Guest Editorial: A letter to my faint-hearted congresswoman
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a guest editorial by Jim Shultz. Shultz is an occasional CNHI columnist and founder/executive director of the Democracy Center. He resides in Lockport, N.Y. Reach him at: jimshultzthewriter@gmail.com.
Republican members of Congress across the country have chosen, in the Trump era, to no longer participate in public town halls. This includes my congresswoman in western New York, U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney.
My public letter to her is not only about her, but also the other cowardly Congress members.
Dear Congresswoman Tenney:
Your face has been a presence recently at citizen town halls across your district. More than a thousand of your constituents have gathered in meeting halls to express their concerns about the chaos unleashed on America by President Trump.
It isn't actually your face. It's a life-size cutout in your absence. That's because, since Trump took office, you have refused one request after another to meet with the people you supposedly represent.
We understand the reason why; it's fear.
You are afraid to meet with veterans who want to know why you talk so much about being their champion and then stay silent while President Trump and Elon Musk take an axe to veterans services.
You say how much you support children, but are afraid to meet with parents and teachers who are concerned about cuts in education.
You won't meet with constituents concerned with cuts in health care or environmental protection. You are afraid to meet with anyone who wants to ask you hard questions.
Last week, you blamed local newspapers for reporting your absence. Your chief of staff scolded one paper, 'You are doing a disservice to your readers and giving local journalism a bad name.'
The problem is not reporters doing their jobs. The problem is your refusal to do yours — to listen to the people you are supposed to represent.
Coward is not a word I use lightly. But when a congresswoman is unwilling to meet with her own constituents in public, that is not only cowardice, it is arrogance.
Here is another word I don't use lightly — concentration camp. I am the grandson of Jews who fled Europe. I understand quite well what that word means.
Last week, as Christians celebrated the peace teachings of Jesus Christ, you marked Holy Week with a taxpayer-funded junket to a concentration camp in El Salvador.
A prison is where governments confine people who have had their day in court, with rules about treatment. A concentration camp is where you throw people who you grab off the street (no legal process required) and leave stockpiled until they die. The only rule is brutality.
The concentration camp that you visited in El Salvador is the same hellhole where Trump is dumping hundreds of people he has labeled as foreign terrorists — no proof needed. One of them is a young father who was living in Maryland. The Trump administration admitted his deportation was 'an administrative error.' The Supreme Court ordered his return. Even Joe Rogan said that shipping him there was wrong.
But you weren't concerned about any of that on your visit. You just wanted to make sure you got your photo taken standing in front of cells of shirtless men with shaven heads, a handy political souvenir.
Here are a few other people who have been caught in Trump's new policy of 'disappearing' off the street. A terrified young woman (a foreign student with a legal visa) was nabbed outside her apartment in Boston. Her sin was publishing a pro-Palestinian opinion article that Trump didn't like. In Florida last week, ICE grabbed a native-born U.S. citizen and tossed him in jail. They kept him there even as his frantic mother presented his U.S. birth certificate in court.
It is not hard to imagine why you don't want to answer any hard questions from your constituents about all that.
You are safely gerrymandered into a lopsided Republican district designed to hand you easy victories every two years. Your concern is not with representing us. What you really care about is how many times you can get on Fox News in a week and keeping President Trump happy.
If that means that veterans, farmers, children, and the elderly suffer cuts that make their lives harder, what do you care?
If innocent people are tossed into brutal foreign cells with no hearing, so what?
You have other things on your mind.
Last week, you boasted about 'a massive fundraising' of more than a million dollars — most of it from wealthy corporations and special interest groups. That is who you really represent, Rep. Claudia Tenney, not us.
There is an expression, 'If you have something to say to me, say it to my face.'
Your constituents have a good deal to say to your face right now, even if it has to be your cardboard cutout.
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