Rep. John McGuire is a No-Show at Indivisible Charlottesville 4/26/2025 Town Hall

Representative John McGuire (VA-05) hasn't held a town hall or taken constituent questions at an open forum since he was elected; instead, he keeps holding secret meetings with rich donors and pretending they're town halls. Well, if he won't do his job we'll do it for him.

On April 26th, Indivisible Charlottesville held a town hall and 500+ people showed up to ask their congressman some powerful and personal questions about how his votes and actions have been hurting them and their communities. Too bad he refused to come and listen.

Follow along using this lightly edited (just to remove “ums” and word repetitions and similar) transcript:

0:16 [Music] [Applause]

So I get to do the technical details from the beginning of the day. I think some people are going to continue to come into the auditorium, so if you're on an aisle seat there's a bunch of empty seats in the middle; feel free to slide in or at least be ready let us fly over for you. We have fire exits in case of an emergency. The way you came in of course is one there are also doors here and For people on stage there's also an exit back here, so leave quietly and quickly if you're told to evacuate. There are bathrooms outside the doors that you came in from. The men's room is over there and the women's room is over there.

There are ushers and marshals available if you need any help during the program, look for someone in a colored penny or someone with a name tag. If you have mobility problems and want to come to the mic but can't get there raise your hand and want a mic brought to you raise your hand and try to get the attention of an usher or a marshal and they will bring it to you.

We don't expect any trouble today, but if anyone does decide to heckle or disrupt our program please do your best to not respond and let our marshals take care of it, they're all trained they know what they're doing. [Music] [Applause]

1:49 Turn your phones off or the readers off. Alright, I'm going to ask you to stand briefly. We're going to recite together the land acknowledgement for this place. We recognize that the people who lived here before us, many of their descendants are still here and we want to acknowledge that we acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land and we are on today the monarch of the nation and pay our respects to their elders past, present, and future. Thank you.

2:44 [Music] 2:51 How's the sound, can you hear me back there? How about this? Alright, my name is Sage, and thank you so much for coming we're so delighted that you came. I'd like to start by introducing our group, Indivisible Charlottesville. Indivisible Charlottesville is an all-volunteer pro-democracy grassroots group that started in early 2017 along with thousands of other indivisible chapters across the US. We are committed to empowering citizens, to holding their elected officials accountable through nonviolent action and communication, and we need to working towards a more progressive and inclusive America that values the well-being, diverse contributions, and civil rights of all people. [Applause] [Music]

4:02 And now a brief introduction to town halls. Raise your hand if you've ever attended one before… nice. I just attended my first one last week. I didn't know it was a thing, but it's been a part of our democracy since for hundreds of years going back to the 1600s, no they're doing [them in the]1700s… a long long time. Town halls involve a legislator regularly returning to their districts to be accountable to the voters to explain their work and to answer voters questions and concerns meeting with and being accountable to their constituents is not just a nice gesture that our officials can choose to make or not it is part of their job.

In 2009 and 2010 the conservative Tea Party used town halls to express their anger when Congress passed Obama's healthcare reforms. Our congressman at the time Democrat Tom Perriello [Applause] [Music] did not hide from their anger, he repeatedly showed up at town halls, faced angry crowds again and again to explain why he felt he had to vote for the Affordable Care Act.

After 2016 Indivisible groups across the country used town halls to push back on the right-wing effort to repeal Obamacare.

During the past few months as Trump, Musk, and the DOGE boys have been ripping through the federal government crashing the economy targeting immigrants and people of color trying to destroy our constitutional system of checks and balances and repeatedly violating our first amendment rights to free speech by trying to silence peaceful descent and alternative viewpoints town halls have seen a huge resurgence across this country. [Applause] [Music]

Some of us on this stage just joined into this role I think in January

6:34

or February uh but a few of us started a working group a town hall working group

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and we started meeting on Sunday nights after the kids had gone to bed to plan a

6:45

town hall with Representative Maguire because we know that many of you are

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concerned distressed and have been harmed by Trump's administration's

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actions so let's just see who that might be I’d like to see a show of hands if

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you or someone you care about is a

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veteran thank you please raise your hands if you or

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someone you care about is a federal worker or even a federal contract worker

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because they've been affected too thanks how about a union member any

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union members here okay it's not the most union friendly state you guys ain't

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there how about nonprofit workers yeah thank you how about educators

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either in a K12 setting or a university level god bless you and my last one someone who relies

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if you or anyone you know or care about relies on social security disability

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survival or retirement benefits yes

8:03

i could go on and on but in the interest of giving you all a voice I'm going to leave it there but I think the point has

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been made in February and March he repeatedly invited McGuire to hold a town hall in

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Charlottesville at a date of his choosing

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he refused to even acknowledge our invitations and he limited his

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engagement with us to form letters and a telephone town hall which contained a

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lot of pre-recorded segments and only allowed pre-screened callers with

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softball questions to talk yeah that is not what democracy looks like

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so and we decided to hold a town hall for him during this two week long

DMU Timestamp: May 14, 2025 21:20

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