Rep. Pelosi's SF Meeting today in SF

Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader and Congresswoman for the 8th District in San Francisco conducted an open forum at the Marina Middle School today. About 1,000 people showed up on a rainly early Saturday morning. "Question Cards" were passed out and were selected (how?) for her response. But for San Franciscans, mostly democrats there, the style of presentation and the method of "hearing us" was not acceptable to many people in the audience. She said she came to speak about the "war," security for Americans, domestic spying, the Patriot Act ("90% of which was law before" it was enacted), the President's performance in and attitude toward all these matters, and the inability of the democrats in Washington to be heard by him. As she began to discuss these issues in the ritual of political presentation, the audience started to act up and begin to shout, "Stop the war." "Bring them (our armed forces) home now!" "Step up to leadership" "Committees are over, " and at the end of the meeting, when she thanked us all for attending and giving us all an opportunity to "talk to her", we and many of the demonstrators who had lined the walls with the usual protest signs. {I tape recorded what the signs said but lost the entry!} I walked past them, about 30 in all and said, "When she has finished we will all shout "Now Hear Us!" I had hoped to turn the scripted meeting with question cards (maybe 10-12 were read aloud) into an OPEN FORUM, with people coming to the stage and letting their feelings, their anger, frustratrion and fury at the inability of the Democrats to get it together, act in unison and attack the administration for the lies, deceit, secrecy and illegality of their responses to terrorism. (This, by the way, without any of the emotion, is the Arab Middle East model, where anyone, anyone is received who asks for a one-to-one communication with an authority. "Representation" as we know and understand it is NOT an integral part of the indigenous political model there. So what implications do you think this has for "democracy" there?") Those of us in the audience wanted to speak to the "top", directly and in simple and clear terms. When she said that the administration had not given the senate sufficient and accurate intelligence to vote on the war, the group shouted, "Then why did you vote for it!!?" She said, "Those are not the facts" so we shouted back, "Then tell us what the facts are." She sequeyed, mumbled, stammered and grumbled, trying hard for an escape. All she should have said is that she, along with many others in Congress had made a horrendous mistake and learned from it. That alone would have helped defuse our anger and frustration: But let's not forget, as much as Hon. Pelosi is doing for we demoncrats and for America, it is still outside the "speak to truth" model. We want politicians who will speak for the people and not for their own careers. Try it, Rep Pelosi, you'll like it! And so will we and maybe the rituals of politics in our country will change and be supported by "doing the right thing!" And you'll still keep your j0b!