Recently I attended a Town Hall where one of the congressmen representing my area, Josh Brecheen, came to discuss and hear the concerns of his constituents— I thought.
I didn’t have too many expectations, as I have never attended one before, but in this politically divided time I knew it could be “spirited” to say the least. Durant is a Republican town but has a growing and healthy Democratic Party, a few members of which attended this meeting hoping to ask questions and also be heard by their representative.
My questions and concerns centered on our hard-working immigrants, documented and undocumented, who are in danger of being captured and deported, separated from their families, all the things I have watched on TV playing out in our country.
Removing gang members and criminals we are all for, but this hostile policy we are watching doesn’t resemble anything most of us wanted or voted for. I had hoped to express my concerns about that, but the Town Hall was a tightly-controlled meeting where questions were not welcomed till after an hour of rapid-fire words, a fast and furious barrage of so-called facts, graphs, numbers and percentages of why the ”Big Beautiful Bill” justified over 170,000 Oklahomans’ losing their health coverage and SNAP benefits! Of course as each poster board gave way in rapid succession to the next one, there were no questions permitted. And honestly, if you weren’t an economist or had an accounting background, you simply had to take his word that the Five-TRILLION-dollar national debt increase made sense to his rural audience!!!
Congressman Brecheen opened the floor to a few questions after reminding his audience of the rules of civility that “would be guided by love, kindness and respect.” But when a woman educator asked why it wasn’t a consideration to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to something reasonable that would help people off that poverty line, Josh answered , “What do you suggest, a million an hour?”
This retort was mocking and sarcastic and revealed a deep resentment of our state’s poor and struggling people. I wasn’t the one who had asked this question but was as offended and outraged as if I had. I’m sure many others felt the same—at least I hoped that was true.
I’m not sure if Congressman Brecheen’s idea of a town hall is like others’, but I found it unsatisfying and frustrating if the purpose was to be heard by one of my legislators who would be representing me at my state’s capitol and government.
Fellow Bryan Countians, don’t we deserve better representation than this?