CALIFORNIA PDA REPORT from Mimi Kennedy 11.6.07 Action at Feinstein’s office to protest Mukasey vote (EXCERPTS)
Monday afternoon LA activists from PDA, Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, LA Impeachment Center and Iraq Vets Against the War, demonstrated in front of Dianne Feinstein’s office on Santa Monica Blvd. to protest her vote for Mukasey in the Judiciary Committee. Dianne’s office is a glass-and-steel high-rise on the corner of Sepulveda and Santa Monica Blvd., one of the busiest intersections in California.
...We chanted “No more torture, no more Feinstein!” It was gratifying that the drivers of most public vehicles – sanitation trucks and metro busses – honked for us. Some of us had letters to deliver. The rule is that only six can be admitted to her office at a time without appointment.
Six of us walked into the glass-walled lobby. The security guard stopped us ... we could not just go up; he had to phone the Senator’s office and ask first. Reasonable; he phoned, and was told a staffer would be down to escort us up in ten minutes. Ten minutes went by, no-one came. I called the office upstairs on my cell phone. The number was busy, as it has been since last Friday, when Feinstein’s vote, to pass Mukasey’s nomination to the Senate floor, was announced. Almost everyone I know who has tried to call reports that they either get a busy signal or Dianne’s cheerful taped voice advising us to call back later – at all state offices and in D.C.
That’s why we were physically at her office on Monday. It was the only way we could let her know, for sure, that her constituents were riled. We waited. The rest of the demonstrators, about twenty – including Col. Ann Wright– came to the glass doors. The security guards began locking the doors. We objected – why were they being locked out of seeing their Senator? ”This is private property,” a guard told me angrily. “Yes, but it’s private property in America,” I noted. “And she’s our Senator and we have redress of grievances.”
And it’s been impossible to get through to her by phone. So basically, Dianne Feinstein votes the way she wants and is in lockdown from her constituents.
Trevor Daley finally came downstairs and heard our complaints, one by one, with an admirable show of patience. He said, among other things, “She asked us how many calls we’ve gotten on this. And it’s only been 600 a day. For Alito and Roberts, it was 2000 a day. So she doesn't feel this is as important to her constituents.”
Her vote on Mukasey was a big surprise, and constituents had four days to react, two of them a weekend. And, we told Trevor, most people are reporting that they cannot get through on the phone, and there is no message-recording capacity on Dianne’s cheery outgoing “call back later” message. So the 600 phone calls that miraculously got through are only part of the real number. That was it for redress of grievances and being in touch with our U.S. Senator. Her phone service should be updated. It is clearly insufficient to take constituent calls in times of crisis. And maybe she likes it that way.
There are very few rank-and-file Democrats left who feel happy that Dianne Feinstein is their Senator.