By Katy Grimes ——Bio and Archives--June 30, 2017
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"We are a group of 460 people. We call McClintock's office frequently. Some of us call every day. We share what we've talked about with the group, and have gotten to be a wonderful community of folks who support each other. We give suggestions for things to talk about and scripts if needed." (emphasis mine)Igor Birman, McClintock's Chief of staff, said the daily calls are an organized attempt to stop the staff's legitimate work without any desire for real political dialogue and said the callers have turned nasty at times.
"They 'torment' our interns and then brag about it" Birman said. "Our interns range in age from high school to college graduates. Some are under 18. These bright kids, who come to Washington to learn about our system of government and work long hours while drawing no salary, were sworn at, compared to Nazi train conductors, asked when they lost their virginity and what type of birth control they were using, just to name a few.""Kate Hege, another constituent who phones in, said the pressure to stop calling made them want to persist" the Bee wrote. Kate Hege, an activist attorney, then posted this on Facebook:
"The Nazi train conductor metaphor was me, I was explaining Hannah Arendt's concept of "the banality of evil" encouraging the interns to see their part in what's happening in our country, as benign and mundane as it might seem to them. They kept saying that they were just doing their jobs. I asked them to be more ethically engaged, to ask questions, not just carry-on because it was their job. That was months ago, I guess it made an impact!"
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"No one in our office was ever told to accuse callers of breaking the law. Senior staffers, myself included, have met many times and continue to meet with Indivisible members, and we welcome constituent calls. While many calls are in support of the Congressman, since January of this year we started receiving them from a group whose mission statement, as posted by its leader, is to "make [staff] uncomfortable" "wreak havoc in [Mr. McClintock's] office" "take a lot of [staff's] time" "weaken [Mr. McClintock's office] in any way possible" "upset" our staff, "throw [our staff] off balance" etc.On the Facebook pages, these women activists openly admit that they "don't expect to influence [Mr. McClintock's] policy." The screen shots of this group's Facebook pages speak for themselves. Alisa Jaffe Hollernon said on her Facebook page:
"Trump is loyal to Russia. We need to not be distracted about things like the wall. We need to get this man impeached."About Trump's election Holleron said: "No, I won't get over it. Getting over it is pretending something terrible isn't happening. Something terrible is happening. It is not normal." And if their Facebook statements aren't enough, the group attended McClintock's recent townhall meeting wearing red robes and white bonnets, mimicking The Handmaid's Tale, a dystopian story of women in a totalitarian and theocratic state that has replaced the United States of America. They claimed they were there in protest of his anti-woman agenda." "We wanted the Congressman to hear our voices because of the attacks on women that he supports and the creeping authoritarianism that he supports" Hegé told HuffPost. "The women who staged the silent handmaids protest this time were from Foothills Rising,"Who Are We, McClintock?" calling group, and members of the Indivisible movement. Member Kate Hegé, told HuffPost that there were "about a dozen Handmaids, ages 12 to 70" representing Amador, Calaveras, Alpine, El Dorado, and Placer Counties.
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Katy Grimes is an investigative journalist, Senior Correspondent with the Flash Report, ReaganBabe, and Senior Media Fellow with Energy and Environmental Institute. A longtime political analyst, she has written for The Sacramento Union, The Washington Examiner, Watchdog.org, The Pacific Research Institute’s CalWatchdog, The San Francisco Examiner, The Business Journal, E&E Legal, The Sacramento Bee, Legal Insurrection, Canada Free Press, and Laura Ingraham’s LifeZette, and can be heard regularly on many talk radio shows each week.