carolinians are showing up for each other. It’s long past time for Thom Tillis to show up for us.
