Questions for the CA District 1 Representative... so far...

At the Indivisible Chico General Meeting, multiple people approached us and asked us to help distribute questions for our representative, as well as offered advice to others about how to phrase/format questions to try to cut through the noise and the filibustering to learn actual answers. The most common points:

1. Phrase them as Yes or No questions, to avoid offering the chance to avoid actually answering the question in favor of some related tangents.

2. Remember that we're not likely to change our representative's stance on anything.

3. Keep in mind that his responses to our questions might be able to change our neighbors' minds about whether they want to vote for him or not.

4. Everyone at the town hall wants to actually hear his responses to their questions, so be respectful of your fellow constituents and let everyone have an opportunity to speak and be heard when it is their turn to do so.

We're all going to be running a variety of emotions during the Q & A, for however long it lasts. Our representative hasn't shown up to talk to his voters in over 7 years, and suddenly he has - Surprise! - scheduled two public conversations in one day. That's a lot of confusion and chaos just dropped on all of us. It likely wasn't done on accident.

At the last public Town Hall, our representative didn't stick around to answer questions for very long. He's not comfortable with being yelled at or hearing "Boo!" from the crowd, apparently. That leaves Monday's events as an open question; they're scheduled for over an hour each, but will he actually take the stage for the scheduled amount of time?

We will see!

In the meantime, definitely take the time to read the questions suggested by people who attended the Indivisible Chico General Meeting! Check them out on the Facebook comment thread here. We are still collecting questions to present to CA District 1 Representative LaMalfa via our "Ask Your Representative!" page, too. Questions and stories submitted to us will be collected and passed along to all of our representatives, in the hopes that somehow we may someday get answers to the many, many questions we all have.

We the People are where the government gets the power, and We the People are who they need to answer to, so We the People will keep looking for effective ways to be represented by those who were voted into our government.