The wave of emails we’ve received this year from people angered by their inability to talk with or get meaningful responses from Ohio Republicans in Congress is like nothing I’ve seen in 45 years of journalism.
Every day people send notes about their unsuccessful efforts to ask the leaders’ positions on Trump administration decisions or to lobby for them to take positions. They call the politicians cowards for refusing to hold town hall discussions with constituents.
For a lark, I suggested a couple of weeks ago to my daily text message subscribers that maybe our newsroom should host a town hall if the politicians won’t. I received 1,000 responses to that text over two days, overwhelmingly in favor. I was surprised, especially considering that just over 2,800 people subscribe to those texts, in which I detail stories we have in the works, questions we seek to answer or help our newsroom might need from text subscribers. (Subscribe free at joinsubtext.com/chrisquinn)
With so many people liking the idea, we decided to pursue it. We entertained hosting it at our printing plant in Brooklyn, where our newsroom is. You can’t miss the mammoth place as you drive on Interstate 480 at Tiedeman Road. It contains no end of printing and sorting equipment that never fails to fascinate visitors. And we have a warehouse where we could fit a few hundred people.
Alas, the plant presents challenges. We’d have to bring in a team to direct parking and another to direct people from one end of the building to the other. We’d have to rent chairs and use a loudspeaker system, and even then, the noise might be too problematic. As much as people wanted to visit the plant, we decided we just couldn’t pull it off.
We looked elsewhere, however, and found a workable, easily accessible venue that we can afford. We expect to host a town hall meeting, in May.
This is not the announcement of that meeting, We won’t be ready to do that until we map out the program. First, we had to figure out the logistics. Now we focus on the agenda.
We see this is a true town hall session, where the people who attend are the ones who do the talking. We considered asking some party officials to be there, but that would be unfair. They are not the ones ducking their constituents, so why should they have to answer for that?
No, we think hearing from you is best. Our tentative plan is to feature five or six of the Trump Administration’s big decisions that have affected our region and ask attendees for their thoughts or questions about them. What would they say to their Congressional delegation if they could? We’ll make sure those comments and questions get through.
We’d bring up the topics in sequence, and one thought we have is to bring in subject experts to answer factual questions, without opinion on what is happening. Say, for instance, that Social Security was one of the topics. Having a Social Security expert to talk about the mechanics as they exist now and how they are changing could be helpful.
I’m not saying Social Security is one of the topics. I just used it as an example. We’re not picking the topics, actually. We hope you are.
Before we set the agenda, we hope you will let us know what you’d like to discuss. Immigration? Tariffs? Doge? Those are all big topics. Would you like to zero in on specific issues related to each?
Here’s your chance to impact the discussion, even if you can’t be there for it. Please send me an email with your thoughts.
Some of you have written with ideas of keeping this civil. I think we’ll be OK in that regard. You’ll understand why when we formally announce it. Some of you have said a town hall without politicians does not excite you. I get it. But a lot of others say they would love the opportunity to participate. We’d stream it for those who want to watch from home.
I hope to have news on this soon. In the meantime, I look forward to your response.
I’m at cquinn@cleveland.com
Thanks for reading.
