Health Care At Harry’s Grill
January 15th, 2010
If you were in Shamokin, PA today you could have come by Harry’s Grill for the T-bone special or the health care meetup. I’m a vegetarian so between the two, I’ll be blogging on the meetup. We were joined by eleven constituents of the 10th district.
Cash is a local farmer who was there with his wife (who came for both the T-bone and health care.) Together they have five kids, thirteen grandchildren and one great grandchild. He pointed out that farmers are losing money on milk “Now that we’re taking home less money, how are we supposed to pay more for health care?”
He is going to be phone banking with us and visiting Congressman Carney’s office soon. Instead of leaving Harry’s at 6:30 Cash and everyone else stayed for an additional hour and a half to get on our state-wide call at 7:00.
Our guest speaker was fabulous, but what really made last night incredible was watching Cash and ten others as they reacted to the activists on the call. Especially, because we knew that almost everyone reporting on the call we initially met through a meetup just like this one.
When Bobbie reported on 40 people out in the pouring rain for a rally in Lebanon folks nodded and grinned in solidarity. And there were giggles across the table when Peg talked about pulling Sen. Dodd aside on her trip to DC.
By the end of the call, which ended as scheduled at 8 PM, folks had been sitting on the hard chairs in Harry’s for two and a half hours, but didn’t want to leave. Smaller conversations broke out – there was brainstorming about getting the speaker of the call to come to one of their events, or hosting a phone bank at someone’s home.
So listen up! By the next call there will be more folks like Cash reporting from Shamokin and Sunbury.
– Athena