I attended and even spoke at the Town Hall Meeting held today at the Ohio State University biomedical research center. It was a chance to talk face to face with our good Senator from Ohio Sherrod Brown along with various doctors & businessmen on the panel.
The Senator, the three doctors from the Ohio State Medical Research Center, the two small business owners and the one recently graduated student that had come down with scarlet fever while in college all spoke first explaining what they thought was important and what they'd most like to see in regard to Health Insurance Reform.
The room probably held a couple hundred people maybe more. I purposely sat right in the middle of one of the small groups of 3 or 4 that I pegged as probably being bused in hecklers. And after talking with them for awhile before the meeting found out they were actually from Bucyrus. They dispersed 3 or 4 small groups like this throughout the crowd as to not appear to all be together... but it was easy to see that they all knew each other well from all of their back & forth to each other before the meeting got started.
Everyone had about a half hour to 45 minutes to do a little pre-meeting personal debating waiting for the event to start with those sitting around them. I think this helped because the hecklers could see the crowd was not going to go for any big outlandish disruptions and I don't think they wanted a big backlash... plus there was plenty of security on site.
Things went smoothly... a standing ovation for Senator Sherrod Brown when he walked in. Both sides were given plenty of opportunities to state their positions as did I. In the 2 hours only a couple hecklers spoke out of turn a few times with a couple words here and there.
Going by speakers, the applause for various speakers positions and the crowds reaction to the hecklers I'd say in this particular venue the numbers were (plus or minus 5%)... 80% were definitely for some serious type of reform, 10% were just there to learn about what was being purposed, and 10% hard against.
It turned out very well. Worth taking a half day off work to be part of.
The Senator, the three doctors from the Ohio State Medical Research Center, the two small business owners and the one recently graduated student that had come down with scarlet fever while in college all spoke first explaining what they thought was important and what they'd most like to see in regard to Health Insurance Reform.
The room probably held a couple hundred people maybe more. I purposely sat right in the middle of one of the small groups of 3 or 4 that I pegged as probably being bused in hecklers. And after talking with them for awhile before the meeting found out they were actually from Bucyrus. They dispersed 3 or 4 small groups like this throughout the crowd as to not appear to all be together... but it was easy to see that they all knew each other well from all of their back & forth to each other before the meeting got started.
Everyone had about a half hour to 45 minutes to do a little pre-meeting personal debating waiting for the event to start with those sitting around them. I think this helped because the hecklers could see the crowd was not going to go for any big outlandish disruptions and I don't think they wanted a big backlash... plus there was plenty of security on site.
Things went smoothly... a standing ovation for Senator Sherrod Brown when he walked in. Both sides were given plenty of opportunities to state their positions as did I. In the 2 hours only a couple hecklers spoke out of turn a few times with a couple words here and there.
Going by speakers, the applause for various speakers positions and the crowds reaction to the hecklers I'd say in this particular venue the numbers were (plus or minus 5%)... 80% were definitely for some serious type of reform, 10% were just there to learn about what was being purposed, and 10% hard against.
It turned out very well. Worth taking a half day off work to be part of.