Seaside, Oregon, is about as far away from Washington, DC, as you can get in the continental U.S. Not quite 3000 miles, but almost (2860 to be exact). And it seemed very far away from the sound and fury of the health care debate in the nation’s capital when I attended a Town Hall meeting last Friday. Sen. Ron Wyden was the speaker at the event, which was attended by over 400 people crowded into the Seaside High School cafeteria.
As we waited, the crowd was calm and polite, but there was a murmur of anticipation and an undercurrent of tension. We had all seen the stories about disruptions and threatened violence at similar Town Hall meetings across the country. Would it happen here? We could see people standing at the back with signs opposing health reform. Would they interrupt the proceedings and cause problems? We all respect freedom of speech, but somehow it wouldn’t seem like “freedom” if someone else was shouting us down and disrupting our attempts to learn about the health reform proposals.