National

Public heckling a legitimate part of McConnell protests, activists say

LOUISVILLE – Andrew Massie doesn’t hate Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The activist-turned-heckler just thinks the Republican leader shouldn’t get one moment's peace in public.

"Just seeing him makes me angry," he said.

That's why when he heard that McConnell was spotted dining at the Bristol Bar & Grille in the Highlands area of Louisville earlier this month, he rushed from the Occupy ICE demonstration downtown to trade his protest sign for his cellphone camera and started filming.

"Where are the babies, Mitch," one person in the clip asked as McConnell walked to his SUV that was parked along Bardstown Road. He was swarmed by more protesters who badgered him with "Abolish ICE!" chants before a man yelled out, "We know where you live, Mitch."

The spontaneous video went viral with more than 200,000 views on Facebook alone. The next day another clip surfaced online showing activists blaring Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power” over stereo speakers outside Sarino’s restaurant, where McConnell was before having to exit the back to avoid more jeers.

These demonstrations have brought a divided national conversation to Louisville about the right to accost those in power versus basic civility. Activists say these confrontations will likely continue and could escalate going into the midterm elections as President Trump and his conservative allies – McConnell chief among them – consolidate their power.

"I believe Kentuckians will continue to engage McConnell using civil disobedience if he continues to ignore us," said Cassia Herron, a leader with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, the largest grassroots progressive group in the state.

Herron said the group, which represents roughly 12,000 members across the state, has participated in past direct actions against McConnell. She said it also supports Kentuckians "use of civil disobedience in whatever way feels necessary."

Heat turned up on Trump officials

Liberals have been rocked recently by decisive conservative wins in the Supreme Court, which handed down rulings that limited abortion rights, handcuffed unions from automatically collecting union dues and upheld the president's ban on travel from citizens of nations that are mostly Muslim.

Before Democrats could catch their breath Justice Anthony Kennedy, considered the high court's swing vote, made a surprise announcement that he was retiring, thus giving Trump a second appointment to the high court.

Opponents say that and other collective gut punches, typified by images of small children caged at the border, outweigh howls that they are being obnoxious or worse for shunning and shaming elected officials in public.

Activists started hounding Trump administration officials in June when White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave by a Virginia restaurant owner, who said she works for an “inhumane and unethical” administration.

Stephen Miller, a hardliner on immigration, was called a "fascist" at a restaurant and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who oversaw the separation of migrant children, was driven out of a Mexican restaurant by activists chanting "shame."

Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a Kentucky native, was confronted while dining out by a schoolteacher, with her toddler in her arms, who listed several of his scandals before urging him to step down. Three days later, he resigned.

Massie said following McConnell, the most powerful Republican in the U.S. Senate, will be a regular part of Louisville politics, by his group and others, for the foreseeable future. That could be in the form of organized events or spontaneous sightings of McConnell and other public officials organized through social media, he said.

Critics say heckling is counterproductive

Critics of these tactics – and they span the political spectrum – say that it represents bad manners and corrosion in the civility of U.S. politics.

WHAS radio show host Terry Meiners expressed that concern on Twitter in the aftermath of McConnell's first encounter with protesters. He said people have the right to tell politicians they stink under the First Amendment but when one heckler went too far by saying they knew the senator's home address.

"If they live on an island that's great, but if they live in a neighborhood with anyone within earshot of their home then there's disruption and discomfort to other folks who lived there before the luminary moved in," Meiners said in an interview. "There's just a sensibility that goes with that, I think.”

The local Democratic Socialists issued a statement saying that person wasn't a member of their organization.

But that activist base isn't waiting on the November elections to express itself. Instead those like-minded organizers say they will continue to disrupt administration supporters whenever possible,  even in their personal space if necessary.

It’s not just their right to do so, in some minds, but a duty to make those in power feel uncomfortable.

"It’s important to remember that public officials are public, and they don’t take off the mantle – ever. They don’t get to be a private citizen," said the Rev. Dawn Cooley, a Unitarian minister who co-founded the anti-Trump group Indivisible Kentucky.

Cooley, who left the group over internal disagreements, said protesters who have been heckling McConnell have left public spaces when asked and have been nonviolent. She said critics are wrongly confusing being well-mannered with making people in power feel comfortable, which she believes is used to hush disagreement altogether.

"People are trying to conflate civil with politeness, and dissent is not polite," Cooley said. "Politeness doesn't get us anywhere, especially when rights are being trampled or children are being put in cages. I don't think we're crossing the lines most the time, we're just not being quiet anymore."

Political strategist Josh Holmes, who served as McConnell's chief of staff before taking the helm for his 2014 re-election campaign, said yelling and screaming at his old boss won’t prove to be productive.

"But frankly, that's not what this is about," he said. “Nobody is trying to persuade McConnell … What they’re talking about with the abolish ICE crowd and all of the various views they espoused on that video, there isn’t 5 percent of Kentucky that subscribes to that. And I’m sure that is extremely frustrating to them and the only way they can get a platform is to confront an elected official.”

Polling released recently by Politico and Morning Consult shows nationwide only 1 out of 4 Americans favor getting rid of ICE.

