WPSU town hall is a start, more needed

Rep. Glenn Thompson remains unwilling to participate in a true town hall. While I am happy to see that he has belatedly scheduled a moderated Q&A session at WPSU on Thursday evening, that venue only has capacity for 100 audience members.

The Q&A session should be moved to a venue that can hold a larger audience, and should be extended to two hours, to allow for more audience questions.

I organized a constituents’ town hall at Penn State’s Forum Building in February. Although Rep. Thompson chose not to attend, nearly 400 members of our community did, which likely showed the congressman that continuing to evade meaningful interaction with his constituents is untenable.

Tickets for the WPSU event sold out within six hours. Many constituents did not even receive notice of the event before it was already filled. Through the grass-roots group I have started since February, PA5 Truth and Action (www.wearepa5.org), many people have already expressed their frustration at being stuck on a waiting list.

I appreciate that WPSU is airing and streaming video of the event, but modern technology makes it possible to do that from anywhere; I provided a Facebook Live stream from the Forum, for example. Now that the congressman has recognized the need for addressing a live audience, he must also see that speaking directly to only a lucky 100 is not sufficient. He also needs to hold real town halls throughout the district, including in distant Erie.

This story was originally published August 8, 2017 at 11:30 PM with the headline "WPSU town hall is a start, more needed."