East Bay Congressmen Address Hot-Button Issues At Joint Town Hall

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CA — Two Democratic congressmen who represent eastern Contra Costa County held a town hall meeting Thursday evening at the Antioch Community Center to field questions and make their respective positions on contemporary wedge issues known to their constituents.

"There's a lot of tension in the country," U.S. Rep. Jerry McNerney (D, CA-9) said during brief opening remarks. "People are nervous about the way things are going."

"One of the problems is that we have a lot of media coverage that's partisan and social media stirring people's feelings up," McNerney said, adding that President Donald Trump has made that problem worse.

U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulner (D, CA-11) addressed the plight of the shrinking middle class, acknowledging that for many Americans it's increasingly difficult to own a home, raise family and retire in dignity.

He also argued that that nationally standardized gun laws could alter the outcomes of mass shootings like one last month in Gilroy where a 19-year-old man fatally shot four people, including himself, and injured 13 more with an assault-style firearm acquired in Nevada.

"It was illegal for him to bring that into California," DeSaulnier said. "That's why we need national standards."

As the meeting moved into a question and answer phase, one of McNern's staffers pointed out the safest exits for the crowd — a practice which has become common as organizers of mass-gatherings in the Bay Area grapple with questions of if and how they can protect their guests from mass-casualties.

A woman from Brentwood asked if the congressmen are working with any Republicans to "close the camps," referring to detention facilities currently holding tens of thousands of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers taken into custody along the U.S.-Mexico border.

"We need decent, humane reform that gives resources to our points of entry so people seeking asylum can actually be put through the system," McNerney said.

Referring to the caustic rhetoric surrounding the federal government's treatment of immigrants, which includes a recent effort to deport a Guatemalan woman living in DeSaulnier's district while she's in the U.S. for life-saving medical treatment, he warned that deep cultural schisms over the issue may be to the advantage of foreign adversaries.

"They want us to fight as much as possible," DeSaulnier said. "That destroys democracy."

"The Russians are very good at this," he said. "The way to destroy democracy is having all of us at each other's throats. We need to get past that."

Another person asked how the U.S. can help foreigners and immigrants when there are homeless Americans in need, many of whom are military veterans, and the question led to a brief applause from a section of the audience.

"That's an example of people wanting to divide us," DeSaulnier countered. "We can do both, and we should do both."

When the focus shifted to questions of impeachment, McNerney and DeSaulnier pantomimed a quick game of rock-paper-scissors to see which man could answer first.

"I fully support an impeachment inquiry," McNerney said.

"In terms of obstruction of justice, there's clear violations," he added.

"The last time a sitting president left office was Richard Nixon, and that wasn't impeachment," DeSaulnier said.

That chapter in American history involved public hearings that ultimately pressured Nixon to resign, he explained.

"That all happened without impeachment," DeSaulnier said.

There were well over 100 people in attendance Thursday night, including at least two wearing red Make America Great Again hats, and the 90-minute dialogue went uninterrupted — other than a few attempts from the audience to clarify questions or have parts of answers repeated.

The representatives were here in the East Bay on August recess from congress, but DeSaulnier's spokesman Ben Enos said he's heading back to Washington, D.C. in September.

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— Bay City News Service