Rogue Valley Independent Media Center

Congressman Walden found > sort of; Medford's 4/5/07 TV Mtng

Where’s Walden? Coalition Members/Allen Hallmark, Citizen Reporter, 09.04.2007 12:52

"On Thursday of last week, Oregon's 2nd district had its biggest collective victory to date! It took place in Medford, but it was the result of months and years of building our peace and justice infrastructure in every corner of the district through local groups in small towns from Madras to Jacksonville and Mosier to Ione."--Amy Dudley, Rural Organizing Project (ROP) http://www.rop.org

"We were astonished to learn that we would soon be meeting with Walden himself using teleconferencing equipment that had just recently been installed."--Allen Hallmark, Citizens For Peace & Justice (CP&J) http://www.medfordcpj.org

As most of you know, a group of us went to the offices of Oregon District 2's notoriously absent congressman, Greg Walden, yesterday (April 5, 2007) expecting to meet with his staff to negotiate a date & time for a teleconference with Walden, instead we got Walden himself via Internet teleconferencing equipment for a little more than one hour.

Our group included Mary (our fearless leader), Arlene, Linda, Jill, Marilyn, Mori, Bronson, Lynn, Wes and Allen.

Bottom line: We did get Walden to commit to holding a town hall meeting in our area during the August recess of Congress and that he will try to give us at least one week’s, possibly two-weeks’ notice of the scheduling of the town hall. But no firm date was set and none is likely to be set until late July at the earliest.

Walden found on television

Walden tv-conference

Where's Walden? Coalition

Following continues the comment from Amy Dudley of ROP:

"Building on the recent momentum of the People's Town Halls, followed by the historic delivery of the Cost of War Resolution and Testimony from the Town Hall to Walden's Bend Office that led to the sit in and arrest of the Central Oregon Seven, the Where's Walden coalition in Southern Oregon held a solidarity rally that led to a meeting on Thursday, for the first time, with Congressman Greg Walden himself via video conference where Walden pledged to a public meeting in district this August with at least 1-2 weeks notice."

"This, my friends, may seem small, but in the 2nd District this is a HUGE victory that speaks to the increased accountability that we are demanding - and receiving! - from our representative. And this is directly a result of our collective cost of war campaign work. You should all be proud!"
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Rest of Report-Back from the Where's Walden Coalition Members-

Summary of our meeting: We were greeted warmly by the receptionist and asked to wait in the tiny waiting room until all of us had gathered. Two of Walden’s assistants then joined us and ushered us into Walden’s ceremonial office and meeting room where the walls were covered with photos of Walden shaking hands or posing with George W. Bush, his father, Dick Cheney, Robert Dole and assorted other GOP heavy hitters.

We were astonished to learn that we would soon be meeting with Walden himself using teleconferencing equipment that had just recently been installed. We were told that this was the first time members of the public had met with the congressman using this new technology. Walden was sitting in his office in his home town of Hood River on the Columbia River east of Portland about 300 miles northeast of Medford. The teleconference used Internet streaming technology, which is far from perfect, so Walden’s image was often blurry and mangled, hardly ever as clear as it came out in the attached digital photo I took.

After introductions during which each of us identified ourselves and gave our main reason for being there. Mary explained our concern for the Iraq war and reminded Walden that 3,265 U.S. soldiers have died to date in Iraq and that the rate of U.S. military deaths has increased to nearly an all-time high since the early days of the occupation. “The surge is not working,” Mary said. She asked Walden when he would be willing to schedule a town hall meeting in our area at which he would address questions from the public about the war and the costs of the occupation of Iraq to his constituents and the nation.

Walden launched into a long defense of his position in support of the occupation although at one point he did say he wants the war to end. He didn’t say when. He says he’s totally opposed to language in House and Senate supplement war appropriations bills that call for a deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. He spent most of his time telling us how withdrawing our troops would create chaos in the Middle East and would be terrible not only for the interests of the U.S. but for the people of Iraq and neighboring countries.