The partisan divide is stark with 79 percent of Republicans and 54 percent of independents wanting the government to keep ICE. If the message is resonating it's among Democrats, where a plurality — 43 percent — embrace the abolishing the agency versus 34 percent who said they want it to stay.

Heckling rooted in history, stoked by Trump

Scholars say that trash-talking opponents is a common part of America’s political history, but that Trump has turned up the heat.

“There’s always a bit of a rabble-rousing element going on, it’s just that the current president is encouraging the norms of a professional wrestling arena in our political dialogue,” said Michael Cunningham, a professor of communications and psychology at the University of Louisville.

Cunningham said Trump nicknaming his opponents — “Crooked Hillary” or “Lying Ted” — is an example of that style. He said it used to be that politicians would leave those type of attacks to their surrogates to create a distance.

“There’s been a definite change in that respect,” he said.

But in terms of how average citizens express their outrage, Cunningham said rough language in polite spaces has always been used to rattle those in power.

“The functions are more at the individual than the persuasive level,” Cunningham said. “During the Vietnam War demonstrations, I recall people chanting, ‘Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?’ It was a way of expressing outrage and frustration at the politicians with the benefit of self-expression for the protester and to influence the audience, not the president directly.”

Meiners, who hosts political guests from both sides of the aisle, said there is a noticeable degradation in how people speak to one another. He said that corrosiveness is largely due to the current president’s rhetoric.

"Trump has heightened the vitriol because he holds the most revered office in the world and prior occupants have not behaved in that fashion," he said. "His level of acerbic outreach is not helpful on a global stage or a local stage."

Republicans have swarmed on comments made by Democratic U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, saying she is the instigator of the public confrontations. Speaking at a rally in California last month, she urged opponents to harass Trump officials wherever they are in public spaces.

“For these members of his Cabinet who remain and try to defend (Trump), they’re not going to be able to go to a restaurant, they’re not going to be able to stop at a gas station, they’re not going to be able to shop a department store. The people are going to turn on them, they’re going to protest, they’re going to absolutely harass them,” Waters said.

Scott Lasley, a political science professor at Western Kentucky University, said people confronting elected officials isn’t new.

What has changed, he said, is how public these incidents have become and that they become everlasting on the internet. Trump is known to engage in a war of words with foreign leaders and American celebrities in his almost daily social media rants.

“There’s been this erosion over time, and with Trump you have an extreme example of it, where he is venting and it does not seem presidential,” Lasley said. “And there’s been an erosion across the board in how we view a lot of institutions.

McConnell isn't fazed by public protests

McConnell for his part downplayed the confrontations on his campaign Twitter account.

In a tweet signed by McConnell, he joked that his wife, U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, should have been by his side to help. She yelled back at protesters who accosted the couple outside a restaurant in the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C.

“I see what they did here,” he said. "They waited until Elaine wasn’t around.”

McConnell spokesman Robert Steurer told the Courier Journal that, "as an avid supporter of the First Amendment," the senator believes that every citizen has the right to peaceably assemble and express their opinions.

Cooley said part of the activist focus on McConnell is that he isn’t accessible to certain constituents. She said given his powerful role in Washington, he doesn’t conduct enough public meetings or town halls where average voters can address him.

“I think it is escalating, and that's because people are getting frustrated by their elected representatives not listening to them,” she said. "I think many of us on the left have been quiet and polite, and we're tired and we're angry. And the more we get told to sit down and shut up, the angrier we're going to get."

Herron echoed that sentiment, saying McConnell has regularly has ignored KFTC's calls and other contacts from Kentuckians about many concerns.

"As a tenured statesman, McConnell should expect his constituents to seek him out as its our civic responsibility to hold elected officials and other leaders accountable," she said. "... As long as there isn't an increase of public safety officials during these encounters, they will remain peaceful and as respectful as civil disobedience can be."

Steurer said their offices in the state and Washington hear from and welcome many visitors on a daily basis. He said that McConnell also regularly participates in events and forums where, "he hears directly from Kentuckians ... about their concerns for the future of this country."

Though McConnell's office did not address whether holding a town hall was necessary for voters to keep in touch with him, Steurer points out that the senator discussed various topics with constituents and local media outlets about combating the opioid epidemic, legalizing industrial hemp and how the Republican tax cuts have benefited local communities.

“In addition to state work periods, Senator McConnell likes to be at home in Kentucky on the weekends,” he said.

Holmes was blunt: town halls don't present McConnell with a constructive dialogue. He said open forums would be packed with activists who are more interested in making a point than productive conversation.

“I totally reject the idea that people in Kentucky feel like they can't have a voice with him,” Holmes said. "They respond to every piece of mail, every phone call, he's in every corner of the state. The accessibility of McConnell is really underappreciated by his critics."

Massie, for his part, admits that he isn't trying to persuade McConnell. The senator is already ignoring those voices, he said.

He said confronting McConnell is vital at this moment because it is giving voice to those who can't speak up for themselves.

"This is for the people who feel he has hurt them and their families and the people they love," Massie said. "I think it’s important to be out in the street."

Follow Phillip M. Bailey on Twitter: @phillipmbailey