Today I got to work and opened up a copy of the Star Tribune and found the following letter...
For years, weekly protests by left-wing extremists have been held at U.S. Rep. John Kline's local office.
Now it seems the hard-core left is shocked that, for once, the average guy is protesting against "Obamacare" at congressional town halls. It's as if the right to protest only belongs to them.
The left-wing agenda on health care, cap-and-tax and crazy spending has overreached, and the sleeping dog has finally awakened.
MICHAEL TIERNEY, BURNSVILLE
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/letters... I am part of the group that holds the weekly peace vigil outside John Kline's office that this letter refers to. Our group is a very peaceful group that stands out on the corner with signs protesting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for one hour every Tuesday evening. We have tried getting town hall meetings with John Kline not to disrupt them but to have an opportunity to be able to civilly speak our thoughts to a man who is supposed to represent us. John Kline has been unwilling to hold any town hall meetings however, many of his supporters seem to think they should have the right to disrupt the town hall meetings of Democrats but they say nothing about the fact that Kline won't even meet with his constituents. Today I sent a letter to the Star Tribune in response to the attacks that were launched on my group in today's paper. I do not yet know whether or not my letter will be published, but here is what I wrote...
An August 7th letter to the editor compares our peace vigil outside of John Kline’s Burnsville office to the recent disruptions of town hall meetings by right-wing groups.
I am a part of the weekly peace vigil in Burnsville and we are not “left-wing extremists” as the letter writer states. We are a group of citizens who are concerned about the impact that violence has on our world and are trying to start a public dialog about bringing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to an end. We would like to be able to bring this dialog to a civil town hall meeting in which people are able to speak without being shouted down but John Kline does not even hold public town hall meetings. (Since 2006, Rep. Kline has substituted a computerized, robo-calling form of “tele-town hall” instead of holding actual face-to-face public meetings.)Unlike the right-wing groups that have been taking over town hall meetings and shouting people down to stifle debate our group believes in civil discourse and we would never engage in the sorts of tactics that we have seen used at recent town hall meetings. If the letter writer wants to engage in peaceful protest as our group does we will support his right to do so even if we disagree with him, but we will not stand by his attempts to use our peaceful protest to justify tactics that we would never even consider engaging in.
