NOLa Town Hall Turning a Vote

Dauphin Island As vacation is slowly going out like the tide on this barrier island, dispatches from home included the mail and the Times-Picayune.  Flipping through them while watching Clive Owen and Naomi Watt in The International with the tribe, I was pleased to recognize two pictures on Friday’s Metro page of the paper with the headline:  “Cao is ‘leaning’ toward Democrats’ health plan.” Heaven help the newly minted Republican congressman from New Orleans if he is not going to stand for health care for our desperate city and its beleaguered cities.The story was somewhat matter of fact.  150 folks showed up to a New Orleans town hall and were overwhelmingly for massive health care reform but willing to take the Obama plan if that was the best available.  Cao several weeks ago had made the astute observation of saying publicly that his political career was ending with his first term as a Republican New Orleans Congressman because he was going to vote against health care reform.  Something to do with abortion, it seemed.  But, he was right.  A “no” vote on something this important to citizens in New Orleans would have been the end for him. 

The pictures held the drama of the event and showed good tactics rather than the strong arm stuff that has been grabbing the news.

Sally Stevens (who the newspaper in the picture caption identified “as a woman who identified herself as Sally Stevens” –huh?) is a “Facebook friend” of mine.  She often comments on various postings on my wall and has become a good barometer on a number of issues.  She works for CulturePAC.com in the city and is a campaigner for fair and equitable economic development in New Orleans.  At the town hall she seems to have gone up to Congressman Cao and dropped a load of medical bills addressed to her and demanded that Cao pay them for her, if he wasn’t going to stand for doing what needed to be done.  She then left the hall.  One thing for sure, they will send her bills every month without fail so she didn’t lose anything here.  She may have helped gain a vote for health care reform.

The other picture had our old friend and colleague, Austin King, identified as a resident of the Irish Channel throwing a fastball question to the Congressman.  Austin is a former politician himself as a member of the Madison (WI) city council and more recently director of the ACORN Financial Justice Center  until leaving a month or so ago en route to NYU law school. 

New Orleans folks know how to make a town hall work and flipped a good vote here.  Props all around!