Seeing Through The Townshirts And Their Tactics

I've been writing about my fabulous adventure with the teabaggers in Alhambra all week and I've been posting pictures that I took and that my old pal, filmmaker Nancy Stein, took. I arrived at the Adam Schiff town hall thing at 4pm, three hours before it started, at a time when most of the people milling around (or sitting in lawn chairs) were from the far right local fringe group, Pasadena Patriots and other assorted nuts, teabaggers, and, as Larry Schorr dubbed them, "townshirts."

I spent the three hours talking with them-- not arguing for the most part, just trying to understand where they're coming from. Some were just confused people with a lot of time on their hands and too many hours listening to the self-serving sociopathic hate rants by Limbaugh, Coulter, Beck and Dobbs... but some were dedicated movement conservatives following the agenda laid out in Dick Armey's Freedomworks playbook for systematically disrupting Democratic town halls and intimidating congressmen and normal constituents. Read a few lines from it-- this leaked plan for intimidating easily-intimidated, congenitally cowardly members of Congress:

* Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up. The Rep should be made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington. They need to leave the hall with so me doubts about their agenda. The other objective is to illustrate for the balance of the audience that the national leadership is acting against our founders' principles which are on the other side of the debate-- and show them that there are a lot of solid citizens in the district who oppose the socialist approach to the nation's challenges. We want the independent thinkers to leave the hall with doubts about the Democrat solutions continually proposed by the national leadership.

* You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep's presentation, Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep's statements early. If he blames Bush for something or offers other excuses-- call him on it, yell back and have someone else follow-up with a shout-out. Don't carry on and make a scene-- just short intermittent shout outs. The purpose is to make him uneasy early on and set the tone for the hall as clearly informal, and free-wheeling. It will also embolden others who agree with us to call out and challenge with tough questions. The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions.

* When the formal Q&A session begins get all your hands up and keep up-- be persistent throughout the entire session. Keep body language neutral and look positive to improve chances of being selected. When called on, a specific prepared question that puts the onus on to answer. It can be a question including lots of statistics/facts. You will not be interrupted from reading a solid question. If you ramble on too long without a focus, you wiII be stopped. After the Rep answers, or more likely diverts or dodges, be prepared with a follow-up take the initiative and you will be able to follow-up. The balance of the group should applaud when the question is asked, further putting the Rep on the defensive. If the Rep tries a particularly odious diversion, someone from the group should yell out to answer the question. These tactics will clearly rattle the Rep and illustrate some degree of his ineptness to the balance of the audience.

At the bottom of this post is a YouTube posted by a right-wing propagandist. It's of a team I met in Alhambra, a man and a woman with posters even more aggressively bizarre than other's, filled with self-righteous anger and bile. This is another teabagger even though-- one in front of Dianne Feinstein's office a few days later. I had listened to the woman's sob story about how she's been screwed over by the insurance companies-- one of which she is suing. I was curious why she was so opposed to health care reform that would address the exact problems she was talking about. My question got her angrier and she accused me of trying to confuse her. She went from looking slightly deranged to looking menacing and dangerous. She was obviously hopped up on drugs. She talked to me for 20-30 minutes, mostly complaining about everything that popped into her mind. I started wondering if her neckbrace and walker were real. Many people were there with fake medical equipment-- and I blogged about one friendly right-wing lady who got out of her scooter and asked me to sit in it for her while she ran off to wave her sign, scream and demonstrate for a while. I don't know if the woman with the neck brace was a faker or not, but when I saw the YouTube yesterday I realized she and her partner were weaving quite a tale for the media. The claim that her injuries were caused by a liberal assaulting her on Tuesday were patently false-- a clear distortion to put the onus for violence of pro-health care supporters and remove it from the violent rightists who have been instructed about how to disrupt events. Her husband (or "husband")-- the one with the Nancy Pelosi cryptkeeper sign who was denying being "astroturf" or right-wing had his lines well memorized. They were exactly-- word for word-- what he had spouted off to me earlier in the week. In fact almost every single person speaking was speaking directly from prepared texts... word for word. The woman started quoting Saul Alinsky. Their goal: project their own failings onto SEIU, Acorn and liberals. Before you watch them spin, I see a post she did with her version of the "assault" (which is now being blown up into a story by far right blogs: