"No doubt in my mind": Woman booted from GOP town hall believes she was targeted "to chill dissent"
Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., a self-proclaimed moderate who won a swing district in 2024, had a 64-year-old social worker carried out of a town hall Sunday night, with the woman telling Salon that she believes she was targeted in an effort to chill dissent.
Lawler received an icy reception at his latest town hall, much like the one he received at a public event held the previous week. While many Republicans have decided to evade their constituents by not holding town halls, Lawler has chosen a different route.
The congressman, who is having conversations about a run for New York governor, per The Hill, has been hosting town halls where constituents are made to jump through hoops to prove they live in the district and verbally pledge to agree to follow a list of rules at the venue door. He's also enlisted local police, state troopers and private security for the events.
Despite this, Emily Feiner, the 64-year-old social worker, told Salon that she was carried out of the room by police after demanding that the congressman answer the question that she asked him. The incident took place at the Kennedy Catholic Preparatory School in Somers, New York.
'I got called on. I asked a question. The question was: 'What was his red line? What would it take in terms of unconstitutional actions that the Trump administration was doing for him to finally exercise his oversight role and call for an end?'' Feiner said in an interview. 'And he didn't answer my question. He talked about appropriations. So I was frustrated, and I did call out, 'Answer my question, answer my question.' And then the next person, he didn't answer their question either.'
Feiner said that she was then approached by a member of Lawler's staff, who told her: 'You've been warned twice, you're coming out now.' Feiner said that she had been targeted since she arrived at the venue, saying that Lawler's staff 'immediately zeroed in on me' despite the fact that 'my behavior was no different than 80% of the behavior in that room.' She said that she thinks she was targeted because she has been to protests outside of Lawler's office and has been critical of the congressman online.
Lawler's office did not respond to a request for comment.
In a widely circulated video of the incident, Lawler's staff are seen attempting to remove Feiner, who responds by saying, 'I'm not leaving.' His staff then repeatedly asked Jennifer Cabrera, who was filming a video of the staff's behavior at the public event, to stop recording. Cabrera serves as the chair of the Westchester-Putnam Working Families Party.
The video then shows the crowd cheering 'Let her stay,' as police pick Feiner up out of her chair and carry her out of the room. Throughout the whole video, Lawler is being booed by the crowd for dodging his constituents' questions. In another video, another attendee is seen chanting, in apparent reference to Feiner, 'beat them up, put them in jail, kill 'em' and 'jail her.'
Feiner said, of the incident with police, that 'none of that is really important to me.'
'What is much more important to me is that they are pursuing a playbook that is reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s — that this is what they do with dissent; that they have no problem carrying a 64-year-old woman out of a town hall that was being held by my publicly elected congressional representative,' she said. 'There's no doubt in my mind this is meant to try to chill dissent.'
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