When Arlene asked about funding for counties that are being cut, resulting in the closing of our Jackson County libraries on April 7, Walden blamed the Democrats for inserting the funding extension into the war supplemental appropriations bills instead of passing the money for the counties separately. Because the bills included the deadlines for withdrawal, he had no choice but to vote no on the House bill, he said. He added, “I don’t care what else is in there” (I) won’t vote for any bill with withdrawal deadlines. He also said, “I want to see us get out of Iraq, but I want to do it the right way.”

Walden also complained about all the pork barrel items in the supplemental war appropriations bills. When we pointed out that pork items being added to unrelated bills didn’t exactly start with this new Democratic congress, Walden claimed that it is new in terms of supplemental war appropriations bills. He asserted that these “have been pretty clean” up until this year. He claimed that the Democrats had to allow the pork items into the bills to get the deadlines for withdrawal included.

Linda asked Walden, “What do you think would be the ‘right way’ for the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq?” She went on to talk about the number of Oregon troops who have lost their lives in Iraq.

Walden said he’s very aware of the Oregonians who have lost their lives while serving in Iraq. He said he carries a list of their names with him often and claimed he’d never shared that with anyone before. He never really addressed how the U.S. should extricate itself from Iraq, other than to say, “It would be a worse disaster with a precipitous withdrawal.” (I’m assuming he, like Bush, wants to stay the course and “win” the war.)

Mori challenged Walden to explain why the Bush Administration has done such a lousy job of restoring the infrastructure of power plants, roads, schools, waterworks and other public works that deteriorated during the embargo against Saddam Hussein’s regime and were further damaged by U.S. bombing and shelling in the invasion and subsequent occupation. She also wanted to know why Iraqi companies haven’t gotten most of the contracts to restore these facilities rather than Halliburton and other large multi-national corporations, whose operations have been full of graft and corruption.

Walden said when he was in Iraq in 2003, he visited the major electric power plant near Bagdad to see progress on its restoration. He said he doesn’t know why more of the contracts haven’t gone to Iraqi firms. He said he agreed they should get more. He just said, “The system was broken to begin with and our folks have been restoring it.” He said restoration has lagged mainly because the insurgents have targeted such facilities and the Iraqi police and Army recruitment and training centers. He blamed “the caldron of fanaticism” spurred by al-Qaeda.

Lynn tried to get the discussion back to setting up a town hall meeting or series of them to allow public discussion of all these issues.

Walden said, “We usually do town meetings in the summer during the break.” He then rambled off a long list of meetings that he attends on a regular basis and described how difficult it is for him to schedule things very far in advance.

Walden bragged that he has been appointed to a committee on Global Warming. (I can’t imagine someone who will try harder to scuttle any real action to address that problem that our congressman) and how that will add a whole new series of meetings to his already heavy schedule.

Mary asked Walden to set a date in August for a town hall meeting here. She said if he were not willing to do so, she was almost willing to sit there in his conference room until he agreed to schedule the town hall meeting.

Walden replied, “I’ve said I’m willing to do the meetings. You can sit there if you want to, it won’t change the situation.”

Mary said, “In other words, we have to wait for you to schedule it and if you don’t, then we have no recourse.”

Wes reminded the congressman that he and a group of union folks came to the same office two years ago and met with his staff and demanded a town hall meeting on privitization of Social Security and were promised that one would be scheduled and it never has been scheduled. “We’re still waiting. It’s been two years. TWO YEARS,” Wes said.

Mori asked how far in advance we could expect to learn that a town hall meeting has been scheduled. She said she would like at least four weeks of notice.

Walden said he would commit to a week or possibly two weeks’ of notice but he doubted it would be possible to promise more than that.

At that point the aides stepped in and said that was all the time the congressman had. We thanked him for meeting with us.

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Congressman Walden found > sort of; Medford's 4/5/07 TV Mtng